Honkai Star Rail Aetherium Wars Guide – Aether Spirits, Victory Zones & Rewards

Honkai Star Rail has essentially added its little version of Pokemon in the 1.4 Update called Aetherium Wars. In this psuedo-Pokemon style event, your Trailblazer and March 7th along with one little Warp Trotter (whose name will differ from player to player), will be collecting and training Aether Spirits.

What are Aether Spirits? They’re digitized versions of most of the common Fragmentium Monsters you’ll have battled against in your adventures across The Herta Space Station, Jarilo-VI, the Xianzhou Luofu, and even the Simulated Universe.

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What Does Aetherium Wars Include in Honkai Star Rail

The actual primary content of the Aetherium Wars event is expansive on every platform, with players going through four different ‘pseudo-gyms’ (complete with puzzles to solve), battling trainers, collecting new Aether Spirits, creating team synergies, attaching different items (Expansion Chips) to their Aether Spirits, and so much more. To give general stats and numbers on the content contained within this event, it has:

• 19 Unique Aether Spirits.
• Tons of Missions with tons of Rewards.
• 4 Victory Zones with their own unique gimmicks and puzzles.
• Trainer Battles.
• Overlord Aether Spirits.
• Exhibition Matches.
• A Levelable Victory Rank.
• The Intergalactic Celebration Tournament.
• A Championship Battle.
• A ‘secret’ final battle against the ‘Mysterious Elite Player‘.

Event Duration & Reward Differences

The Event originally started on October 11, 2023, at 11:00 GMT+8 time and will end on November 13, 2023, at 3:59 (Server Time).

This event will be added to the Conventional Memoir in case you end up completely missing this event. This means you’ll be able to go back and experience Aethrium Wars in its entirety long after the ‘event’ ends.

However, this means you’ll miss out on all the Limited-Time Rewards, which is a pretty big list of things to miss out on (1200 Stellar Jade and various other upgrade Materials).

All Aetherium Wars Victory Zone Leader Battles in Honkai Star Rail

There are quite a few missions in the Aetherium Wars event, it’s a substantial amount of new content. First off, after being introduced to the game, tutorialized on its mechanics by Giovanni, and fighting off the Team Rocket wannabees (AKA the Topaz Support Squad) to get the Warp Trotter Aether Spirit, you’ll be tasked with clearing four unique Victory Zones. Each of these Victory Zones has its leader and takes place in a different area you’ll recognize:

After your Trailblazer collects all four of these Mastery Marks, they’ll head back to the new Aetherium Wars Arena in the Old Weapon Testing Grounds Map of Boulder Town to get the Intergalactic Celebration underway.

Intergalactic Celebration & Mysterious Elite Player Showdown

The Intergalactic Celebration Tournament is essentially the Elite Four of this event with each of the following opponents needing their (albeit tedious) own elevator ride down to the arena and their own adorable introduction cinematic before the battle:

After overcoming this series of difficult battles, you’ll come face to face with last year’s Aetherium Wars Champion, Topaz, another Red Light Level fighter with a Grunt: Security Personnel, a Senior Staff: Team Leader, a Commerce Trotter (Numby), and a Grunt: Field Personnel. Topaz being the Champion makes sense of course, given that she was flipping that Aether Spirit Coin around in her first cinematic when appearing on Jarilo-VI.

You’ll battle her team of employees (which has to be against HR Regulations) to become the newest Champion of the League. However, the story doesn’t end there, as there’s one more battle you’ll need to overcome. Throughout the entire event’s storyline characters have been hinting at this Mysterious Elite Player who seems to have beaten everyone and blasted through the ranks. It never made it quite clear who it was, and even the hints Giovanni gives you are left intentionally vague.

After following the mission objectives and ending up at the peak of the Pillars of Creation Map, you’ll go head to head against your final opponent, “Pitch Dark Hook the Great” AKA the adorable little leader of The Moles, Hook. This battle involves fighting against 2 Imaginary Weavers, an Automaton Direwolf, two Automaton Grizzlies, a Searing Prowler, an Everwinter Shadewalker, and an Incineration Shadewalker. But, as soon as the battle is over there’s one last little (incredibly adorable) cutscene with Hook hugging the Trailblazer, and that’s it for the mainline story of the Aetherium Wars event.

What Are Aether Spirits in Honaki Star Rail

While we said Aetherium Wars was basically Honkai Star Rail’s version of Pokemon, the actual Aether Spirits that the Trailblazer is collecting are a lot more like Digimon. They’re digitized versions of Fragmentium Monsters with their data contained in these unique little Coins that you’ll notice in Topaz introductory cutscene for the Belobog ‘story’ missions in Version 1.4 as well as in every ‘fighter introduction’ cinematic for the Aetherium Wars Tournament. 

Essentially, once you start your journey to gather all the Mastery Marks for the event, you’ll take control of a brand new team of characters, but instead of the gacha characters Honkai fans have become attached to rolling for, this time they’ll be taking control of four Aether Spirits of their choosing. Each Aether Spirit has its stats for the Trailblazer to keep track of, such as their:

• Name
• Level
• Type
• HP Stat
• Attack Stat
• Speed Stat
• Expansion Chip Slots (Either 2 or 4 Max)
• Basic Attack
• Ability
• Ultimate

There’s easily enough versatility in the Aether Spirits, their abilities, and their Expansion Chip builds for every one of you to make your own unique Team Composition.

How To Collect More Aether Spirits in Honkai Star Rail

One of the primary ways Aetherium Wars separates itself from the standard Pokemon formula is that you won’t be able to go around collecting Aether Spirits of all types at your leisure.

Aether Spirit Battles only happen in the designated areas, players will only obtain one copy of each Aether Spirit the first time they fight it in combat (not including trainer combat) in Mastery Mark Victory Zones, and random encounters don’t respawn which is likely to prevent overgrinding early to make the entire challenge a breeze.

How Aetherium Wars’ Combat Works in Honkai Star Rail

Combat in Aetherium Wars works mostly the same as it would with a normal party of characters, with the main differences being:

• Ultimate Meters have segments to their charge level instead of filling by percentages
• Expansion Chips as a whole, as they can make big or small modifications to how certain parts of an Aether Spirit Work.
• There are Type Advantages and Disadvantages (Humanoid beats Mechanical, Mechanical beats Aberrant, Aberrant beats Humanoid) that, when used, will deal either x1.5 damage to the countered type or x0.8 damage to the resistant type.
• Party members automatically revive and heal to full after each combat.
• Some abilities ‘technically’ allow you to have more than four party members at a time.

The thing to pay attention to in each battle and with each new Aether Spirit is Type Advantages/Disadvantages and the Ability and Ultimate of both your Aether Spirits and the Enemy’s Aether Spirits. There are a lot of absurdly overpowered combos in this event, and stumbling upon a synergy can be a lot of fun.

Expansion Chips in Honkai Star Rail

To keep the Pokemon comparison going, you can think of Expansion Chips as Honkai Star Rail’s version of Held Items or even Abilities. Essentially, they’re items that can be equipped to any Aether Spirit and each has a unique effect. Some Aether Spirits only have 2 Expansion Chip Slots (with one unlocking by leveling up) while others, typically Overlord-type Aether Spirits, will have 4 Expansion Chip Slots at Level 6.

While team composition is the main way you’ll find overpowered builds and hilariously strong synergies in Aether Wars, Expansion Chips do contribute to these setups an almost equal amount. There are 32 Expansion Chips to collect in total (14 Epic-Rarity & 18 Rare-Rarity) with a large portion of them unlocked as rewards through specific Trainer Battles or in Exhibition Matches.

Victory Rating Overview & Potential Rewards in Honkai Star Rail

While players are steadily progressing through each Mastery Mark Victory Zone and figuring out their team comp, they’ll also want to increase their Victory Rating (which from lowest to highest, goes from Purple Light Level to Red Light Level in reverse ‘rainbow’ order). Each new Rank lets you level your Aether Spirits more (to a max of 6) and comes with its stellar rewards, with each Rank giving 40 Relic Remains, 6 Traveler’s Guides, 6 Refined Aether, 8 Lost Crystals, 30000 Credits (x4) after completing all four Missions as well as the general Rewards for the actual rank up that change from Light Level to Light Level.

The best way (and pretty much the only real way) to do this is by completing the Exhibition Matches, which will unlock as your Victory Rank advances. Every fourth Exhibition Match has its own unique Expansion Chip reward (with the 3 challenges before it giving some Aether Spirit Upgrade Data as a reward).

All Four Victory Zones & Their Gimmicks in Honkai Star Rail

Each of the four Victory Zones you’ll be heading to claim Mastery Marks has their gimmick as well as the same three objectives you’ll want to complete before leaving. The objectives in particular usually won’t be completed by the time you get the Zone’s Mastery Mark simply because the Overlord Aether Spirit is always behind some obstacle that needs the Mastery Mark to get past.

So, unless you want to come back to each of these later to get the last couple of objectives, it’s usually worth staying after the Mastery Mark battle, even if the game offers you the option to leave.

Corridor of Fading Echoes

In the Corridor of Fading Echoes, the gimmick is heavily tutorialized and you’ll need to basically insert a core into nearby Snowshine Lamps and then make it so the AoE of their light overlaps with other nearby Snowshine Lamps. Doing this a couple of times will steadily unlock more and more of the Victory Zone and eventually pave the way to reach its leaders, Serval and Pela.

Cloudford

Cloudford’s puzzle has you using your trusty Camera function again to line up 3 Marking Segments of a Mastery Mark Badge image and take a picture to ‘clear’ the image and progress forward. However, the best thing to know about this puzzle ahead of time is that you’re not taking the Trailblazer’s phone out and snapping some pictures.

Rather, the Camera UI Icon will pop up once you’re standing in an area where all three Markings overlap to create a complete image, so if you think you’re in the right spot but the UI hasn’t shown up yet, move around a bit to find that perfect spot.

Herta Space Station

Herta Space Station’s main puzzle element is having players collect parts of an Elevator Pass that will get them to Herta by finding Wubbaboos holding parts of the pass in each area (using images you’ll be given as references). However, there will also be a couple of Lucent Passageway light bridges to solve in this Victory Zone as well, so keep that in mind as well.

Great Mine

For the last Victory Zone, you’ll be utilizing the mechanic that was also introduced in the mainline missions added in the 1.4 Version Update, the Automaton Spider Stealth Bombs that you’ll sneak up and use to knock out(?) any nearby non-Aether Spirit enemies.

This mostly just entails waiting until one of the targets starts walking in the opposite direction, running up with the Spider, and starting the explosive countdown before they turn around.

“Other” Aether Spirit Category

The “Other” category of Aether Spirits isn’t hidden somewhere around the Victory Zones and isn’t obtained from some super secret battle. There are only three of them, and one is the Warp Trotter that you’ve been traveling with the entire event.

The other two are easy to obtain as well, as all you have to do is walk up to the IPC Guard (named Barrie) standing beside the Main Table in the Old Weapons Testing Grounds and see if you can claim your rewards after each Victory Zone is cleared. He’ll give you some Expansion Chips but the last two rewards with be both of the Shadewalkers.

All Limited-Time Rewards in Honkai Star Rail

As far as Limited-Time Rewards go, this Event has a hefty amount of them, and missing the entire duration of the Aetherium Wars Event means you’re missing out on:

• 1200 Stellar Jade
• 1 Track of Destiny
• 1 Self-Modeling Resin
• 300 Relic Remains
• 62 Traveler’s Guides
• 54 Refined Aether
• 50 Lost Crystals
• 12 Worldbreaker Blades
• 96 Lifeless Blades
• 850,000 Credits

However, if you do happen to miss the Event and come back to it later through the Conventional Memoir, you’ll still have access to all the Rating Rewards, the Mission Rewards, and the Character Selection Reward.