Image: HoYoverse
Honkai: Star Rail’s big 2.0 update adds the highly-anticipated realm Penacony with new storylines and companions.
HoYoverse has unveiled Honkai: Star Rail’s big Version 2.0 update, which lands on February 6 with a whole new realm called Penacony, several new storylines and more companions for players to meet. Version 2.0 will also kick off Penacony’s Trailblaze Missions, which will play out from Version 2.0 to 2.2 and culminate in Version 2.3’s epilogues.
Here’s a trailer for Version 2.0:
Honkai: Star Rail’s big new update kicks off next month
The Crew of Honkai: Star Rail has received an invitation to visit Penacony as honoured guests for an event called the Charmony Festival in Version 2.0, bringing players to the long-awaited new region at last. Penacony appears to be a lavish retreat set in space, featuring an interstellar hotel called the Reverie that attracts celebrities from worlds away to vacation in style. Despite how it now looks, however, Penacony used to be a frontier prison before control of the planet shifted to a group called the Family.
Penacony will give players a new cosmic vacation-themed region to explore, with several points of interest located in the hotel itself. A Dreampool device in the hotel will let players visit one of 12 Dreamscapes such as the Golden Hour, and another device called the Dream’s Eye connects disjointed paths in the hotel seamlessly. Dreamwalking also allows players to walk on walls and ceilings, along with the rest of the hotel’s rambunctious occupants.
It sounds like it’s all fun and games in Penacony for now, but things might take a turn once players actually get to visit the planet in February. This update also adds several new playable characters, such as the mysterious 5-star Black Swan who wields the memories of people around her as weapons. Another 5-star character named Sparkle is an actor who changes her identity and swaps roles at the drop of a hat. A local Penaconian named Misha will also appear as a 4-star character, and two old faces from the Xianzhou - Dan Heng and Jing Yuan - will reapper in Version 2.0’s event warp.
Version 2.0’s is also streamlining the game’s lore thanks to a feature called Fate’s Atlas, which summarises plotlines from each world in chronological order. Enhancing Relics has also been improved to make it easier for players to both find materials and filter through Relics. Genshin Impact’s new 4.4 update is also adding a new region in Chenyu Vale.