The best Honkai Star Rail March 7th build

What is the best build for March 7th in Honkai: Star Rail? As a member of the Astral Express crew and a frequent adventurer on their planetside excursions, adorable amnesiac March 7th is one of the party members who'll join your team in Honkai: Star Rail's prologue. From that point on she's unlocked permanently, meaning that you'll be seeing a lot of her not only in cutscenes but likely fighting on your side throughout the early parts of the game — especially if you're an F2P player with limited opportunities to pull from the gacha.

As a starter character, March is far from the strongest on the game's roster. But she's a good utility character and fun to have around to boot, meaning that it's well worth equipping her with the best build for her kit. So read on for our best Honkai: Star Rail March 7th build advice, including relics, light cones, and more.

Honkai: Star Rail best March 7th build

March 7th path and element

March 7th follows the path of The Preservation. This means that she's a shield specialist in combat, and can use her skill to protect a chosen ally from harm (and deliver a free action follow-up attack on any enemies who dare to interfere with her special someone).

She's aligned with the Ice element, which allows her to deal her elemental damage while applying a powerful Frozen debuff that immobilises affected enemies for at least one turn. Her ultimate attack deals AoE ice damage to opponents across the field, giving her a desirable balance between defence and offence in combat.

Her weapon of choice is a bow, which allows her to attack at range during exploration. It's for this reason that she makes a particularly helpful utility party member at the start of the game, since she can often begin a combat encounter before an enemy spots her, giving your party the edge in the attack.

Best light cone for March 7th: Moment of Victory

• 4-star alternative: Day One of My New Life

The choice of March 7th's best light cone doesn't so much lie in the rarity value of the respective options as in how exactly you want to build her.

Since March's shields are reasonably powerful in their own right, you might choose to strike a balance between her defensive and offensive capabilities with the Moment of Victory light cone. This boosts March's DEF by a minimum of 20%, rising by the same amount again when she takes a hit — which becomes more likely with this light cone equipped. Meanwhile, her Effect Hit Rate receives a minimum 20% increase also.

However, trying to build March as a dual-specialist risks spreading her capabilities too thin, and since you're unlikely to be hurting for DPS specialists, it's potentially better to focus her build entirely around her shield. For this, Day One of My New Life is the light cone of choice (as well as March's canonical one). Equipping it increases March's DEF by a minimum of 16%, but all of her allies receive an 8% minimum increase to their DMG RES as well. Despite being a lower-level light cone, it's a better team player choice for a dedicated March 7th support build.

Best relics for March 7th: Knight of Purity Palace

• 2-piece set bonus: Increases DEF by 12%
• 4-piece set bonus: Increases the max DMG that can be absorbed by the shield created by the wearer by 20%

March's best relic set, Knight of Purity Palace, gives simple but powerful boosts to her DEF stat and shields. The 4-piece set bonus provides a particularly strong enhancement to her shield, and so it's well worth going all-in on this relic set for her as soon as you can.

Now that you've got March's build sorted, be sure to check out our best Trailblazer build and best Dan Heng build guides to see how to equip her fellow starter characters.