Yanqing Honkai: Star Rail Guide for Relics, Light Cones, and Skills

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The Departure Warp banner guarantees a standard 5-Star character for Honkai: Star Rail newcomers to start their journey with. Each one of these characters is unique for filling out a specific role in your party. If you’re looking for someone to fill in that DPS slot, Yanqing might just be your boy.

Introduced to us as the lieutenant of the Xianzhou Alliance’s Cloud Knights, Yanqing follows the Path of the Hunt and excels in delivering swift and powerful attacks to the most Elite enemies with his swords of ice.

If you were lucky enough to enlist Yanqing to your team, this guide covers all the things you should know to set him up for success.

Best Relic Set and Ornament for Yanqing

Though the Hunter of Glacial Forest set grants bonuses that cater to improving the damage of Yanqing’s critical strikes, his best relic setup actually forgoes the 4-Piece bonus and instead pairs the 2-Piece Hunter of Glacial Forest with the 2-Piece bonus of Musketeer of the Wild Wheat. This boosts both his Ice DMG and his ATK, leading to an increase in his overall DMG regardless of whether he crits.

This mixed setup grants him these synergies:

• 2-Piece Bonus: Hunter of Glacial Forest – Increases Ice DMG by 10%.
• 2-Piece Bonus: Musketeer of Wild Wheat – ATK increases by 12%

As for his Planar Ornaments, players have the choice between Space Stealing Station or Inert Salsotto. Both sets are considered to be a DPS go-to, and you really can’t go wrong with either one. Unless you are really hurting for some CRIT numbers, Space Stealing Station should be the more consistent pick, as it’s easy for Yanqing to satisfy the SPD requirement that will give him a 24% ATK bonus.

Here’s a review of what Space Stealing Station does:

• Increases the wearer’s ATK by 12%. When the wearer’s SPD reaches 120 or higher, the wearer’s ATK increases by an extra 12%.

For comparison, Inert Salsotto has the following effects:

• Increases the wearer’s CRIT Rate by 8%. When the wearer’s current CRIT Rate reaches 50% or higher, the wearer’s Ultimate and follow-up attack DMG increases by 15%.

Stats to Prioritize for Yanqing

These are the stats that you’d ideally like on your Yanqing:

• Body: CRIT DMG
• Feet: ATK% or SPD
• Planar Sphere: Ice DMG
• Line: ATK%

With his gimmick, Soulsteel Sync, granting him a good amount of CRIT Rate when it’s active, stacking CRIT DMG is the way to go, and you get tons of it by using a CRIT DMG body piece. For his boots, ATK% or SPD are interchangeable with one another, so choosing between the two would depend on their substats. For his Planar Ornaments, an Ice DMG sphere and an ATK% Line would grant you the best results.

CRIT DMG, CRIT Rate, ATK%, and SPD are the ideal substats you want on your Yanqing in order of importance. Having the occasional defensive stat like HP% or DEF% on him is not terrible, but since you would prefer that he does not get hit at all, offensive stats grant him the most benefits.

Best Light Cone for Yanqing

The 5-Star light cone ‘In The Night’ is single-handedly the best light cone that you can equip on your main DPS Yanqing. The good news? It’s got all the things that your Yanqing could ask for with great stats, innate CRIT Rate, and a conditional stacking buff that affects all of his damaging abilities that’s fairly easy to achieve. The bad news is that unless you got it during its debut, there’s currently no way for you to get it now as its Event Warp has passed. Players who would like to obtain this light cone will have to wait for a rerun in the future.

Here’s what makes ‘In The Night’ crazy good:

• Increases the wearer’s CRIT Rate by 18/21/24/27/30%. While the wearer is in battle, for every 10 SPD that exceeds 100, the DMG of the wearer’s Basic ATK and Skill is increased by 6/7/8/9/10%, and the CRIT DMG of their Ultimate is increased by 12/14/16/18/20%. This effect can stack up to 6 times.

If you missed out on getting ‘In The Night’, then the more readily available ‘Sleep Like the Dead’ can also work wonders on Yanqing. It still caters to making critical strikes more powerful with that significant increase to CRIT DMG. This light cone also comes with the ability to make it more likely that your next attack will crit if your previous attack did not crit. However, this effect does have a three-turn cooldown. You can get ‘Sleep Like the Dead’ through warping or by buying it in the Starlight Exchange shop for 600 Undying Starlight.

‘Sleep Like the Dead’ grants its wearer the following:

• Increases the wearer’s CRIT DMG by 30/35/40/45/50%. When the wearer’s Basic ATK or Skill does not result in a CRIT Hit, increases their CRIT Rate by 36/42/48/54/60% for 1 turn. This effect can only trigger once every 3 turns.

Budget Alternative

The 4-Star Path of The Hunt light cone ‘Swordplay’ is a solid choice on Yanqing if you’ve not obtained any of his 5-Star options. Since his kit is geared towards dealing damage to a single target, Yanqing is less likely to switch targets in between strikes and can use ‘Swordplay’ stacking ability to great effect. Players can obtain a copy of this light cone through warping.

‘Swordplay’ grants the wearer this ability:

• For each time the wearer hits the same target, DMG dealt increases by 8/10/12/14/16%, stacking up to 5 times. This effect will be dispelled when the wearer changes targets.

Yanqing Skill Priorities

Here’s a breakdown of Yanqing’s skills:

• Frost Thorn (Basic ATK) – Yanqing’s Basic ATK strikes a single enemy, dealing Ice DMG equal to 50 to 110% of his ATK.
• Darting Ironthorn (Skill) – This is the bread and butter of Yanqing’s kit as it activates Soulsteel Sync for 1 turn. It also deals Ice DMG equal to 110 to 242% of his ATK to a single enemy.
• Amidst the Raining Bliss (Ultimate) – Activating Yanqing’s Ultimate increases his CRIT Rate by 60% and increases Yanqing’s CRIT DMG by an extra 30 to 54% for 1 turn if Soulsteel Sync is active. Afterward, deal Ice DMG equal to 210 to 378% of his ATK to a single enemy.
• One With the Sword (Talent) – When Soulsteel Sync is active, Yanqing’s aggro decreases. His CRIT Rate increases by 15 to 21% and his CRIT DMG increases by 15 to 33%. After attacking an enemy, there is a 50 to 62% fixed chance to perform a follow-up attack, dealing Ice DMG equal to 25 to 55% of his ATK which has a 65% base chance to Freeze the enemy for 1 turn. The Frozen target cannot take action and receives Additional Ice DMG equal to 25 to 55% of his ATK at the beginning of each turn. This all comes with the caveat that if Yanqing gets hit, the Soulsteel Sync effect will disappear.
• The One True Sword (Technique) – After using his Technique, Yanqing deals 30% more DMG for 2 turn(s) to enemies whose current HP is 50% or higher in the next battle.

Prioritize maxing his abilities in this order:

• Ultimate (Amidst the Raining Bliss)
• Skill (Darting Ironthorn)
• Talent (One With the Sword)
• Basic (Frost Thorn)

Yanqing’s Ultimate takes the highest priority as each level-up greatly increases his damage output. This is followed by his skill and talent, as this improves the buffs Yanqing receives from Soulsteel Sync. You can leave leveling up his Basic ATK for last as you would usually only resort to using it if you’re out of skill points, and thus is the least impactful to level up.

Here’s a checklist of what you need to level his skills up:

Yanqing is part of the Path of the Hunt which uses the Arrow of the Starchaser as their path specific trace material. This resource requires Trailblaze Power to claim from Calyxes which limits how quickly you can farm this material. Knowing which skills are worth leveling allows you to efficiently use your limited resources.

Best Yanqing Team Compositions

There’s no doubt that this Cloud Knight Lieutenant falls under the glass cannon archetype. He hits hard and hits fast, but if he takes the slightest bit of damage, all of his setup goes out of the window. That is why his teammates should facilitate his playstyle by doing two things: keep him from getting hit or buff his already insane damage and speed.

Here are our candidates to join Yanqing’s Cloud Knights:

• Gepard (Yanqing’s best teammate. Just keep them on opposite ends, though)
• Trailblazer (Fire) (To redirect all aggression away from Yanqing)
• Tingyun (Buffs both his ATK and energy regeneration to his ultimate)
• Asta (Increases his SPD)
• Pela (Offers DEF-shred and ice debuffs)
• Natasha (Healing for when things go awry)

Keeping his Soulsteel Sync up is crucial to a team with Yanqing as the heart so most of your team’s resources needs to be dedicated to him. He might need a lot of babysitting but once he gets going, Yanqing can carry the team on his back with ease.