HSR Relic Guide: Main/Sub Stats, Crit Value & Smart Farming
Relics fill 6 slots: 4 Cavern pieces (Head, Hands, Body, Feet) and 2 Planar Ornaments (Planar Sphere, Link Rope). Head always rolls flat HP and Hands always rolls flat ATK, so those two slots never need main-stat fishing; the other four have random main stats. Every relic can hold up to 4 sub-stats, gaining or upgrading one every 3 levels (+3/+6/+9/+12/+15), for 5 upgrades total on a 5-star piece taken to +15. To judge a piece fast, use Crit Value = 2 x CRIT Rate% + CRIT DMG%, and hold off on serious cavern farming until your Equilibrium Level hits 6, since that's when 3-star junk finally stops dropping.
The 6 relic slots: which main stats are locked, which are a gamble
Relics split into two clean groups. Group one is Cavern Relics - the Head, Hands, Body and Feet slots, which drop from the Cavern of Corrosion. Group two is Planar Ornaments - the Planar Sphere and Link Rope, which only drop from the Simulated Universe, never from caverns. That's 6 slots total, each with its own stat pool.
Head and Hands are the easy slots: their main stat is locked. Head always rolls flat HP, Hands always rolls flat ATK. That means whatever piece you pick up in those two slots is immediately usable - no need to hunt for the right main stat, just check the sub-stats. The other four slots - Body, Feet, Planar Sphere, Link Rope - roll a random main stat from a pool of options, which is exactly why they eat the most Trailblaze Power: you need to land the right main stat AND good sub-stats at the same time.
One thing worth knowing: the Planar Sphere is the ONLY slot that can roll an Elemental DMG% main stat (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Quantum, Imaginary, Physical...), so any DPS that wants that bonus has to specifically farm the Sphere slot. When farming, always glance at the main stat first - wrong main stat means instant discard, don't waste time reading the sub-stats on it.
Sub-stats and upgrade rolls: don't expect every piece to max out
Every relic can hold up to 4 sub-stats. Most 5-star pieces drop with only 3 sub-stats rolled in; landing one that already has all 4 from the start is rarer and noticeably more valuable, so it's worth holding onto even if its starting numbers don't look better than a 3-line piece at first glance.
Every 3 levels of upgrading (the +3, +6, +9, +12, +15 checkpoints) the relic gets a sub-stat added or increased - 5 checkpoints total for a 5-star piece taken all the way to +15. If the piece already had 4 sub-stats from the start, all 5 checkpoints go into boosting the lines it already has, so a good line just keeps getting better. But if it only had 3 sub-stats, one of those 5 checkpoints gets spent rolling in a brand-new 4th line completely at random - it might be exactly what you need, or it might be dead weight. That's why two relics that look similar on paper can end up wildly different in quality even after both hit +15.
Because every upgrade is a dice roll, don't dump all your upgrade materials into a freshly dropped piece before you know its sub-stats are actually useful. The smarter move is to upgrade cautiously through the first couple of checkpoints (+3, +6), check whether the rolls are trending the right way, then commit to +15 if it looks good - or stop and save materials for something else if it doesn't.
Crit Value: the quick yardstick for good gear vs junk
Crit Value (often shortened to CV) is the community's way of folding CRIT Rate and CRIT DMG into one single number for quick comparisons, instead of eyeballing two separate lines and guessing. The formula is CV = 2 x CRIT Rate% + CRIT DMG%. It only counts the CRIT sub-stat lines rolled onto that specific relic - not your character's base stats, not main stats, not anything on other pieces.
The x2 weighting on CRIT Rate isn't arbitrary - the game is balanced so that 1% CRIT Rate is worth roughly 2% CRIT DMG, which is why the community keeps repeating the "golden 1:2 ratio" when building characters: for every point of CRIT Rate you add, aim for about two points of CRIT DMG alongside it, or you're leaving damage on the table. Crit Value is basically that ratio compressed into one score.
A higher CV means a piece rolled more into its CRIT lines, but that doesn't automatically make it a keeper. A high-CV piece with the wrong main stat, or one missing another sub-stat your character actually needs (SPD, Effect Hit Rate, and so on), can still lose out to a lower-CV piece that fits the build better overall. Treat Crit Value as a fast filter for comparing two pieces in the same slot, not an absolute score that decides everything on its own.
When farming is worth it, and when it just burns Trailblaze Power
The Cavern of Corrosion has 6 difficulty tiers, and each tier is gated by your account's Equilibrium Level - to enter tier N you need Equilibrium Level N, capping out at tier 6. At the lower tiers, 5-star relics can still drop, but the odds are pretty low, and most of what you get is still 3 and 4-star filler.
That's exactly why farming too early - while your character levels and Equilibrium Level are still low - burns Trailblaze Power for little return: every cavern run costs the same amount of stamina regardless of difficulty, but at low tiers you're mostly walking away with disposable 3-4 star gear, and even a correctly-named piece might not have the main stat you actually wanted. The community's rule of thumb is to push Equilibrium Level to the max (tier 6) first - that's the point where 3-star relics are removed from the reward pool entirely, leaving only 4 and 5-star drops, and that's when farming actually starts paying off.
Before reaching that point, spend your Trailblaze Power on leveling characters, unlocking Traces, pushing Equilibrium Level up quickly, and upgrading Light Cones instead of grinding caverns. In short: relic farming is the last step of a build, not the first - get your character foundation and Equilibrium Level maxed out first, then treat the Cavern of Corrosion as your main farming ground.
The 4+2 set rule, and how to tell keep vs scrap fast
A Cavern relic set (Head/Hands/Body/Feet of the same set) always comes with two effect tiers: wearing 2 pieces gives the 2-piece bonus, wearing all 4 adds the 4-piece bonus on top (usually the much stronger one). Planar Ornament sets, on the other hand, only have 2 slots total, so they only ever offer a 2-piece bonus - there's no 4-piece version. That's why the most common build pattern is: 4 matching Cavern pieces (full 4-piece bonus) plus 2 matching Planar Ornaments (2-piece bonus) - commonly shortened to a "4+2" set.
For characters that don't need to lean fully into one specific 4-piece effect, you can instead split the Cavern slots into two different 2-piece sets, stacking two separate 2-piece bonuses, then add the 2-piece Planar Ornament bonus on top - a "2+2+2" layout. It's more flexible for mixing stats but gives up the stronger 4-piece payoff. Whether 4+2 or 2+2+2 is better depends entirely on the character and team, there's no one-size-fits-all answer.
To skip manually calculating Crit Value or eyeballing every sub-stat line on a pickup, just run it through the scoring tool at /hsr/relic-score - plug in the main stat and sub-stats and it spits out a score relative to the max possible roll, so you can compare old vs new directly. Only swap gear when the new score is clearly higher, not just 1-2% better, since taking a piece from +0 to +15 eats a fair amount of upgrade materials. Check /hsr/relics to see what a character or set actually needs slot by slot, and track upgrade material stock at /hsr/materials so you farm the right thing instead of wasting stamina running in circles.
FAQ
What Crit Value counts as "good" gear?
There's no single threshold that applies to every character, since each one needs a different CRIT Rate to CRIT DMG ratio depending on its base stats and kit. Crit Value is best used to quickly compare two relics of the same slot and role to see which one rolled better on its CRIT lines - not as an absolute number every character must hit.
Which slot should I farm first?
Prioritize Body, Feet, Planar Sphere and Link Rope first, since those four have random main stats and are much harder to land correctly - farming them earlier gives you more chances to build up options. Head and Hands already have a locked main stat (HP and ATK), so anything you pick up is usable right away; you lose nothing by farming those later and just focusing on sub-stats when you do.
My 5-star relic has bad sub-stats - is it still worth upgrading to +15?
Check the main stat first, since that's the one thing that can never change: if it's already wrong for the character, salvage it for materials instead of gambling more resources on it. Only take a piece all the way to +15 when the main stat is right and at least a few sub-stats look promising for the build - otherwise save the materials for something else.
