Honkai Star Rail Swarm Disaster Guide (Simulated Universe) – Best teams, strategies, & more!

However, I do have rules I settled with when I designed my entry team (first four units). When deciding on who to bring first, here’s a checklist:

• A dedicated healer: This is non-negotiable. You need a dedicated healer to survive.
• At least one AoE unit: Usually, this will be Erudition units like Himeko, but you can also have people like Blade to fill it in.
• A buffer: People like Yukong, Ruan Mei, and Bronya improve the versatility of your team. Since you don’t know what elemental weaknesses you’re going up against, having a buffer to support your stronger characters will help you in every situation.
• Your MVP(s): We all have that one (or two) DPS unit we’ve invested all our resources into. Bring them.
• High HPs/DEFs: My Level 80, E6 Sushang, with the best equipment I can give her, can never survive the Elites and Bosses of the later Phases. Be sure the units you’re bringing are equipped to survive. Some five stars like Himeko and Imbibitor Lunae are also pretty fragile.
  • Option #2: You can also bring Gepard or Fu Xuan to tank hits and protect your team.
  • Option #3: Bring Clara or Fire Trailblazer for "taunts."
  • Option #4: Go on the Destruction Path and grab Regression Inequality of Annihilation (3* Blessing); it's the one that splits DMG between allies. Also, grab as many HP and healing-boosting abilities as you can.

I haven’t properly experimented with all the Paths in Swarm Disaster yet, but again, it ultimately will come down to team synergy. For example, my own team encourages fast battles with continuous turns, so my default is the Hunt Path, which summons Trotters. Still, if you want definite answers, I do think Destruction and Elation are your best bets.

Anyways, I’ll outline what the other Paths are good for as well so you can make your own decision on the matter. I’ll cover the Paths it can trigger a Resonance Interplay with, too! You'll only need three of that Path's blessings to get a resonance card.

Destruction boosts your team’s DMG% by winning battles. It’s the most straightforward path to follow in Swarm Disaster. The only thing you need to think about is surviving and winning. You don’t have to be fast about them too. Your rewards are consistent blessings, and you can grab good buffs towards the finale. A potential "downside" to this is the Path encouraging you to enter Elite domains, but the extra Blessing you can get from winning those is more than worth it.

• Resonance Interplays: Elation, Preservation

Elation is the opposite of Destruction—it’s for players who like to avoid fighting. Elation can apply “Happiness” to domains and turn them into anything but battles. You’ll be walking through Adventures, Rewards, and Swarm Occurrences most of the time! The only real “downside” is how you can’t choose what rewards you’re going to get, especially for Occurences, so it’s a little harder to build a good setup. The luck factor can be pretty exciting, though.

• Resonance Interplays: Abundance, Remembrance

Hunt’s usually the path I go for, as mentioned, since I like teams that involve a lot of advanced forwarding and continuous turns. In the Hunt path, a Warp Trotter can be added to domains. Your team gets +Crit DMG% for every Warp Trotter you beat. As you know, these creatures are notoriously fickle, so only take this domain if you know you can beat them quickly. They're weak to Quantum, Imaginary, and Physical. If you have Sushang built, you can use her here (never in the Elite and Boss rooms though).

• Resonance Interplays: Elation, Abundance

The Abundance Path encourages people to stay in Swarm Disaster and enter as many Domains as luck will grant them. Any domain blessed with “Mercy” can increase your countdown number, allowing you to avoid Planar Disarray until you’ve got all the things you need. The Communing Trail buffs you get also make it a good option for people with self-sacrificial characters like Blade and Arlan.

• Resonance Interplays: Nihility, Propagation

Nihility allows you to turn nodes into “Blank” nodes. Stepping into one increases your party’s DMG. Only when you’re on a Nihility path do the Blank domains turn into events (instead of nothing). But what they turn into is completely random. I would only enter Nihility if you need the blessings.

• Resonance Interplays: Hunt, Propagation

The Remembrance Path is good but sadly not a fit for the characters I have. Essentially, its passive boosts Effect Hit Rate. Those who play a lot with DoT characters like Kafka, Sampo, etc. might have a good time here. Its Swarm playstyle is pretty sweet, though. If the master of luck gives you god-tier domains (like Reward and Adventure), you can copy the domains you like to adjacent nodes.

• Resonance Interplays: Destruction, Hunt

Preservation is all about retaining the domains you really like and preventing them from collapsing. Each of these protected domains even grants a Shield% boost. The catch is that you have to enter Boss domains to get those boosts. If you like playing the long game, you can try and walk the Preservation Path.

• Resonance Interplays: Remembrance, Nihility

Here are other Curios to watch out for in Swarm Disaster:

• Medal of the Glorybood Era: Instantly gain a three-star blessing in exchange for your next Occurrence domain being a blank.
• Rubert Empire Mechanical Cogwheel: Obtain 50 Fragments each time you enter a domain. As long as you keep your total below 500, this is a Curio you can keep until the last room. However, if your Fragments exceed 500, you lose all the ones you have and this Curio.
• Cavity System Model: Lose all the Fragments you have, but increase your team’s Crit DMG by 24% for every 100 you lost. An invaluable Curio for building high output DMG instantly. I always hoard Fragments on the off chance I see it. In my opinion, you do need to sacrifice at least 500 Fragments for the trade off to be worth it.
• Spirit of the Knights of Beauty: Gains your four dice rolls, an invaluable Curio in Swarm Disaster.
• A Pinch of Bearded Gunpower: Gain an extra Cheat (available only after you've unlocked Cheats).

True Sting is the final boss in every Swarm Disaster run you’ll go on in Honkai: Star Rail. It’s characterized by four things:

1. A changing first weakness (True Sting will always be weak to Quantum and Imaginary—but the third is random; you learn about it once you touch the final room’s Obelisk). Always have your favorite DPSes of varying elements with you before you enter the final room!
2. Endless mobs
3. Extremely high HP
4. Potentially one shot, one kill attacks from the second round onwards

Aside from taking characters like Fu Xuan, Luocha, etc. with you, the blessings that you take are really important. If you grab the following, your survivability will increase dramatically:

• Regression Inequality of Annihilation (3*, Destruction): Spilts DMG between all allies
• Being of Abundance, Becoming One Mind (3*, Abundance): 30% of a single target’s heal will be blasted to other allies
• Clear Lucite Body (2*, Abundance): When HP is full, reduces DMG take
• Interstellar Construct: Quadrangular Pyramid (2*, Preservation): Increases max DMG that can be absorbed by Shields
• Interstellar Construct: Sanctuary (2*, Preservation): At the end of the turn, there is a fixed chance to gain a shield equal to % of a character’s max HP
• Orbital Redshift (1*, Destruction): Increases Max HP