5 Features from Honkai Star Rail that Genshin Impact Needs

Genshin Impact has been around for a while, as it recently celebrated its three-year anniversary. Since then, we had many updates and quality-of-life improvements, but unfortunately, Honkai Star Rail, a game barely released six months ago or so, has many features that Genshin Impact fans, myself included, really wish to have.

So, I decided to list five features and quality-of-life improvements that HoYoverse should consider bringing from Honkai Star Rail into Genshin Impact.

Changes to the Resin System

Ever since its release, Genshin Impact’s Resin has been the one currency many require to claim rewards from the various Domains and Bosses, and those rewards are what allow you to increase your characters’ levels, ascend and also strengthen them.

But since the primordial days of Version 1.0, we’ve only seen an increase to the Resin cap once, from 120 to 160, and later on, the ability to craft 5 Condensed Resin instead of 3, but that’s about all we’ve seen so far.

On the other side, however, Honkai Star Rail’s Version 1.3 introduced not only an increase of the cap to 240 but also a system that will accumulate even past the 240 cap, called Reserved Trailblaze Power. While it replenishes roughly one-third slower than the regular Trailblaze Power, it’s still convenient because even if you wish to take a break for, say, four days, you’ll have plenty of currency accumulated when you return.

While Genshin somewhat mitigates this issue through Condensed Resin, you can only hold five of them in your inventory at any given time, equivalent to roughly 200 Resin.

So, it’s a given why Genshin should improve this feature. I feel this would benefit a lot of players who just don’t have the time to login every day and spend their Resin.

Making Past Events Always Available

When Honkai Star Rail got its first event, everyone quickly noticed this neat little feature: The Conventional Memoir. Now, what this does is that certain limited-time events, after they’ve ended, get added permanently to the Memoir later, allowing players to experience the stories contained in them without worrying about a time limit looming over their heads.

Admittedly, this does come with a caveat. Events that get added to the Memoir take away the limited-time rewards tier, meaning you won’t get as many rewards as when they debuted. Still, they contain a neat side story that ties into the main tale of Honkai Star Rail in some way. 

Meanwhile, Genshin Impact has some significant events, most notably the Golden Apple Archipelago and even the Akademiya Gala event. They had a generous time limit during their debut, but they’re gone now, and you can’t experience any of their stories unless you look their cutscenes up on YouTube. It would be really nice if we could re-experience these events, even if it meant cutting off some of their rewards like how Star Rail does it.

Farming Whenever You Want

We’ve all been there. You leveled up that new character you pulled in the gacha to LV 90, and now you have to upgrade their Talents. But unfortunately, you get a message saying that the domain to obtain the required materials isn’t available. In Genshin Impact, all the Talent material domains rotate during specific days of the week. While all of them are available on Sunday, you must keep close track of each.

Well, it might surprise you that in Honkai Star Rail, that issue is practically non-existent because all the materials you need are available 24/7 at any time of the week, so you can farm anytime you want, including the Trace materials, Honkai Star Rail’s equivalent of Talents.

In Genshin Impact, I have plenty of characters who still have low Talent Levels. In contrast, in Star Rail, most of my characters are practically at their maximum levels because I can farm what I need at any time (and also combined with the Accumulative system I mentioned prior).

The Very Convenient Self-Modeling Resin

To properly build your characters in Genshin Impact, you need Artifacts. Even if you focus on a character’s weapon and level first and foremost, you will inevitably have to start building up their artifact sets eventually, which can be a chore.

This is due to how each character varies on which stat they’re dependent on. For example, Arataki Itto and Albedo rely on Defense in order to deal more damage, whereas Dendro and Anemo characters, such as Venti and Nahida, rely on the Elemental Mastery status. Plus, an artifact can only have one main stat at a time.

However, in Honkai: Star Rail, that issue is mitigated by using a rare item known as a Self-Modeling Resin, obtained by reaching Level 40 on the FREE Battle Pass tier or thoroughly clearing out an event’s limited-time rewards.

Combining that item with Relic Remains (an item made from scrapping 5-star Relics you don’t need) allows you to create your own Relic pieces with the main stat you desire.

Genshin Impact does have the Artifact Strongboxes, but in Star Rail, you can choose specific pieces to meet your needs. Now, sure, the sub-stats you get are still random. Still, this removes much of the randomness from the main stat, which many would argue is one of the toughest to get right.

A Reworked Standard Banner

When you look at the interface for Honkai: Star Rail’s gacha banners, it’s hard to ignore how much they share with Genshin Impact’s DNA. After all, both games’ limited-time character banner guarantees you a 5-star in 90 pulls, and the weapon banner, which in Star Rail is the Light Cone banner, ensures it on the 80th pull, with a guaranteed rate-up percentage that carries over across banners.

But the primary feature I want to highlight is not on either of those banners. Instead, I want to bring the attention to the Standard Banner. The community often dislikes this banner for not being worth the pull investment, but HoYoverse has added an incentive in Star Rail.

If you perform 300 pulls on the standard banner, you can choose any of the five stars currently available in the general pool. And yes, that’s all you need to do. You can claim your reward once you’ve reached 300, and the character is yours.

Now, that might be a bit of a bummer due to its one-off nature. Still, I know of many players who just want a specific character in Genshin Impact, but with how the general pool grows as the years go on, the individual character percentage grows smaller.

And there you have it. Five features that HoYoverse should work on for Genshin Impact.

It honestly amazes me just how much Honkai Star Rail has improved on some of the negatives that Genshin Impact had in just three patches. And it looks like HoYoverse is also diligently patching Genshin Impact with quality-of-life improvements, such as a way that solves the dreaded “quest busy” error, as well as a reworked Daily Commission system that takes full advantage of the open-world aspect.

I can’t wait to see what sort of new features the developer has in their plans for both games.