What are Paths in Honkai: Star Rail?

Honkai: Star Rail is full of characters with different abilities. Each character has a specific role on a team, like dealing damage, healing teammates, attacking multiple enemies at a time, and more. These roles are called Paths, and understanding them is key to effective combat in Honkai: Star Rail. Here's everything you need to know about Paths.

Paths in Honkai: Star Rail function a lot like the character classes in other RPGs. Each one dictates how a character will contribute to the team and tells you a little about what affects their attacks, skills, and Ultimates will have during battle.

There are fourteen total Paths in the game, of which only eight are playable at the moment: Destruction, The Hunt, Preservation, Erudition, Abundance, Harmony, Remembrance, and Nihility. Destruction, Hunt, and Erudition are damage-dealing classes, while Abundance, Preservation, Harmony, Remembrance, and Nihility are support classes.

Damage-dealing characters are the backbone of any team, as these are the folks who you'll use to quickly Break and knock out enemies, which can limit the number of turns your opponents take and the overall damage your team will suffer.

Destruction characters are all-arounders who can attack both single and multiple targets at a time. The Hunt characters focus on dealing a high amount of damage to a single foe, while Erudition characters excel at dealing damage to multiple enemies at once.

The other five Paths are either dedicated to strengthening your team, weakening your enemies, or to adding to your team strength with an auxiliary member. Abundance characters are the most straightforward—they can heal teammates. Remembrance characters, on the other hand, summon a memosprite that can aid your team with its special abilities.

Preservation characters can shield your other characters, making them tougher in battle and sometimes providing other benefits. Harmony characters increase the damage your team can deal, and Nihility characters weaken opponents so they're less effective, attack less often, or do less damage.

Light Cones are special items you can equip on your characters that boost their stats and give bonuses. These can strengthen your characters quite a bit, but each Light Cone only works with a specific Path. That means if you want to strengthen a certain character and their role on a team, you'll also need to get the appropriate Light Cones to unlock their full potential.

You can get new Light Cones as you play through quests and open chests, or you can get them through the Warp system.

Pay attention to your characters' Paths to make a strong and effective team in battle. You always want damage-dealers on a team, so Destruction, Hunt, and Erudition characters are going to be your focus most of the time. But, you’ll also want Abundance or Preservation support characters on a team, allowing you to either heal your teammates or shield them from attack.

You’ll also want to have access to a variety of elemental attack types as well, so you can exploit enemy weaknesses. Try different combinations of characters so you can find which ones you like the most and which are most effective together.