Honkai: Star Rail – I used Stellar Jade worth $830 USD to pull for Black Swan
Sometimes you just have to go wild and let loose, right? I mean, that’s what we’re in Penacony for in the first place. It’s space Vegas, baby! It’s basically mandatory to get there and do some gambling – all the better if it’s all for science.
I recently had the chance to play Honkai: Star Rail update 2.0 on a preview server ahead of launch using a special press account provided by HoYoverse. Imagine what a whale account in a game like this looks like and then quadruple that imagination – that account had literally everything unlocked, including the new characters, Black Swan and Misha. It was a blue whale account. It’s probably what HoYoverse CEO Dawei plays on usually.
As a cherry on top, the studio had loaded the account up with 50,000 Stellar Jade, the in-game currency required to purchase Warps – tickets for the gacha mechanic. Did I need those after already having everything unlocked? No. Did I use them anyway before HoYoverse takes that account back? You bet.
Here comes Pom-Pom, the decider of fates.
HoYoverse
I played through the update first, though, gobbling up whatever Stellar Jade I could through my gameplay to add to these large funds. I also converted all the waste material you get as you’re pulling into tickets, so all in all I was able to pull 419 times – that’s 67.040 Stellar Jades worth of pulls.
To put this into perspective: You get 8.080 Stellar Jade for the $99.99 USD package in the store found in the game, which provides the best Dollar to Stellar Jade conversion available (without considering factors like the initial top-up bonus for your first purchase) at 80.81 Stellar Jade for the Dollar.
To get those 419 pulls, you’d have to purchase the $99.99 USD package 8.2 times. Using the 80.81 Stellar Jade per Dollar conversion, I blew currency worth approximately $829.6 USD on the Black Swan banner. That’s what I call whaling, ladies and gentlemen!
Here comes the part you’re all here for – the tally!
- 5-Star characters: 6
- 4-Star characters: 35
- 5-Star Light Cones: 0
- 4-Star Light Cones: 16
Black Swan graced me with her presence four times, the other two 5-Star character pulls were both Himeko. I didn’t exactly count how many of Misha, Guinaifen, and Tingyun I got (and they were already E6 when I received the account), but I’m pretty sure I could have fully leveled up each of them.
That's Black Swan grabbing all the gacha tickets.
HoYoverse
In Honkai: Star Rail, you’re guaranteed to get a 4-Star character or Light Cone for every ten pulls and a 5-Star character or Light Cone for every 90 pulls. On a limited banner, you’re guaranteed to get the featured character – Black Swan, in this case – after 180 pulls, in case you lose the so-called 50-50 to another character of that rarity. Since I got six 5-Star characters, I beat the minimum amount I should have gotten by two.
But if you look back at it, six characters really isn’t a lot considering I would have had to spend $830 USD for them. That’s not even enough to E6 Black Swan.
And, sure, I could have gotten more than that, had I been luckier. But I could have also gotten less, so, you know – you’re still submitting to a lottery here, despite HoYoverse’s system being remarkably fair in comparison to some other competitors out there. My colleague Josh, who was in the preview as well, got exactly one 5-Star character pulling from the standard banner using all that free Stellar Jade – the rest of his gets consisted of Light Cones.
Let that difference of fortunes be a lesson to you – always spend responsibly, no matter how hot that waifu or husbando you’re trying to get is.
