Does Honkai Star Rail Have Co-Op & Multiplayer? Explained

Honkai Star Rail takes everything that made Genshin Impact so darned good and switches up its combat into a tantalizing, turn-based affair. There’s party composition, questing and the same gacha character mechanics that fans came to know and love about HoYoverse’s last title. But what about multiplayer in Honkai Star Rail? Well, it works a little differently to your standard co-op affair, so let’s explain what’s going on here.

Is Honkai Star Rail Co-Op?

Unfortunately, no, Honkai Star Rail does not have a co-op mode. In other words, you can’t play together like you can in Genshin Impact.

That might seem a little confusing, given you can add friends in Honkai Star Rail, so let’s explain where this multiplayer functionality comes into play.

Honkai Star Rail Multiplayer Explained

Once you’ve added a friend, you can use one of their Support Characters as a member of your party for a limited amount of time. The borrowed character can only be borrowed for use in Calyxes and Caverns of Corrosion, though. In other words, don’t go expecting to be able to use them all the time, otherwise, there would be no need to pull your own characters!

It’s also worth noting that your friend must set one of their Characters as the Support Character on their Trailblazer Profile in order for you to use them.

If you were hoping you could just borrow one of your friend’s high level Support Characters to cheese your way through a tricky encounter, guess again. Any Support Character you borrow from a friend will have its level adjusted to your own level once selected.

The good news, though, is that there’s a benefit to borrowing a character from your friends, as when you do, players will earn Credits.

If you’d like to get in on the character borrowing and credit-earning action but don’t have any friends playing Honkai Star Rail, fear not. The game will bring up a list of random players you can choose from in order to borrow a Support Character from. Don’t fancy any of the characters on offer? Just go ahead and refresh the list and you’re all good to go.

How to Borrow Support Characters

To borrow a Support Character, go to a Calyx or Cavern of Corrosion and click or tap on the ‘Challenge’ button. This will take you to the Character Selection screen.

Now go ahead and select the ‘Support’ button on the right-hand side of the screen. Now go ahead and pick the Support Character you’d like to add to your team.

That’s everything you need to know about Honkai Star Rail co-op and multiplayer functionality. For more tips and tricks on the game, be sure to check out the links below.