How to Balance “Top Half Score Hunting” and “Bottom Half Clear Guarantee”? A Two-Team Revolution Upending Pure Fiction’s Rules

Have you ever had this happen? You put your strongest Himeko + Herta permanent cycle team on the top half of Pure Fiction, watch your score skyrocket to 40,000, and celebrate early. Next, you slot your second AOE team (like Jing Yuan or Serval) into the bottom half. But when the fight starts, you spot an Automaton Grizzly among the bottom half enemies. Your second AOE team can barely scratch it, your cycle breaks, and you end the half with just 15,000 points. Your total sits at 55,000, just missing the 60,000 full star mark.

This is old-school thinking. You try to run two full AOE teams to beat Pure Fiction, and you chase equal damage and survival balance across both squads.

But at the same time, another Trailblazer also puts Himeko + Herta on the top half, and also hits 40,000 points. When he faces Automaton Grizzly on the bottom half though, he brings a totally unexpected team: his T0 boss-killing squad from Memory of Chaos, Acheron + Pela + Guinaifen. He ignores all surrounding trash mobs, manually focuses all fire on Grizzly. Once Grizzly falls, he locks in the full 20,000 clear guarantee points. His total hits 60,000, for an easy full clear.

The gap between these two outcomes comes down to how well you understand two-team building. Pure Fiction never tests you on having two equally balanced AOE teams. Instead, it is an asymmetric battle between “top half score hunting” and “bottom half clear guarantee”. This guide will fully break down this game-changing damage and survival balance strategy.

The Problem With Two AOE Teams: Why Equalism Caps Your Maximum Score

Pure Fiction’s design is full of asymmetry. It intentionally builds the top half and bottom half as two completely different challenge environments. If you stick to the old equalism mindset and try to use two similarly strong teams to clear both, you’ll immediately hit a hard cap on how high your score can go.

The Score Paradox: Why Does Your Second Team Always Stall On The Bottom Half?

This is the most common stuck scenario. Pure Fiction’s designers know exactly how strong Himeko + Herta are, so they designed the top half as a grass-cutting paradise: enemies have low health, low toughness, and spawn in large numbers, making it a literal 40,000 point ATM built just for the Himeko + Herta combo.

Case Study: Player Xiao Ming puts Himeko + Herta on the top half, easily grabs 40,000 points. But the bottom half enemy layout is almost always a few small mobs plus 1-2 high-health elite enemies (like Sam or the Warden of the Silent Cell). That elite enemy is a roadblock for any second AOE team. Your Jing Yuan or Serval’s AOE damage barely scratches the elite, and Jing Yuan’s Lord is tricked into wasting damage on the small mobs. Your second team stalls out here, only gets 10,000-20,000 points, and leaves you with a total score that’s too low.

The Overlooked Mistake: Wasting Your T0 Memory of Chaos Team On Trash Mobs

Another common mistake is putting your strongest Memory of Chaos boss-killing team (like Acheron, Jingliu) into the top half trash-clearing paradise. This is literally using an anti-aircraft gun to kill a mosquito: total overkill.

Case Study: Player Xiao Hong uses her 2 Eidolon 1 Acheron team on the top half. Acheron drops an ultimate that deals 800,000 overkill damage to a 50,000 health trash mob. Her clear speed is great, but she only ends up with 25,000-30,000 points, because she lacks the extra follow-up attacks that Himeko + Herta have to rack up extra score. Then she puts her underleveled Himeko + Herta on the bottom half, and against the high-health elite, the combo’s core functions (toughness breaking and health pressure) completely fail, and she only gets 15,000 points for the half. Total score 45,000, a total loss. She used the wrong tool for the wrong job.

How To Rewrite The Rules For Both Halves: Roles For Your Score Hunting Team And Clear Guarantee Team

To conquer Pure Fiction, you have to throw out the old equalism rulebook. The core of the new rule is the Tian Ji horse racing strategy: specialize your two teams into a dedicated score hunting team and a dedicated clear guarantee team.

Core Requirements (Top Half): Build An Extreme AOE Score Hunting Team

The only goal of this team is to leverage the infinite waves and low enemy health of the top half grass-cutting paradise to hit an extreme high score of 40,000, even 50,000 points. This team is the engine that gets you your full stars.

• Core Mechanic: Follow-up attacks and full-party AOE damage.
• MVP Compo: Himeko + Herta. This combo is the current meta answer for Pure Fiction, their toughness break chain and half-health trigger chain create a permanent score-grinding cycle that never stops.
• Alternative Option: Argenti. He uses the massive energy refund from killing trash mobs to pull off infinite ultimates to rack up score fast.
• [Q&A] Does a score hunting team need a sustain unit?
  Absolutely yes. A lot of players see their Himeko + Herta team die early because they drop a sustain unit to stack more damage. While Pure Fiction enemies have low health, they hit hard and come in endless waves. Your score hunting team needs a strong group sustain unit (like Fu Xuan, Huohuo, Luocha) to keep the combo spinning and firing all the way to the end.

Core Requirements (Bottom Half): Boss-Killing Tactics For Your Clear Guarantee Team

The goal of this team is not to grind extra score, it’s just to clear the half. In Pure Fiction, as long as you clear the half, you get a base 20,000 points (this is your “guarantee”). That 20,000 plus your top half 40,000 adds up exactly to 60,000 full stars. Because of this, this team should be your best Memory of Chaos boss-killing team.

• Core Mechanic: Single-target burst damage and high-frequency toughness breaking.
• MVP Characters: Acheron, Jingliu, Dan Heng • Imbibitor Lunae, Dr. Ratio, and more.
• Tactics: Manually control the team, ignore all small trash mobs, and focus every single-target skill (even your support’s basic attacks) on the highest-health elite enemy. Your goal is to kill it in 4 turns, no matter what it costs.
• Sustain: This team also needs a top-tier sustain unit, because this is a boss-killing fight on the same difficulty level as Memory of Chaos.

Beyond Equal Team Balance: Team Composition Plans For Planning Damage And Survival

The damage and survival balance in Pure Fiction doesn’t refer to balance within one team, it refers to asymmetric balance across your two teams. You need a spear for score hunting, and an attacking edge for your clear guarantee.

Pure Fiction Two-Team Composition Guide (V1.0)

• Tactical Goal: Asymmetric Full Stars (60,000 points)
  • Top Half (Score Hunting Team – 40k+): Himeko + Herta + Ruan Mei (or Asta) + Fu Xuan (or Huohuo)
  • Bottom Half (Clear Guarantee Team – 20k): Acheron + Pela + Guinaifen + any sustain unit
  • Core Logic: The Himeko + Herta combo grinds out an extreme high score on the top half trash paradise. The Acheron team manually focuses the elite boss on the bottom half hard mode, grabs the 20k guarantee points.
• Tactical Goal: Asymmetric Full Stars (60,000 points)
  • Top Half (Score Hunting Team – 40k+): Argenti + Tingyun + Sparkle (or Bronya) + Huohuo (for energy)
  • Bottom Half (Clear Guarantee Team – 20k): Jingliu + Bronya + Pela + any sustain unit
  • Core Logic: The Argenti team uses the infinite trash spawns on the top half to pull off infinite ultimates for score. The Jingliu team focuses on stacking damage on the bottom half, uses high burst to take down the elite.
• Tactical Goal: Balanced High Score (50,000 points)
  • Top Half: Jing Yuan + Tingyun + Asta + any sustain unit
  • Bottom Half: Kafka + Black Swan + Ruan Mei + any sustain unit
  • Core Logic: Use this when both halves have a mix of trash and elites. Both teams have AOE and some boss-killing power, but neither can hit the 40k+ extreme score on one half.

The Future Of Two-Team Building: Choosing Between Specialization And Balance

The coexistence of Pure Fiction and Memory of Chaos is Honkai: Star Rail’s ultimate test of how wide your team roster is. It forces you to think about whether your resources are enough to build two teams with completely different core strategies.

This ultimately leads to a fundamental choice that defines your playstyle: do you want to be a balanced “jack of all trades” account, level two generalist teams that get you around 50,000 points and 33 stars across all content? Or do you want to be a specialized tactician, build an extreme Himeko + Herta trash-clearing team and an extreme Acheron boss-killing team, that easily grabs you 60,000 full points and 36 full stars across all content?

“Score hunt the top half, guarantee clear the bottom half” — this asymmetric strategy is the ultimate answer to high scores in Pure Fiction, and the deepest understanding of how to balance two teams for this game mode.