I recently wrote a piece about how to not waste your wishes in Genshin Impact, and a lot of that info is still relevant in Honkai Star Rail, a game that wears a lot of the same skeleton as Genshin Impact (although, as I might say in a post later down the line, Star Rail is not just Genshin in space, in fact if you love everything about Genshin, you may find very little to keep you interested in Star Rail, and that isn’t a bad thing.)

Since I had a lot of this info top of mind I decided to crank out a short video just quickly rambling about how to allocate your wishes.

Here’s the short bullet point version:

Only Spend gems on the Timed Event Banner

This is a limited time banner that relies on a timer and fomo to get you spending. The five star character that’s featured in this banner is ONLY available here for a limited time. It’ll come back around though eventually in a few months so don’t feel pressure to spend real money on this game just yet. Wait a couple weeks before you understand the game before putting any money into it.

There is a pity counter on this banner that doesn’t expire. That means after a certain amount of pulls you are guaranteed a five star character. In this case it’s 90 pulls. You may pull sooner, if you do the counter resets to zero. The counter does not reset at the end of the banners time out, it caries over into the next one. Meaning you can hoard pity to use on a better 5-star sometime down the line if you have the self control for it. When you pull a five star there’s a 50% chance it’s the event banner character, otherwise you get a dud 5-star character from the standard banner pool. If this occurs the second time you hit the pity counter for a 5 star character there is a 100% guarantee it will be the event banner 5-star character.

Spend all your free tickets you’re going to be getting on the promotional banner.

This is guaranteed to get you a 5 star after 50 pulls, this is as good as it’s going to get for you since every other banner has a pity of 90 to pull a five star. Once these 50 pulls have been exhausted this banner will disappear for good. This is designed to get you started in the game. I like it.

Don’t spend your gems on the Standard banner

This banner is not timed and the standard banner five star characters are already in the pool for the timed event banner. That means you’re going to get all these 5 star characters EVENTUALLY, as they cuck you out of getting the 5-Star limited Banner character. You will be getting free tickets for this banner all the time though, so don’t worry, you’ll be pulling from here regularly anyway, but there’s no point in wasting valuable resources and pity on it.

Don’t Buy the Weapon Banner

This banner is for whales. Ignore it unless you hate having money. You won’t get the crazy step up in performance you were hoping for, and you may not even get an item applicable to your loadout.