Honkai Star Rail 2.1 banners: Acheron and Aventurine join the ranks

Honkai Star Rail 2.1 banners add two long-awaited personalities to the RPG’s roster of 5-star characters and give the neglected Preservation route another member, finally. HoYoverse is also continuing the tradition of adding two rerun banners for previous characters, so if you missed out on one of the best Star Rail healers – or Jingliu – your second chance is almost here.

If you're short on Stellar Jade ahead of the Star Rail 2.1 banners, HoYoverse has plenty of events and freebies in the version update to restock your supply.

Honkai Star Rail 2.1 banners – First half

The first round of banners goes live on March 27, 2024, with Acheron in the spotlight. The full list includes:

• 5-star – Acheron (Nihility, Electric)
• 4-star – Gallagher (Abundance, Fire)
• 4-star – Dan Heng (Hunt, Wind)
• 4-star – Pela (Nihility, Ice)

Acheron is unique among Star Rail characters in that she gains no energy. Her abilities apply bloom stacks on enemies, and once you have enough, she can unleash her exceptionally powerful ultimate skill.

Gallagher is another twist. He heals and attacks, scales on break damage, and debuffs enemies, and he applies a status that heals allies when they attack foes, not unlike Luocha.

Pela is an excellent debuffer who shreds enemy defenses, while Dan Heng is useful in F2P parties. He debuffs enemy speed and has a special feature that ignores enemy type resistances.

Speaking of Luocha, the rerun banner features him – a 5-star Imaginary character of the Abundance path. Luocha’s heals scale with attack, and his ultimate is particularly handy. It can remove enemy buffs and attacks all foes on the field. He heals automatically without using a skill point once every two turns when an ally drops below 50 percent HP, and he can create a field that restores the party’s HP when any ally launches an attack.

The same three 4-star characters will appear on Luocha’s rerun banner.

Honkai Star Rail 2.1 banners – Second half

The second round of banners goes live on April 17, 2024, with another new 5-star character and a rerun. On this banner, you can expect:

• 5-star – Aventurine (Preservation, Imaginary)
• 4-star – Lynx (Abundance, Quantum)
• 4-star – Luka (Nihility, Physical)
• 4-star – Serval (Erudition, Electric)

Aventurine is something the Preservation path needed for a long time – someone who can upgrade shields instead of just replacing them. His skill improves the party’s shields, he triggers follow-up attacks, and his ultimate debuffs enemies. He pretty much does everything.

Lynx is the proto-Huohuo, a healer who cleanses debuffs – albeit irregularly and only with her ultimate – and who heals over time when each ally’s turn starts. She’s handy, though you’ll need to focus on energy regeneration to get the most out of her.

Luka is a bit of a weird one. He’s excellent in single-target battles, and even more so if you have Black Swan or Kafka on your team, but he has no AoE or blast attacks. That limits his usefulness in Pure Fiction and some Memory of Chaos scenarios, but with the way HoYoverse revamps Star Rail’s battle system every few months, he’ll probably be more useful in the not-so-distant future.

New players get one Serval by default, and despite being an Erudition character, she’s an excellent source of shock damage – perfect for Black Swan and Kafka teams.

The second rerun banner stars Jingliu, a 5-star Destruction character with ice as her element. She has a high skill ceiling and won’t really shine until you bump her trace levels to almost-maximum, but considering the lack of powerful ice characters at present, it’s hard not to recommend her.

If you're wondering who else might work with these characters, check out our Honkai Star Rail tier list, and head over to our Star Rail codes page for some freebies to help with your next pull.