Best Honkai Star Rail Boothill Build, Light Cone, and Relics
The best Light Cones and Relics for the straight-shootin' ranger
UPDATE 12/12/2024: We have updated this Boothill build guide with some additional information on the best Boothill Light Cones, Relics, team compositions, and what order to prioritise his Traces in.
The best Honkai Star Rail Boothill build is less of a fudger to put together than you might think, thanks to the Galaxy Ranger’s unique kit. He only needs speed and break damage – nothing else. That makes the Light Cone situation a bit tricky for now, but on the bright side, it’ll make getting the right ornaments and relics a breeze, comparatively speaking.
Our Honkai Star Rail Boothill build guide breaks down which light cone and relics work best for the 5-star Hunt character. Check out our Boothill materials guide to see what you need to max out his traces while you're here.
Best Honkai Star Rail Boothill Build
Boothill is a 5-Star character from the Path of the Hunt that dishes out Physical damage.
Boothill's role in a team is a single-target DPS, where he will regularly engage in stand-offs against opponents. He makes light work of those with or without Physical weaknesses, given that he can use his Ultimate (and Technique!) to give Physical weakness to an enemy, and with the right build and allies, he can dish out huge amounts of damage.
Honkai Star Rail - Best Boothill Light Cone
5-Star Boothill Light Cones
Boothill’s in a bit of a weird place as a Hunt character who relies entirely on Break damage. One of the only Light Cones that offers any kind of break damage support is his signature cone, Sailing Towards a Second Life. It gives the wearer a whopping 60 percent break damage buff, and break damage they deal ignores 20 percent of the enemy’s defense. Boothill can apply physical weakness to enemies with his technique and ultimate, so he’ll manage to get that buff pretty frequently.
It also raises the wearer’s speed by 12 percent if their break damage is over 150 percent. Boothill benefits from speed anyway, but even more so if you’re running the Talia set with its high speed requirements for that extra break buff.
4-Star Boothill Light Cones
Tempting though it might be to splash out for Boothill’s Cone, you do have other options. They just work a bit differently.
One of them is Subscribe for More, an easy Light Cone to work with that grants big buffs without making you jump through hoops. The wearer’s basic attack and skill damage get a 24 percent buff and then, when their energy is full, another 24 percent buff. Boothill needs his ultimate to implant physical weakness, so for enemies without physical weakness, you’ll probably sacrifice that second buff. A flat 24 percent increase – before even factoring in buffs from characters like Ruan Mei – is still pretty good, though.
Swordplay is another solid option. This one increases the user’s damage by eight percent – more, at higher superimposition levels – every time they attack the same enemy, and the effect stacks up to five times. Boothill will almost always be attacking the same enemy, so the only downtime for this cone is when you defeat a foe and move on to a new one. That said, his kit gives him extra turns under certain circumstances, so you should be able to re-stack those stacks pretty quickly.
Our third and final 4-Star option is Shadowed by Night, which provides a 28% increase to Boothill's Break Effect at S1. That's not all, though, with this Light Cone increasing Boothill's Speed by 9 (for two turns) whenever he enters a battle or deals Break damage to an opponent. This makes it the second-best option for Boothill after his signature Light Cone.
3-Star Boothill Light Cones
On the 3-star side is Adversarial, which buffs the wearer’s speed by 10 percent for two turns when they defeat an enemy. 3-star cones are common, so you can probably reach Superimposition V on this one without issue and raise that buff to 18 percent. It might not augment his damage, but a fast Boothill is still a strong Boothill.
Honkai Star Rail - Best Boothill Relics
Boothill is a physical character, but don’t waste your time farming Streetwise Relics. He needs break far more than he needs physical damage. That means you’ve got a few set options, all of which are easy to get even without entering a Cavern of Corrosion.
Iron Cavalry Against the Scourge is the best set for Boothill as of right now. It provides the following when equipped:
- 2-piece effect: Increases Break Effect by 16 percent.
- 4-piece effect: Ignores 10 percent of the enemy's DEF when dealing Break Damage if the wearer's Break Effect is 150 percent or higher. If their Break Effect reaches 250 percent or higher, they ignore an additional 15 percent of the enemy's DEF when dealing Super Break damage.
If you don't yet have Iron Cavalry Against the Scourge, your second best set of Relics for Boothill are Thief of Shooting Meteor, which provide the following:
- 2-piece effect: Increases break effect by 16 percent.
- 4-piece effect: Increases break effect by a further 16 percent and restores three energy when the user inflicts weakness break.
You can get Thief of Shooting Meteor from Echo of War challenges, so you might already even have some nice 5-star pieces rattling around somewhere. If not, you can mix it with Watchmaker, Master of Dream Machinations, as the 2-piece set for that one also raises break damage by 16 percent. You just don’t get that wee little energy buff.
Honkai Star Rail - Best Boothill Ornaments
Boothill only has one ornament set that suits him really well, and that’s Talia, Kingdom of Banditry. It raises the wearer’s break effect by 16 percent and, if their speed hits 145 or higher, they get an extra 20 percent break effect buff.
You could run general damage set such as Herta’s Space Sealing Station or the Glamoth set if you have to, but since all of Boothill’s kit scales on break effect, it won’t be quite as effective.
Honkai Star Rail Boothill - Relic Substats
Boothill needs break effect in Honkai Star Rail, and a lot of it. His attacks all scale on it, and one of his bonus traces buffs his critical hit rate and damage by an amount that scales on break effect, up to 30 percent crit rate and 150 percent crit damage. He also deals additional break damage if he attacks a target in a weakness broken state, so you get almost nothing positive by focusing on attack or crit stats.
- Body: Anything
- Feet: Speed
- Sphere: Anything
- Rope: Break Effect
Ignore the temptation to get energy regeneration for the rope. His ultimate is useful, but he can just attack enemies that other party members break and deal more damage.
Break effect and speed are the best substats to focus on as well. Unlike other characters, Boothill doesn’t have a dramatic fall-off point with his break effect stat. 200 percent is a good number to aim for if you can, and if you’re using his signature Light Cone, some players are even recommending getting that stat to 300 percent.
Honkai Star Rail - Boothill Traces Priority
The order in which you should prioritise Boothill's Traces are as follows, from highest to lowest priority:
- Talent
- Skill
- Ultimate
- Basic Attack
Honkai Star Rail - Best Boothill Teams
The best Boothill team in Honkai Star Rail is all about Break Effect, using Boothill as our DPS carry in place of the AoE, Break Effect powerhouse that is Firefly.
- Boothill
- Harmony Trailblazer or Bronya
- Ruan Mei
- Gallagher, Lingsha, or Aventurine
The above team composition recruits the Harmony Trailblazer, who's Ultimate and Technique are both capable of increasing the teams Break Effect by 30 percent. On top of that, we're using Ruan Mei to further amplify Boothill and the rest of the team, with her kit helping increase the Weakness Break Effiency and All-type Res Pen of her allies.
As for our healer, we've opted for Gallagher, who'll benefit massively from both Ruan Mei and the Harmony Trailblazer too. You can swap him for 5-Star character, Lingsha, if you fancy however.
While Ruan Mei is arguably a must-have for any Boothill team given how much she can amplify the Galaxy Ranger, there are plenty of options for support characters. Rather than the Harmony Trailblazer, you could consider the likes of Bronya, who's able to provide Boothill with bonus actions, and is arguably the next best character to have on a Boothill team.
There's also F2P-friendly option, Pela, and Aventurine as a healer, that you could consider.
If you're wondering who else might work with Boothill, 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.