The best Honkai Star Rail Trailblazer build

What is the best build for the Trailblazer in Honkai: Star Rail? The Trailblazer is your nominal player character in Honkai: Star Rail, at least in as much as they provide your point-of-view throughout the story. In practice, as a starter character in a HoYoverse game, they're likely to lose their spot on your team as soon as you've got a few better options in hand. But it's never a good idea to dismiss your initial crew entirely — especially if you're an F2P player who doesn't expect to pull a huge roster from the gacha.

Upon starting Honkai: Star Rail for the first time, you'll be given the option to choose the gender and name of your Trailblazer. From then on this baseball-bat-swinging artificial humanoid will be your constant companion throughout the game's cutscenes, if nothing else. But if you do decide to keep them around for the long-haul, you'll want to know how to make the most of them. So read on for our best Honkai: Star Rail Trailblazer build advice, including relics, light cones, and more.

Honkai: Star Rail best Trailblazer build

Trailblazer path and element

Unlike every other playable character in Honkai: Star Rail, the Trailblazer's path and element are adaptive, meaning that they will be able to change over the course of the game.

However, at the start of the game, your Trailblazer will follow the path of The Destruction and be aligned with the Physical element. The former means that they are an aggressive DPS well-suited to taking on solo combat situations, while the latter allows them to inflict a Bleed debuff on enemies to deal additional damage over time.

For now, our build advice for the Trailblazer will focus on this Destruction/Physical combo, but we'll add alternatives for the other elements and paths as they become available over time.

Best light cone for the Trailblazer: Something Irreplaceable

• 4-star alternative: Nowhere to Run

Given the choice of every Destruction light cone in the game, Something Irreplaceable is the top choice for the Trailblazer. It adds a base minimum of 20% to the Trailblazer's ATK (up to 40% when the weapon is fully ascended). It also provides a small health leech benefit, restoring 6-12% of the Trailblazer's HP when they either defeat an enemy or take a hit, while also granting a temporary 20-40% DMG increase for their next turn. This 5-star light cone can only be acquired from the gacha, however.

Players focussing on weapons more readily available in F2P will benefit from almost any 4-star Destruction light cone, but Nowhere to Run offers a decent lower-powered alternative to Something Irreplaceable if you want to replicate most of the same benefits. It grants the same base ATK boost and actually has better health leech upon defeating an enemy (12-24% rather than 6-12%, but without the benefits when the Trailblazer takes a hit). It's also missing the DMG boost, but other than that, it does a very similar job to its 5-star sibling.

Best relics for the Trailblazer: Champion of Streetwise Boxing

• 2-piece set bonus: Increases Physical DMG by 10%
• 4-piece set bonus: After the wearer attacks or is hit, their ATK increases by 5% for the rest of the battle, stacking up to 5 times

The Champion of Streetwise Boxing relic set can be obtained from boss drops at both 4- and 5-star rarities. When kitting out the Physical/Destruction Trailblazer, farming these relics for a complete set is your best bet. Since the Trailblazer is best suited to a DPS role, theis relic set helps to make them a bit tankier, making the most of the fact that they're highly likely to regularly draw enemy fire during combat.

Now you know how best to equip the Trailblazer for the start of their Honkai: Star Rail journey! But they can't be expected to fight alone. Take a look at our Honkai: Star Rail banners guide to see who's up for grabs in the gacha to join your team.