In Honkai: Star Rail, the order you level your character’s Traces (skills) is almost always the deciding factor between a smooth battle experience and wasting all your hard-earned upgrade resources. New players often get overwhelmed by the sprawling skill tree and end up stuck with decision paralysis. This guide puts together a simple cheat sheet to help you quickly nail down the right leveling priority for any character, so every bit of resource you spend gives you the maximum possible power boost.
No matter what role your character fills, there are some universal priority guidelines you can follow. These work great when you’re low on resources and need to make the safest, most impactful choice.
For most damage-dealing characters, their regular Skill is their main source of damage, so getting it up to your current max level as soon as possible is the most straightforward way to increase your overall damage. For tanks and support characters, their Skills usually provide key defensive or team buff effects, so they’re just as worth investing in.
Every character has one or more passive Talents that are usually the core of their entire kit. For example, a character’s burst damage, energy regeneration mechanics, or unique special effects all rely on their Talents. After you finish upgrading your main Skill, you should immediately pour resources into Talents to unlock your character’s true full potential.
Below, we’ve broken down more detailed priority recommendations based on every common character role in the game.
These characters exist solely to deal as much damage as possible, so their priority order is very straightforward:
We recommend getting your Skill and Talent up to a key threshold like Level 8 first, before moving on to upgrading your Ultimate and Technique.
The number one job for these characters is keeping your team alive and providing support utility, so damage is almost always a secondary concern.
A special note: for some Preservation characters like Gepard, his Skill energy refund Talent is extremely important, so you should prioritize leveling that up early.
The value of these support characters comes from the attack buffs, damage boosts, enemy resistance shred, and crowd control they provide—their own personal damage doesn’t matter at all.
For example, Tingyun’s Skill (attack percentage buff) and Talent (Ultimate energy refund) are her absolute core; Silver Wolf’s Skill (enemy weakness implant) and Ultimate (resistance shred) are her key defining mechanics.
Not every character fits perfectly into the rules above, so here are the most common exceptions you’ll run into.
Some damage dealers get most of their total damage from their Ultimate, like Jing Yuan with his Lord’s attacks, or some Destruction characters with massive one-shot bursts. For these characters, your trace priority will shift to: Ultimate > Skill > Talent > Technique. Always check a full character guide to understand their unique kit if you’re unsure.
A very small number of characters (some Erudition or Destruction characters) rely on their Basic Attack as their main source of damage. In this case, you should move Basic Attack up to the same or higher priority than Skill, and make sure you level the Talents that boost its damage.
Some Light Cone (weapon) effects are tied directly to the level of a character’s specific Trace. For example, some Light Cones require your Skill to reach Level 6 to unlock their full effect. Before you decide your leveling order, double-check the description of the Light Cone you plan to use—you may need to adjust your priority to get the most out of your weapon.
Finally, let’s talk about practical resource planning to make your character leveling process go as smoothly as possible.
When you ascend a character, the maximum level for all their Traces goes up. You don’t need to immediately max every single skill every time you ascend. A common efficient strategy is: once your character hits Level 70 Ascension, get your core skills (Skill, Core Talent, Ultimate) up to Level 8; once you hit Level 80 Ascension and are ready to fully invest in the character, you can push those core skills up to Level 10, especially your main damage dealer’s Skill.
The damage boost you get from leveling Traces is a guaranteed fixed multiplier, while Relics provide random stat boosts in a separate multiplier zone. When you’re just starting out and have bad base Relics, investing in Traces has an extremely high resource value, and gives you steady, noticeable power gains. We recommend that after you hit the required Equilibrium Level for the main story and hit your power target, you start investing in Traces first, and only start upgrading your Relics once you have solid main stats on all pieces.
If you need to get a new character battle-ready quickly and are extremely low on resources, stick to this minimum threshold:
Once you hit this threshold, the character will already be able to perform most of their role in low-difficulty content, and you can gradually upgrade them later as you get more resources and prioritize your main damage dealers.
Mastering the right trace leveling priority will help you avoid common mistakes, and let you put your limited credits, experience materials, and trace materials to the best possible use. Use this cheat sheet based on your main team composition, and build a roster that works perfectly for you to enjoy your Honkai: Star Rail journey!
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