The new event in Honkai Star Rail is called Tides of War, and it pits you against bosses and swaths of enemies. In order to defeat all of them, you'll need to rev up your Grit and defeat them before they escape.
How to S rank all Tides of War stages in Honkai Star Rail
The Tides of War event is a short-term event inside of Honkai Star Rail. In order to play, you can click on the Events tab or access the new levels from the main menu. Each day, a new level of Tides of War will be added, each with its own requirements to complete.
In each, you need to complete the same four goals to get all the loot:
- Enter "Grit Phase 4: Power Awoken" 1 time.
- Defeat the first wave's boss.
- Defeat the second wave's boss.
- Defeat the third wave's boss.
Each day, the battles will have the same goals, but the way you get Grit during those battles will change. Any action you take will get you a small amount of Grit, but the main action that ramps up your Grit will change daily. It may be killing a certain enemy, healing, taking damage, or other actions. Once you hit a certain amount of Grit, you will go up a level, or Phase, and earn a new power from it.
- Grit phase 1 never gives any effect.
- Grit phase 2 will have a choice between two powers you pick before the battle begins.
- Grit phase 3 will have a choice between two powers you pick before the battle begins.
- Grit phase 4 doesn't have a choice to make, but it ramps up your power, and it refills all your character's Ulimates.
Day 1: Trotter Effect
You will have to complete three battles in a row within the round limit you are given. Some enemies in these battles will be Trotters or can be turned into Trotters. Once you start to damage the Trotter enemies, they will attempt to flee, so you will need to keep an eye on those piggy fiends while keeping track of your remaining turns. You need to defeat the Trotters quickly or break them to keep them from running away.
The best team you can make with the trial characters for this battle is Kafka, Black Swan, Acheron, and any Sustain character. For phase 2, Enduring Effect is great with Acheron and Kafka. For phase 3, choose War of Attrition for additional DoT damage. Once the boss is killed, it will move to the next phase, so make sure to kill the Trotters first before getting rid of the bosses. The bosses in order are Voidranger, Dino Chef, and finally Sam.
Day 2: Perilous Threshold
Since the Grit booster is all about raising and lowering your allies' HP, you will want to take Jingliu for her HP drain, Blade, Luocha for his auto heals, and Bronya for her action advancement. The Trial Bronya is also holding a Dance, Dance, Dance, the Light Cone that boosts the action speed up even more. If you have Sparkle, she would also be a great pick for this team, but she is sadly not on the list of Trial characters.
With the healing and the HP drain these characters bring, you will trigger the Grit phases very, very fast. I chose Equivalent Exchange and Struggle Booster for Phase 2 and Phase 3's Support Functions. In order to win, you will need to take down two mini bosses and then Argenti.
Day 3: Supreme Leader
For today's match up, the Grit multiplier is: when the ally positioned first in the Team Setup successfully uses their Ultimate, you get a large amount of Grit. I used the trial team of Argenti, Huohuo, Sparkle, and Tingyun, using the girls to boost Argenti. Make sure Argenti is positioned first in the far left, making him push the Grit meter with his Ult as fast as possible.
You can also use Dan Heng - Imbibitor Lunae, but I like Argenti's two-stage Ultimate. You need only 90 Energy to trigger Argenti's first Ultimate, and that cheap Ultimate will ramp your Grit into the 200s very quickly. But in phase 4, you will want to use Argenti's second-tier Ultimate as often as possible.
Related: Best support characters to share in Honkai Star Rail
Houhou is necessary here because Kafka can mind control Argenti and ruin your run, but Houhou will cleanse that at the beginning of his turn, saving you tons of time. For the phase 2 choice, I picked Respect From All, though you could choose Shared Hatred; it seemed like Respect From All was less likely to overfill Energy. I chose Determined Attack for phase 3 to boost the trial characters' stats up a little higher.
Day 4: Weakness Assault
The theme for today is breaking enemies. If you break an enemy's weakness or hit a Weakness Broken enemy, you'll ramp up your Grit meter very quickly. You'll have to take down an ice monster called Ice Out In Space, a malefic ape, and Bronya. All of these are weak to both Fire and Quantum, which makes the trial Silver Wolf and Xueyi good choices for this challenge.
I also added Ruan Mei to the team for buffing my allies and enhancing weakness breaking, and you'll also want any healing unit; the trial healer is Lynx, who works pretty well in this situation, but if you have a Houhou, Luocha, or anyone with a cleanse that isn't tied to their Ult, they would be better. For Phase 2, I chose Expose Weakness to help break the little enemy to help bring down the boss afterward. For Phase 3, I picked Shatter Shield to help deal additional damage, but either one can work. Pursuer is going to be more consistent.
Day 5: Overflowing Wounds
You get a boost of Grit in this round of Tides of War if you deal more damage than it takes to kill something, and the damage overflows to the other enemies. If you choose the trial Jing Yuan, you can match him up with Phase 2 Mass Overwound and Phase 3 Victory Rush. If you choose Seele instead, you can pick Phase 2 Solitary Overwound and Phase 3 Final Blow.
I boosted my Jing Yuan with the trial Sparkle, Tingyun, and Fu Xuan. After getting buffs from all the supports, Jing Yuan was able to destroy all the smaller enemies, overflowing the extra damage onto the boss units. This build cuts it a little bit close, however, so if you can switch out any of the characters for better-built versions from your own pulls, it would be better.
With Seele, I picked the same supports with the different choices for Phases and tried the round all over again. It seemed to go a lot smoother with the Seele team. Technically, you can win with either trial leader, but for a more consistent win with trial-only characters, I would go with trial Seele. Just make sure you are keeping an eye on her extra turn mechanic; you can take several turns in a row if you are careful about timing her Resurgences and Ultimates by targeting weaker enemies.
Day 6: Perpetual Exploit
Today is all about consecutive actions, which means you will need to manipulate the action order to make sure you are completing actions one after another. Seele giving herself another turn and immediately attacking again would be an example of this.
I chose the trial Aventurine, Dr. Ratio, Hanya, and Topaz and Numby. I picked Chain Motivation and Chain Amplification for Phase 2 and Phase 3, respectively. In this unique instance, using an Ultimate will advance your turn 100%, so you want to make sure to time your Ults after using your Galefury to make sure you get the maximum amount of stacked actions.
While Hanya does help generate Skill Points, you might want to replace Hanya with an E1 Guinaifen with her light cone Resolution Shines as Pearls of Sweat if you have access to her. She will give even more debuffs to help to boost Ratio. Since Ratio was a free character, you may have a better-built version of Ratio in your lineup that you could sub out for the Trial version.
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