Honkai Star Rail: Apocalyptic Shadow - Thoughts and Expectations

During the 2.3 livestream, the developers behind Star Rail announced that we’d be getting yet another permanent game mode with the new version.

This game mode will finally let the Hunt characters shine and give us a ton of Stellar Jade to pull for new characters.

In this opinion piece, I’ll go over my thoughts on this new mode and what I’m expecting from it.

What is Apocalyptic Shadow?

Apocalyptic Shadow is a new permanent game mode that will become available with Honkai: Star Rail 2.3. It will work in a similar way to Pure Fiction and Memory of Chaos, where it will offer a set of challenges spread out through various stages and, in the end, give a ton of Stellar Jade—800 in total, to be exact.

However, unlike the other two modes, Apocalyptic Shadow will only focus on defeating boss enemies, meaning that this mode will benefit characters who deal single-target damage over those focusing on AoE, as was the case in Pure Fiction.

This, in turn, I believe to be a really good decision on the part of the development team, as it finally gives us the opportunity to bring out the best of our Hunt characters, who, let’s be honest, do not see much play anywhere else.

Being able to do a DPS check against a single enemy will surely be a lot of fun, and I’m assuming we’ll get a ton of videos showcasing new builds and huge numbers.

How are the Rewards?

The rewards for Apocalyptic Shadow are honestly great. During the livestream, it was announced that all permanent game modes will be getting a total Stellar Jade increase from 720 => 800, which means that if we manage to clear all three modes fully, we’ll be getting 2400 Stellar Jade per cycle. 

This is honestly amazing income combined with all of the events and the Simulated Universe, which is also getting an update. However, a new mode means that we’ll have to spend that much more time with the game.

Is it Getting too Much?

With the introduction of Apocalyptic Shadow, the total number of permanent game modes has now jumped to 4. This in turn is great when looking at pull income, but is having this many modes really that good?

Well, the short answer is yes. This is because, although we have four permanent modes, none of them require that much time to complete. A simulated universe run can take 10–20 minutes, which on average will require you to spend 30 minutes to do two runs and get all the rewards.

With the quick-clear functions added to Pure Fiction and Memory of Chaos, you only need another 10-15 minutes to clear those, and they reset every 2-3 weeks, so once you do them, you forget about them.

Apocalyptic Shadow will also work in the same way where you do it once and forget it, and it will likely have a quick clear function added to it as well, greatly lowering the time you need to spend with it.

To summarize, I do not believe that Apocalyptic Shadow will eat away too much of your time, and casual players should easily be able to do it so that they can get a decent amount of Stellar Jade from it.

Having another source of Stellar Jade is an amazing addition, as it will allow me to get even more pulls, thus more characters. I’m gladly waiting for the introduction of the new mode and testing it out when it releases alongside version 2.3 next week.