Honkai: Star Rail – Best F2P Teams to Build

Combat in Honkai: Star Rail lives and dies by the teams that players can cobble together. With the correct selection of units, every challenge in the game can be conquered with relative ease, especially if the synergies between characters hit that perfect sweet spot that results in the biggest damage numbers and most broken interactions possible.

Building a team in Honkai: Star Rail is heavily dependent on a player’s luck. Not everyone can play using the best characters in the roster. However, the F2P units in this game are more than capable of clearing almost everything that stands in the way. Here are four F2P team comps that any player can build.

Updated November 16, 2024, by Marc Santos: As Honkai: Star Rail’s roster of playable characters continues to expand, so too does the potential for powerful team compositions. With the second Xianzhou Luofu and Penacony arcs now over, players have even more units to play around with. While the majority of meta units do come from the limited-time character banners, it’s hard to deny that even a team full of 4-star units can dominate the game’s hardest content. This guide has been updated to include two more 4-star characters that can make many budget teams shine.

The Ol’ Reliable

This is the standard team composition all players should be familiar with. It consists of:

• One tank
• One DPS
• One flex pick
• One healer

Players can take this sort of team anywhere and find decent success as long as they play their cards right. By its nature as the traditional RPG comp, it’s also very flexible when it comes to character picks. The starting trio composed of Dan Heng, March 7th, and Physical Trailblazer can breeze through Honkai: Star Rail’s story content without a problem, as well as most of the early Forgotten Hall and Simulated Universe floors.

The Double Tank Setup

As its name suggests, this team setup relies on using two tanks that can share enemy aggro with each other. It’s composed of:

• Fire Trailblazer
• March 7th
• Two flex picks

March and Fire Trailblazer are the only two free-to-play (F2P) tanks on the roster as of the launch version of Honkai: Star Rail. The good thing is that they are both incredibly good at their jobs.

This composition is pretty flexible when it comes to damage options. Any other character can fit into the remaining two slots here, and since the tanks offer enough protection for everybody, having a healer is completely optional unless players are locked in a drawn-out boss fight. Depending on the enemy matchup, either March or Fire Trailblazer can assume the role of dedicated Weakness Breaker as well, while the other covers for their original tank duty.

The Hyper Carry Crew

Using a hyper-carry team is always risky, but it can pay off if players manage their units properly. An example of this using F2P characters would be something like:

• Dan Heng/Any DPS carry
• Tingyun
• Asta
• A tank or healer

In this case, Asta and Tingyun will focus mostly on giving the team’s DPS enough buffs to delete large chunks of an enemy’s health bar. Bronya is the ideal support unit for this team comp, replacing Asta’s SPD boosts with ATK and CRIT DMG buffs that stack nicely with Tingyun’s.

The last slot can be filled by either a tank or a healer. In most cases, March 7th or Fire Trailblazer with any 4-star Light Cone is enough to cover this slot. They’ll be able to break Toughness Bars while giving the rest of the team more leeway to pull off their big moves..

The Elation Meme Team

This team is designed with the Simulated Universe in mind. It makes heavy use of ultimate abilities and follow-up attacks to score ridiculous damage numbers using the Elation’s many blessings. The team is as follows:

• March 7th
• Herta
• Dr. Ratio
• Pela

This team cares very little about elemental weaknesses. As long as players can get Slaughterhouse No. 4 and either Auto-Harmonica or Champion’s Dinner: Cat’s Cradle, they’ll be able to steamroll through almost everything with sheer brute force. Couple these with Freeze-related bonuses from the Remembrance, and enemies won’t even be able to take their turn before the incoming onslaught of empowered ultimates and Herta spins wipes them off the field. This setup is most ideal with E6 March as she can heal allies with her shield.

Dr. Ratio was introduced in HSR as a free 5-star character for everyone who played the game from January 16, 2024 until the end of the 2.1 patch. Those who failed to get him then may have to roll for him in a future banner.

Hyperbreak Team

With Imaginary Trailblazer now available in HSR, players can now create teams that focus around exploiting the Break system. One such F2P-friendly team is as follows:

• Imaginary Trailblazer
• Sushang
• Bronya
• Any sustain unit (tank or healer)

Imaginary Trailblazer enables an effect called Super Break, which lets allies deal massive bonus damage to any target that already has their Toughness Bars broken. This character pairs extremely well with someone like Sushang, who is significantly more effective against broken enemies.

Bronya is the preferred second Harmony unit here since she can force other team members to take their turn, accelerating Toughness Bar depletion by having the right characters attacking more frequently. Players can get her for free after they do 300 pulls on the standard banner.

Since this is a Break-focused team, players will need to adjust their team based on the elemental weaknesses of the enemy. This reason alone should encourage players to build a wide roster of support and sustain characters.

HSR F2P Pure Fiction Team

This team is composed of the best characters for Pure Fiction in Honkai: Star Rail, but with a stronger focus on the F2P side of things:

• Herta
• Serval
• Gallagher
• Guinaifen

This team’s damage comes from both Serval and Herta. Both are great at dealing AOE damage, and the former can easily bring the health bars of weaker enemies down to 50%, giving the latter the opportunity to deal even more AOE damage.

Both Guinaifen and Gallagher are also great at dealing with crowds. Guinaifen’s can inflict the Firekiss debuff to multiple enemies at once, increasing the damage they take from all sources. Meanwhile, Gallagher can increase the Break DMG dealt to enemies via his Besotted debuff. Also, despite being a healer, Gallagher is a surprisingly strong damage dealer if built properly.

4-Star Characters to Look Out For

The cast of playable characters in the game continues to grow with every major patch, and players will soon find that many new and powerful team compositions can be brought to life with 4-star units. Eventually, the roster will become so diverse that players will be actively encouraged to become creative with the teams they form.

The addition of a single unit can create a ton of team building possibilities. Instead of pigeonholing players into specific compositions, the following will explain the strengths of Honkai: Star Rail’s latest 4-star characters as well as some example teams where they work best in.

Yukong: Burst Damage and Offensive Buffs

Yukong is the first-ever 4-star Imaginary support unit who focuses purely on offense. She offers massive ATK and CRIT buffs while also being able to deal good damage on her own. Her biggest downside is her Skill’s ATK/CRIT buff uses charges that are consumed after any ally’s turn ends, which makes SPD and turn management very important when using her.

Some of Yukong’s best teammates include:

• Dan Heng – Imbibitor Lunae
• Seele
• Jingliu
• Luocha
• Fu Xuan
• Silver Wolf

Luka: Burst Damage, DoT, and Debuffs

Luka is a Nihility character who does a little bit of everything when it comes to attacking. He can inflict Bleeding, deal high burst damage, and debuff enemies to make them take even more damage. He can fit in literally every team composition that needs some form of DPS increase. However, Luka is unable to match the consistency and raw damage output of dedicated damage dealers, which means he’ll shine the brightest with a team who can make use of his skills.

The best teammates for Luka include:

• Kafka
• Sampo
• Silver Wolf
• Guinaifen

Lynx: Healing, Cleansing, and Aggro Management

Lynx is an excellent all-around healer, especially when she’s in the right teams. She can keep the team alive by topping off their HP bars and removing one debuff from everyone by using her Ultimate. On top of that, she has a very specific interaction with Destruction characters. Once Lynx uses her Skill on a Destruction character, monsters will be more likely to target the healed ally instead of everyone else. This makes Lynx invaluable in high-damage teams with no tank characters.

The best teammates for Lynx are:

It’s also worth mentioning that as a healer, Lynx will fit into any other team just fine. The same can be said with all healers unless players are using characters who can self-heal like Fu Xuan and Physical Trailblazer.

March 7th (Hunt): Single-Target, Follow-up Attacks, SP Positive

March 7th’s Swordmaster form makes for a very good sub-DPS in a wide variety of team compositions, especially in Follow-Up Attack teams with units like Xueyi and Topaz. She can be built for Crit or Break depending on what role you want her to fill, and she gains either increased DMG or Toughness Reduction depending on the Path of the character she uses her Skill on.

Overall, March 7th (Hunt) is a versatile unit, and once you finish her event on the second trip to the Xianzhou Luofu, you can get her for free. The best teammates for her include:

• Harmony Trailblazer
• Topaz
• Xueyi
• Gallagher
• Robin

Moze: Follow-Up Attack Specialist

Like Hunt March 7th, Moze is a character who focuses on follow-up attacks, but he does this differently from others. In-game, his Skill lets him hide in the shadows, making him untargetable while still being able to perform follow-up attacks.

While Moze is out of the field due to his Skill, any attack performed on enemies he marks will deal an additional instance of Lightning Damage. After a marked enemy is hit three times, Moze performs a follow-up attack. As such, he works best with other FUA characters, including:

• Feixiao
• Hunt March 7th
• Topaz
• Lingsha
• Aventurine
• Robin (for damage amplification)

Clara is a surprisingly good partner for Moze. Since he can disappear from the battlefield, enemies will have less allies to target, increasing the odds of Clara getting hit and thus triggering Svarog’s counterattacks.

Gallagher: Healing, Break DMG

Gallagher is the best character to use if you want an offense-oriented healer. His Ultimate inflicts enemies with the Besotted debuff, which makes it so any friendly character that attacks them is healed for a certain amount. Besotted enemies also receive more Break DMG, making Gallagher an excellent choice if you want to exploit HSR’s Break Effect mechanic.

Players can take Gallagher on pretty much any team and still find success with him. However, due to his Break-focused kit and Eidolon bonuses, he is best used with Break carries like Firefly, Rappa, and Boothill.