If you’re a new Trailblazer just learning how the relic system works in Honkai: Star Rail, the most common mistake you can make is upgrading randomly or disassembling good gear by accident. This wastes all the materials and credits you worked so hard to farm, and leaves you stuck when you’re trying to push your team power higher. This full practical guide breaks down every step from locking, upgrading, to disassembling relics. Follow along, and you’ll make zero mistakes, hitting max combat power with the least amount of resources.
Step 1: Learn to Lock Relics First to Avoid Accidental Deletion
Most new players slap a good relic on their character and immediately rush to upgrade it, completely forgetting that locking is the most important first step. Later, when your storage is full and you’re bulk disassembling extra relics, it’s way too easy to accidentally sell off that perfect endgame relic you spent weeks farming for — and once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.
The practical trick here is incredibly simple: as soon as you determine a relic has the right set and the correct main stat for a character, hit the lock button immediately, no matter how good or bad its secondary stats are. Even if you don’t have a character that can use it right now, locking it and storing it away costs you nothing, and it’s way better than regretting deleting it later.
You also need to remember that the game only automatically locks relics that are currently equipped to a character. Any good spare relic you swapped off a character needs to be locked manually — don’t skip this tiny step just because it’s a hassle.
Zero Waste Upgrading Rules: Different Strategies for Different Stages
The second common mistake new players make is maxing out every relic they get right away. When they finally farm a true endgame perfect relic, they don’t have any upgrade materials left to level it up. The right approach to upgrading is adjusting your strategy based on your current progression stage, never dump all your resources into a relic on a whim.
During the transition phase before your full team is built, when you’re still leveling up characters and pushing through the main story and limited-time events, you only need to upgrade relics for your core damage dealers and key supports to +9~+12. You don’t need to max them all the way to +15. Most relics you use in this phase are just temporary placeholders that you’ll replace later anyway. Maxing them out costs three times as many resources for no reason, and saving those resources for your future endgame relics is a much smarter use of your supplies.
Only two scenarios call for maxing a relic all the way to +15. First, you’ve confirmed that this is the final endgame relic for your current character: it has the correct set, the right main stat, and at least two useful secondary stats that fit the character’s needs. Second, you’ve already finished leveling and gearing all five characters on your main team, and you have extra leftover materials to improve your spare gear. Also, never feed unidentified 4-star or higher relics directly into other gear as upgrade fodder. Disassembling high-star relics gives you valuable conversion materials, so eating them directly is just throwing resources away. Only 3-star and lower relics are safe to use directly as upgrade fodder.
If you accidentally upgrade a bad relic, don’t panic. The game already lets you transfer upgrade levels between relics. You only pay a small fee to move all the accumulated experience from your old relic to a new one, so you don’t have to disassemble the old relic and waste all that built-up experience.
Correct Bulk Disassembling Practices: Get Max Materials Without Losing Good Gear
After you run relic caverns for a while, you’ll definitely run into the problem of a full storage box. Bulk disassembling is when mistakes happen most often, but if you remember two core rules, you can sort your storage without stepping on any landmines.
First rule: if you already locked all the good relics when you got them, the bulk disassemble system will automatically skip all locked relics by default. That means accidental deletion is almost impossible. The key is always locking good relics when you get them, not trying to check every single relic one by one when you’re disassembling. Second rule: only disassemble relics you know you’ll never use. This includes 5-star relics with completely wrong main stats (like a damage set head piece with a defense main stat), and unused 4-star relics that are just sitting around after your team is fully built. These are all safe to break down. If you have a 5-star relic with the right set but wrong main stat, it’s a good idea to keep 1 or 2 copies as spares. A new character released later might end up needing exactly that setup, and you’ll save the stamina you would have spent re-farming it.
Fix the 3 Most Common Beginner Mistakes
To wrap up, let’s go over the three most common mistakes new players make. Avoiding all three will cut your total gearing time almost in half: First, you dump all your materials into temporary transition relics just to get a quick power spike, leaving you with no resources left for your final endgame gear. Our tip: during your first month playing, never upgrade any relic past +12, and save all your extra resources for later.
Second, you throw away any relic with bad secondary stats. In reality, functional characters like supports and preservation characters only care about having the right main stat and the right set. Any correct main stat with at least one useful secondary stat is already good enough for them, you don’t need to go chasing max critical stats for these roles. A relic with slightly worse secondary stats is perfectly usable on a functional character, throwing it away is just a waste of a good piece of gear.
Third, you don’t sort your storage for long periods of time, and only disassemble when it’s completely full. You’re far more likely to make mistakes when you’re rushing to clear space. Our tip: sort your storage after every two relic cavern runs. Lock the relics you want to keep, break down the junk you don’t need, and you’ll never end up with a huge messy backlog that’s impossible to sort through.
Gearing relics in Honkai: Star Rail isn’t actually that complicated. Just remember the simple mantra: “Lock first, upgrade by stage, only max out the right gear”. Follow this, and you’ll make zero mistakes, waste no resources, and push your team’s power to the max as fast as possible. That leaves you ready to take on even the hardest endgame content the game has to offer.
