The simulated universe has undergone a bit of a change, bringing you Honkai Star Rail’s swarm disaster and all that it entails. It’s a complex game mode with lots of explainers, so here’s our guide to help you out. You can thank the Genius Society for this mode that’s now permanently available in the game.
We at Pocket Tactics love a bit of Hoyoverse, and we’ve got build guides for Honkai Star Rail’s Imbibitor Lunae, Honkai Star Rail’s Fu Xuan, and Honkai Star Rail’s Lynx to help you out with your new units. Plus, here are the latest Honkai Star Rail codes to help you pull who you want.
Now then, let’s get into our Honkai Star Rail swarm disaster guide.
What is the Honkai Star Rail swarm disaster?
The Genius Society – Herta, Screwllum, Ruan Mei, and Stephen Lloyd – has worked together to treat you to the swarm disaster, a new mode of play in Honkai Star Rail’s simulated universe. Here, you move across a board instead of straight through chambers while collecting curios, blessings, and cosmic fragments to bolster your team. This mode isn’t particularly easy, and you can definitely consider this as ‘late-game’ content, so prepare your teams wisely.
You can access the swarm disaster by entering the option in the main menu. It’s available once you complete world 5 of the simulated universe. In this mode, there are fresh buffs to unlock as you complete challenges in the game, along with a new path to tread called Propagation.
What is the Honkai Star Rail communing trail?
One aspect added in the swarm disaster update is the communing trail. You can see this in the main menu of the swarm. It’s a collection of buffs you can attain as you progress through stages, regardless of whether you pass them or not.
Basically, the communing trail screen shows all the buffs you have already unlocked and can unlock, through Trial of Pathstrider goals and just working your way through the main swarm levels. The available buffs are in a list under each path and mostly offer shield, resonance, defense, and damage increase benefits.
What is the Honkai Star Rail planar disarray?
See that timer counting down your turns? Yeah, ominous, right? That’s how many domains you can go through until the planar disarray triggers. Once it hits zero, enemies will get a significant buff as the disruption level rises. You can usually reach the boss within this time on each level, but for those wanting to collect more treasure or hunt through extra domains, do so at your own peril.
How do I trigger a swarm disaster emergency?
Another fun update with the swarm disaster is that you can trigger emergencies, whether you mean to or not, as you progress across the stage. Herta doesn’t mention these emergencies during the tutorial so don’t worry if you don’t recognize it.
You can trigger these emergencies by landing on enhanced spaces, especially combat challenges, but there isn’t a specific way of guaranteeing an emergency. There’s a reward available for triggering an emergency on the higher difficulties, so they do serve at least one purpose.
The emergencies tend to turn combat spaces into swarm combat domains, but can also grant Propagation curios.
What is Honkai Star Rail resonance interplay?
As you enter the swarm disaster mode, like the simulated universe, it presents you with a choice of which path you want to travel. These paths get unlocked as you progress through the higher difficulties of the swarm, again, like in the main simulated universe mode.
There is, however, one notable change – there is resonance interplay available between two paths you have blessings for.
How do I activate Honkai Star Rail resonance interplay?
In order to use the resonance interplay, you need to unlock the resonance for two different paths. This requires getting three blessings from each path. The interplay automatically takes effect after you meet these requirements.
Each of the eight paths (Propagation included) can resonate with two other paths. You can activate both options by collecting the right blessings along the way. For instance, say you start on the Hunt path, you can activate the resonance interplay with the Abundance by getting three Abundance blessings, and then also the Elation by collecting three blessings of that path, too.
Here are the currently available resonances between paths:
| First path | Second path | Resonance interplay |
| Abundance | Nihility | After using your path resonance, all teammate’s weakness break efficiency increases by 15%, and break effect increases by 50%. This lasts for two turns. |
| Abundance | Propagation | When a character’s HP gets restored by a path resonance, and if the healing is higher than their maximum HP, they recover one skill point. This can trigger one time per resonance use. After triggering this effect, all teammate’s damage increases by 30% for two turns. |
| Destruction | Elation | When a character uses a follow-up attack, they regenerate 5% of their energy for path resonance. If their current HP is lower than 50%, they regenerate an additional 5%. |
| Destruction | Preservation | Using path resonance causes any character with less than 50% HP to gain a shield equalling 40% of their maximum HP. This shield lasts for two turns. |
| Elation | Abundance | When the Elation path resonance deals damage, it dispels one random buff on one ally. |
| Elation | Remembrance | When the Elation resonance deals ice damage, there is a 150% chance to freeze enemies for one turn. |
| Hunt | Abundance | When you defeat enemy targets with path resonance, all allies restore HP equal to 50% of their maximum HP. |
| Hunt | Elation | After using path resonance, all teammate’s speed increases by 25 for two turns. |
| Nihility | Hunt | If path resonance applies all four buffs (shock, burn, bleed, wind shear), then all allies’ actions advance forward by 4%. |
| Nihility | Propagation | A teammate’s basic attack can now cause all DoTs currently applied to the target to immediately deal damage equal to 40% of the original damage of the statuses. |
| Preservation | Nihility | There is a 150% chance for the Preservation resonance to inflict bleed on the current target for two turns. Bleeding enemies take physical DoT equal to 12% of their maximum HP at the start of each turn. This damage cannot exceed 250% of the total amount of shield currently on allies. |
| Preservation | Remembrance | When attacking frozen enemies with Preservation path resonance, the damage dealt increases by 80%, but the freeze status gets removed. |
| Propagation | Destruction | After using path resonance, it nullifies all damage received by a single target ally (except DoT). This dispels after taking a hit. If the target ally’s HP is lower than 50%, it also recovers one skill point. |
| Propagation | Preservation | Upon using a path resonance, a single target ally gains a shield equal to 60% of their maximum HP, which lasts for three turns. |
| Remembrance | Destruction | When a path resonance-caused freeze effect dispels or gets resisted, there is a 150% chance of lowering the target enemy’s all-type resistance by 15% for two turns. For every 1 HP that each ally has lost, the target’s resistance becomes lowered by an additional 0.06%. |
| Remembrance | Hunt | If a path resonance-caused freeze effect becomes dispelled or gets resisted by enemies, there is a 150% chance of decreasing the target’s speed by 15% for two turns. |
Now, before you head into the challenge, why not check your units and improve them a little first using our guides for characters like Honkai Star Rail’s Gepard, Honkai Star Rail’s Himeko, and Honkai Star Rail’s Qingque.