Honkai Star Rail Swarm Disaster Guide

Honkai Star Rail’s swarm disaster adds a higher difficulty of combat domains where rewards aplenty lie, if you can complete the challenge that is.

The simulated universe has undergone a bit of a change, bringing you Honkai Star Rail’s swarm disaster and all that it entails. It’s a complex game mode with lots of explainers, so here’s our guide to help you out. You can thank the Genius Society for this mode that’s now permanently available in the game.

We at Pocket Tactics love a bit of Hoyoverse, and we’ve got build guides for Honkai Star Rail’s Imbibitor Lunae, Honkai Star Rail’s Fu Xuan, and Honkai Star Rail’s Lynx to help you out with your new units. Plus, here are the latest Honkai Star Rail codes to help you pull who you want.

Now then, let’s get into our Honkai Star Rail swarm disaster guide.

What is the Honkai Star Rail swarm disaster?

The Genius Society – Herta, Screwllum, Ruan Mei, and Stephen Lloyd – has worked together to treat you to the swarm disaster, a new mode of play in Honkai Star Rail’s simulated universe. Here, you move across a board instead of straight through chambers while collecting curios, blessings, and cosmic fragments to bolster your team. This mode isn’t particularly easy, and you can definitely consider this as ‘late-game’ content, so prepare your teams wisely.

You can access the swarm disaster by entering the new option in the main simulated universe menu. In this mode, there are fresh buffs to unlock as you complete challenges in the game, along with a new path to tread called Propagation.

What is the Honkai Star Rail communing trail?

One aspect added in the swarm disaster update is the communing trail. You can see this in the main menu of the swarm. It’s a collection of buffs you can attain as you progress through stages, regardless of whether you pass them or not.

Basically, the communing trail screen shows all the buffs you have already unlocked and can unlock, through Trial of Pathstrider goals and just working your way through the main swarm levels. The available buffs are in a list under each path and mostly offer shield, resonance, defense, and damage increase benefits.

What is the Honkai Star Rail planar disarray?

See that timer counting down your turns? Yeah, ominous, right? That’s how many domains you can go through until the planar disarray triggers. Once it hits zero, enemies will get a significant buff as the disruption level rises. You can usually reach the boss within this time on each level, but for those wanting to collect more treasure or hunt through extra domains, do so at your own peril.

How do I trigger a swarm disaster emergency?

Another fun update with the swarm disaster is that you can trigger emergencies, whether you mean to or not, as you progress across the stage. Herta doesn’t mention these emergencies during the tutorial so don’t worry if you don’t recognize it.

You can trigger these emergencies by landing on enhanced spaces, especially combat challenges, but there isn’t a specific way of guaranteeing an emergency. There’s a reward available for triggering an emergency on the higher difficulties, so they do serve at least one purpose.

The emergencies tend to turn combat spaces into swarm combat domains, but can also grant Propagation curios.

There is, however, one notable change – there is resonance interplay available between two paths you have blessings for.

How do I activate Honkai Star Rail resonance interplay?

In order to use the resonance interplay, you need to unlock the resonance for two different paths. This requires getting three blessings from each path. The interplay automatically takes effect after you meet these requirements.

Each of the eight paths (Propagation included) can resonate with two other paths. You can activate both options by collecting the right blessings along the way. For instance, say you start on the Hunt path, you can activate the resonance interplay with the Abundance by getting three Abundance blessings, and then also the Elation by collecting three blessings of that path, too.

Here are the currently available resonances between paths:

Now, before you head into the challenge, why not check your units and improve them a little first using our guides for characters like Honkai Star Rail’s Gepard, Honkai Star Rail’s Himeko, and Honkai Star Rail’s Qingque.

More:

Honkai Star Rail: Every Version of Bronya in the HoYoverse Multiverse Explained