How To Beat Pure Fiction In Honkai: Star Rail

The endgame of Honkai: Star Rail is a robust one, with three pinnacle game modes that ask for different skill sets and team compositions, with Pure Fiction asking players to defeat as many enemies as possible in the shortest amount of time. The more enemies you defeat, the higher your score, and with higher scores come better rewards.

Honkai Star Rail Sparkle Acheron And Aventurine Closeups

Honkai: Star Rail – Five Star Character Tier List

When there are different characters in a game, there’s bound to be a difference between their power level, which puts them in different tiers.

As an endgame mode, don’t expect to conquer Pure Fiction without significant investment in some good characters, and even unlocking the mode takes time. Discover everything you need to know about Pure Fiction here.

How to Unlock Pure Fiction

The cutscene introducing the Phantylia boss fight in Honkai: Star Rail.

You won’t be playing any Pure Fiction until you’ve put a few dozen hours of playtime into Honkai: Star Rail over several days. Unlocking the mode requires completing a few steps first:

Completing the Xianzhou Luofu storyline, specifically defeating the Lord Ravager Phantylia in the Traiblaze Mission A Dragon Gallant, Its Ocean Distant.
Reach Equilibrium Level 3, which you can only access by reaching Trailblaze Level 40 and passing the previous two Equilibrium challenges at Trailblaze Levels 20 and 30.
Having a team of characters at or around level 50.
Completing the “Youci’s Clever Decor” mission, introducing Pure Fiction once all previous requirements are met.

There are many more activities, missions, and methods to increase Trailblaze Levels than there used to be. However, the campaign still has significant level gates, starting early in the Jarilo-VI storyline and extending well into the Xianzhou portion of the game.

Specifically, the level gates require you to:

Reach Trailblaze Level 13 following the Jarilo-VI mission Long Wait for the Blade’s Edge.
Reach Trailblaze Level 24 following the Jarilo-VI mission Not Good With Farewells
Reach Trailblaze Level 29 to access the Xianzhou Luofu.
Reach Trailblaze Level 34 following the Luofu mission Stars Spun, Prescience Sprung.

How fast you can breach each Trailblaze Level gate will depend on how much time you invest in the game daily and if you’re willing to spend real-world money to expedite the process (which, for the record, is not necessary).

You’re likely to be at or around Trailblaze Level 36 by the time you defeat Phantylia, meaning you’ll be doing some additional grinding to reach Trailblaze Level 40 and unlocking access to Pure Fiction.

How Pure Fiction Works

The starting screen of a phase of the Pure Fiction game mode in Honkai: Star Rail.

Pure Fiction tests how fast two of your teams can defeat three sets of enemy waves. Every action your teams take awards points, and each enemy defeated, awards significantly more.

The waves are separated by the number and type of enemies faced.

Wave one hosts several elite enemies and many more standard enemies.
Wave two is made up entirely of standard enemies.
Wave three features either another set of elite enemies or a story boss flanked by support elites and mooks.

Each wave has a set number of enemies, and if possible, you will always be fighting five enemies at a time. You have a time limit of four cycles (one set of turns for your team, one for the enemy) , and if you don’t finish all the enemies efficiently enough, you could end up wasting part of a cycle fighting only one enemy, wasting both time and points.

Your goal in Pure Fiction is to reach 60,000 points across both rounds. You can only earn a maximum of 40,000 points for defeating every enemy in the first round, so you must get at least 20,000 points in the second round or vice versa. In practice, and without a hefty investment in the best characters for the mode, you’re more likely to get around 32,000 points or so per round at the highest difficulty you can complete.

There are four levels of Pure Fiction, with higher levels adding higher-level enemies. Specifically:

Pure Fiction level one has level 55 enemies.
Pure Fiction level one has level 65 enemies.
Pure Fiction level one has level 75 enemies.
Pure Fiction level one has level 85 enemies.

Each level of Pure Fiction also has different enemies to fight, meaning the team composition that beat level one might not be ideal for level two, and so on. Each version of Pure Fiction also comes with a special buff for a particular damage playstyle, like damage over time (DoT), follow-up attacks, or Break Effect.

There are also team-specific buffs you can apply if one or both of your setups don’t synergize with the current activity buff.

Lastly, there’s a quick-clear feature once you’ve completed a level of Pure Fiction. When the next phase of the mode arrives after 42 days, you’ll be able to clear up to level three of Pure Fiction with 60,000 points and automatically clear the two lower levels, earning their rewards without having to trouble yourself with lower-difficulty chores.

Honkai Star Rail Rappa idle animation with her ninja star behind her.

Honkai Star Rail: Best Team Compositions For Rappa

Rappa might not have a lot of team composition choices, but she works phenomenally if you put her in one of these in Honkai: Star Rail.

How to Beat Pure Fiction

Splash art of the character Himako in Honkai: Star Rail.

As with the other endgame modes in Honkai: Star Rail, certain characters are better in Pure Fiction than they are elsewhere, with some exceptions. And because of the mode’s emphasis on area-of-effect damage, characters that aren’t as effective anywhere else are suddenly at the top of the tier list.

Some of these surprisingly ascendant characters, and the other ones you want to complete Pure Fiction are:

Character	Role	Description
Himeko	Main DPS	As an Erudition character, Himeko is the one standard banner 5-star that excels in Pure Fiction thanks to the amazing AoE damage in her follow-up attack and Ultimate, and AoE Fire damage being a rarer element
Herta	Main DPS	Like Himeko, Herta’s ability to hit every enemy on the field with all of her abilities, and a follow-up attack that hits based on how many enemies have reached 50% health, makes her ideal for Pure Fiction.
Argenti	Main DPS	Argenti continues Erudition’s dominance, offering top-tier AoE Physical damage, which is hard to come by in any capacity. Only Yunli really competes with Argenti in that respect.
Jade	Sub-DPS	Jade offers AoE Quantum damage and buffs your main DPS. She won’t be soloing Pure Fiction without some significant investment, but she immediately amplifies any Erudition team, and especially follow-up attack versions.
Rappa	Main DPS	Rappa is one of the best Erudition characters, as she can function as a main DPS outside of the mode almost as well as she does in it. Her Imaginary AoE damage and Super Break amplification make her an absolute mostner, if she’s part of your team.
Aventurine	Sustain	Aventurine makes it so your team ends a Pure Fiction run without taking a point of damage thanks to the massive Shields he provides the team. His follow up attacks also add some supplemental damage and weakness break, meaning he’s good in almost any team setup.
Robin	Support	*There aren’t many characters Robin can’t* buff, whether they rely on Ultimate, follow-up attacks, or more traditional Skills.** Her ability to instantly give your team a second set of turns with her own Ultimate is almost overkill.
Yunli	Main DPS	Yunli isn’t quite as good as Argenti when it comes to Physical AoE damage, but as a Destruction unit, she is still a fantastic choice, especially against the beefier elite and boss enemies.
Acheron	Main DPS	Acheron requires a bit more investment and a specific team composition for optimal damage, but even without every tool at her disposal, she can reach some of the highest DPS numbers in the game.
Lingsha	Sustain	Lingsha has a lot going for her, including AoE Fire damage with every aspect of her kit, top-tier healing, and general utility. She magnifies the potential of characters like Firefly, but any follow-up attack or Super Break team would be happy to have her.
Ruan Mei	Support	Ruan Mei is one of those characters that can fit into any team comp and make it better, with her ability to improve and extend Weakness Break, plus her absurd damage buffs.
Gallagher	Sustain	One of only two four-stars at the top of the Pure Fiction list, Gallagher offers clunky but effective healing, good Break Effect, and AoE Fire damage on top of it all.
Fu Xuan	Sustain	The Crit buffs Fu Xuan provides, as well as her ability to reduce team-wide damage, makes her a solid choice for Pure Fiction, and she works well in almost any team regardless of composition.

You don’t need all of these characters to be successful in Pure Fiction, and if you’re a newer player you won’t have few or any of them. That list is a good starting point for characters you can save for when they come around again on the limited banners, which usually takes six to eight months from their initial release or rerun.

Once you have the right team, you’ll need to use their kits optimally, especially on Pure Fiction level four. Focus your attention on elite and boss enemies, as these usually come with additional abilities that can make your life difficult, but don’t ignore the mooks, either. Death by a thousand cuts is still very much a thing.

One final note: never worry about not being able to get to the 60,000 points on level four, as you might not have the perfect team to conquer it every time. Clearing levels one through three is overall more valuable, and even if you can only get 40,000 on level four, you’re only missing out on the equivalent of a single pull on either banner, which is a fine sacrifice to make.