One of Honkai: Star Rail’s most powerful characters is a literal child. She’s so strong, in fact, that a few brave players found out she can solo some of the turn-based RPG’s hardest battles.
Star Rail, much like Genshin Impact, expects you to have a team of four characters when you enter each fight. Enemies are weak to certain elements, like fire or ice, and you’re supposed to create a team of characters who attack with the same type of damage. But Clara, a young girl with a robot dad, doesn’t have to play by those rules.
A few brave players have taken on Star Rail’s difficult roguelike mode, called the Simulated Universe, using only Clara. In this mode, you take on increasingly high-level enemies and gain buffs when you beat them. Clara’s high survivability and unparalleled damage output lets her stroll through the level 60 version of the Simulated Universe at level 50, and do it all unscathed.
Reddit user XYolbertZ finished their Simulated World 6 run using only Clara earlier this week and it prompted a few other players to take on the challenge too. Over on YouTube, both Jenazad and Zeeebo were able to survive every fight using only Clara, including the notoriously difficult final boss.
“This run [without Clara] is not easy. It took me a few hours to actually get a complete run,” Zeeebo said. “But I managed to replicate it with just one unit.”
Clara is near the top of our Star Rail tier list for a reason. Unlike other characters, Clara doesn’t require a full set of amazing gear to excel because her robot dad, Svarog, automatically counter-attacks for a huge amount of damage when enemies hit her. They also receive a debuff that causes them to take even more damage in the next turn. While your foes have a battle with Svarog, all you have to worry about is keeping Clara alive with her natural damage reduction and the mode’s randomized healing buffs.
Jenazad and Zeeebo recommend trying to get Clara’s Light Cone, which works a lot like Diablo’s legendary items and grants her a heal when she defeats enemies. Without it, you might have to rely on being lucky with what kind of buffs you get to choose in the mode.
Star Rail doesn’t reward completed solo Simulated Universe runs with anything special, but that hasn’t stopped players from trying to do it with the game’s best characters. Someone managed to do the same solo run with Seele, who is currently the best character in the game because of her attacks that deal absurdly high damage and her ability to reset her turn and do it all again.
Sadly, neither Clara or Seele are free characters, so you’ll have to grind up currency or spend money for a chance to get them through the game’s gacha rolls. But that it’s even possible to unconventionally complete endgame fights with one character underlines just how elastic Star Rail’s systems can be if you know how to exploit them.