Honkai Star Rail: Pure Fiction – The Himeko & Herta Success Story

Whenever HoYoverse throws a new Honkai Star Rail challenge at us, the community tends to figure out how to beat it in no time. The new Pure Fiction game mode, which released on January 8, 2024, isn’t an exception to that rule and there is already one duo, who completely destroys the new content. I hope you don't get dizzy easily …

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Honkai Star Rail: Pure Fiction – The Himeko & Herta overnight success story! | © HoYoverse

The long awaited new game mode “Pure Fiction” in Honkai Star Rail went finally live on January 8, 2024, and most players are super hyped to dive right into this new challenge! And even though the new content isn’t even out for 24 hours as of right now, there is a pretty special duo who seems to be utterly OP in the stages of Pure Fiction.

I never thought to ever say this again, but: Clear the stage for the two most broken characters, Himeko and Madam Herta, who went from being garbage to must-haves in just a few hours.

Honkai Star Rail: Pure Fiction – The Himeko & Herta Success Story

The time has finally come: HoYoverse gave Himeko the justice she always deserved and made her OP! Well … at least in the new game mode called “Pure Fiction”! Alongside her, even Madam Herta had a little glow up and both are currently completely taking over the Star Rail universe!

But what makes them so incredibly strong all of a sudden?

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Honkai Star Rail: I never thought that Himeko would ever be considered broken ... | © HoYoverse

Before we take a closer look into this crazy comp, it's probably worth mentioning that although Pure Fiction is the latest content added to Honkai Star Rail, it's by far not the hardest. Unfortunately, Memory of Chaos remains a lot tougher and probably still makes Himeko look pretty awful most of the time.

An Overnight Success Story

Himeko & Herta's Synergy Explained

For all those who may not be very familiar with Herta and Himeko's kits, a large part of their strength and fun comes from their talents, which work remarkably similar! Both are following the path of The Erudition and have huge AoE damage. With their talents, both ladies perform a mighty follow-up attack, when a certain condition is met:

  • Himeko's talent “Victory Rush”:

Whenever an enemy is inflicted with Weakness Break, Himeko gains one stack. After she gathered three stacks in total, Himeko immediately releases her follow-up attack, dealing a respectable amount of Fire DMG.

  • Herta's talent “Fine, I'll Do It Myself!”:

When an ally's attack causes an enemy's HP percentage to fall to 50% or lower, Herta will launch a follow-up attack, dealing Ice DMG.

It all starts to make sense …

The Perfect Match With Pure Fiction

By a lucky coincidence, or because HoYoverse simply likes Himeko and Herta, many of the enemies in the Pure Fiction stages are weak against either fire or ice or even both. Next to that, there are even some buff, called nodes, you can select in order to make the team even better and increase your Weakness Break! Of course, this is a wonderful scenario for our two stars, and I guess it's finally starting to click even for the last few of us!

To keep it short: Himeko and Herta keep triggering each other's talents with their own follow-up attacks, which results in a never ending chain of spins and damage! Kuru Kuru Kururin!

“The human thirst for discovery is truly boundless …” — Himeko

The follow-up chain will stop, when one of the both conditions isn’t met anymore. However, if you build both of them well enough, you can almost clear an entire stage with just one Himeko ultimate, which triggers the first follow-up attack from either Himeko herself or Herta.

The Spin-To-Win Comp

Since Himeko and Herta alone aren’t a real team comp, I'm going to show you one really fun example!

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Honkai Star Rail: Make Himeko great again! | © HoYoverse

I just had to pair this comp with Ruan Mei, since she buffs break effect by a ton, which lets you trigger both talents even easier! A really fun team, which is super autoplay friendly, since it pretty much already works on it own anyway!

Celine Jaeckel

You can find tons of guides & news about Genshin Impact & Honkai: Star Rail right here, from the EarlyGame Gacha Queen herself! If she is done farming for the day, Celine hops straight into her second love, League of Legends....