Honkai: Star Rail version 2.0 has a release date, will add dreamy new realm Penacony to the space RPG

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With quality of life changes around relics and reviewing the game’s storyline

Image credit: HoYoverse

Honkai: Star Rail’s version 2.0 will arrive at the start of February, adding a new area, three playable characters and new missions to the gacha space game, HoYoverse have revealed.

Version 2.0 Music Video — “WHITE NIGHT” | Honkai: Star Rail

The headline addition in version 2.0 – or If One Dreams At Midnight, as it’s also known – is the new realm of Penacony, a former prison turned holiday destination in the Asdana system.

The area includes a luxury hotel called The Reverie that allows its guests to travel between planes of realities in their sleep, including various dreamscapes that the player will be able to visit and explore. Those dreamy worlds include the cityscape of The Golden Hour and the puzzly path-changing Dream’s Edge, which will apparently make use of some new gravity-flipping traversal mechanics enabled by mysterious item Dream’s Eye.

With the new area comes new Trailblazer missions for Penacony, which will run from 2.0 through to 2.2 with epilogues in 2.3. Those missions will introduce new five-star character Black Swan, Honaki: Star Rail’s first appearance for a Memokeeper. Her basic attacks and skills will have the chance to stack an effect called Arcana onto enemies, inflicting damage over time.

Image credit: HoYoverse

Two more new playable characters join Black Swan in version 2.0. Five-star Sparkle increases the party’s max skill point and can boost the critical damage of a companion with her unique skill, while also giving their action an Advance Forward. Her ultimate will restore multiple skill points.That combos nicely with four-star addition Misha, who deals more damage with his ultimate based on the number of skill points used by the team, along with a chance to freeze enemies.

On top of the three new characters, returning characters Imbibitor Lunae and Jing Yuan will show up during 2.0’s first and second event phases.

Around the addition of new areas, missions and characters, version 2.0 will make some quality of life tweaks to Honaki: Star Rail’s user interface. New feature Fate’s Atlas will better arrange the game’s storyline for referencing back to events in chronological order. Meanwhile, enhancing relics has been changed to allow players to insert materials while upgrading to get their relic to a specific level. Characters will also have recommended relic sets that can be equipped more easily, with further improvements that aim to make sifting through your relics to mark, discard and salvage what you need that bit more convenient.

Honkai: Star Rail’s version 2.0 will release on February 6th – a day earlier than the typical Wednesday release.