Simulated Universe Guide for Honkai Star Rail Beginners
The Simulated Universe is Honkai: Star Rail's roguelike mode: every time you clear a fight you pick 1 of 3 random Blessings, and collecting 3 Blessings from the same Path unlocks that Path's powerful Resonance move. From World 3 onward, after beating an Elite or Boss you can spend 40 Trailblaze Power at a terminal to claim Planar Ornaments — the only source of that relic type in the game. New players should default to Preservation, since its Resonance deals AoE damage based on your team's total Shield and is very forgiving; Abundance (healing) only unlocks after you win your first battle in World 5.
What is the Simulated Universe and how does it play?
Put simply, the Simulated Universe plays like a maze board game: you move node by node, and each node can be a fight, a choice event, a rest stop to shop at, or a Blessing exchange shop. It's a "roguelike" mode — meaning every run starts fresh: your characters stay the same, but all your temporary power (buffs) resets to zero and has to be earned again.
What you pick up is called a Blessing: a buff that lasts for the whole run, making your team gradually stronger fight after fight. Every time you win a battle or hit a matching event, you're offered 1 of 3 random Blessings to pick — choose based on the Path you're building toward so nothing goes to waste.
From World 3 onward you'll also start finding Curios — special-effect items that can be a global buff, or even a downside if you pick the wrong one, so always read the description before grabbing one. Every World ends with a Boss fight, and only beating it counts as clearing that World.
Which Path should beginners pick?
At the start of every run you have to pick a Path — think of it as the "school" that decides which Blessings you'll prioritize grabbing. Collect 3 Blessings from the same Path and you unlock that Path's Resonance: a huge bonus effect you can trigger mid-battle, no character skill points required.
The Path of Preservation is the easiest pick for beginners: its Resonance deals physical damage to all enemies, scaling off your team's total Shield value. So you just build shields like you normally would, and the damage comes for free — no complicated combos needed, which makes it very forgiving while you're still learning how Simulated Universe works.
The Path of Abundance (healing, team sustain) is another safe pick later on, but it's not available from the start — you have to win your very first battle wave in World 5 to permanently unlock it (even if you lose the rest of that run, the unlock sticks for good). While you don't have many Paths unlocked yet, just prioritize whichever Path is offering you the best 3 Blessing choices in that moment — don't force yourself into one specific Path if the game isn't dealing you good cards for it.
Weekly rewards and how to farm Planar Ornaments
The Simulated Universe has its own weekly points bar, filled up by playing runs and completing objectives. This bar resets every week, so log in weekly to hit every reward tier for Stellar Jade and Herta Shop currency — don't let it go to waste, it's a steady source of free Stellar Jade that doesn't cost any Trailblaze Power.
JadePlanar Ornaments specifically (the relic type made of Planar Sphere and Link Rope, which add a fifth and sixth stat slot on top of your usual 4 relics) come from exactly ONE source in the entire game: the Simulated Universe, and only from World 3 onward. After beating an Elite enemy or a Boss on a floor, you'll find a terminal — interact with it and spend 40 Trailblaze Power (or a substitute item if you've stocked some) to claim the full set of Planar Ornaments shown on screen.
Quick tip: don't rush to spend Trailblaze Power the moment you beat the first Elite you run into — clear as much of the floor as possible first, beating as many Elites/Bosses as you can in that run, then cash in all your Planar Ornaments at once to get the most value out of every bit of Trailblaze Power you have.
Practical tips for new players
Bring a multi-element team instead of stacking everything into 1-2 elements. Enemies in the Simulated Universe have all kinds of different weaknesses, and a multi-element team lets you break more enemy Toughness and trigger more Weakness Breaks, so you're less likely to get stuck in a fight because you're missing the right element.
Prioritize grabbing Blessings to unlock your Path's Resonance as early as possible each run — it's the single biggest source of damage or support you get without spending any real character build resources, and once you have Resonance up, the run gets noticeably easier.
If your team's HP is still healthy, go ahead and pick path nodes with a combat icon instead of avoiding them — the more fights you take, the more Blessings and Curios drop, and the stronger your team gets by the end of the floor. Only dodge fights when your HP is running low and you don't have the Path of Abundance unlocked yet to heal up.
World structure: from tutorial floors to endless score-farming
The Simulated Universe is split into multiple Worlds arranged by rising difficulty, and each World lists its own recommended Trailblaze level so you can gauge how your team stacks up against that content. Per the official data, the earliest Worlds (1-2) only have one fixed difficulty — these are the tutorial floors that teach the basic mechanics, with low recommended levels (World 1 around level 5, World 2 around level 14). World 3 is the first floor with a terminal for claiming Planar Ornaments, recommended around level 25.
From World 4 onward, each World offers MULTIPLE selectable Difficulty tiers — higher tiers are harder, but pay out more weekly score and better odds at rarer Blessings in return. The recommended level climbs with each Difficulty tier, from roughly level 30 (Difficulty 1) up to level 80 (the highest Difficulty) — this is the "endless farm" part of the mode: replayable with no run-count limit and no Trailblaze Power cost to enter, capped only by the weekly score bar and the Trailblaze Power spent claiming Planar Ornaments.
Practical advice: don't jump straight to the highest Difficulty — pick a tier you can reliably beat the boss in within a reasonable time, since dying partway still means redoing the whole floor from the start. (official in-game figures.)
The 9 Aeons (Paths) in the base Simulated Universe
In the base Simulated Universe (not counting Divergent Universe), the official data lists exactly 9 Aeons, each representing one Path with its own pool of Blessings. The table below pairs each Aeon's name with its Path so unfamiliar names in-run are easy to look up.
| Aeon | Path | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Qlipoth | Preservation | Resonance scales with Shield, easiest for beginners |
| Fuli | Remembrance | Tied to clone/memory-style mechanics |
| IX | Nihility | Debuffs and DoT on enemies |
| Yaoshi | Abundance | Team healing, unlocks after first World-5 win |
| Lan | The Hunt | Fast single-target damage |
| Nanook | Destruction | All-in damage, trades HP for output |
| Aha | Elation | Gamble/double-effect mechanics |
| Tayzzyronth | Propagation | Cloning/spreading effects |
| Nous | Erudition | AoE damage |
How Blessings and Curios work, and the 8 room types in the maze
Blessings don't stop at one tier: the first time you pick a given Blessing it lands at a low level, but rolling the exact same Blessing again on a later choice UPGRADES it (stacking on the old one), up to a cap of level 4 — noticeably stronger than level 1. So sometimes picking a DUPLICATE of a Blessing you already own is better than grabbing something brand-new, especially while the existing one is still only level 1-2.
Curios work completely differently: they do NOT upgrade, and you can only carry 3 Curios at once in a single run — once you're full, taking a new one means dropping one you already have, so think before you grab one. (The complete list of every Blessing and Curio with full effect text lives at /hsr/simulated-universe — this article only explains how the SYSTEM works, not every individual entry.)
The Simulated Universe map is built from tiles, and the official data confirms 8 distinct room types: Combat (regular enemies), Encounter (surprise ambush), Occurrence (story choice/chest events), Respite (a rest stop to swap Blessings or heal), Elite (tougher enemies with better drops), Boss (the floor's final fight), Transaction (a shop using in-run currency), and Adventure (an optional side challenge, usually for bonus rewards). Knowing each tile type in advance helps you plan a route — whether to avoid a branch or not depends on your remaining HP and whether you're farming Blessings or Planar Ornaments right now. (official in-game figures.)
Rising difficulty and the Aeon-ban curse at high-score tiers
The higher the Difficulty tier at the final World, the more the game adds side rules to force you off autopilot, not just enemies with more HP/ATK. One of those rules is the "Aeon ban" curse: at the hardest tiers, up to 2 Paths get BANNED from offering Blessings that run — forcing you to pivot your build toward the remaining Paths instead of repeating the exact same strategy every time. This is why the "endless farm" side of Simulated Universe stays more interesting than it sounds: the rules shift with each high-score attempt.
A few other settings also shape difficulty: the max number of enemies allowed on screen at once per rarity tier (regular, elite, boss) scales up at higher Difficulty, and the number of chest keys you get per run (roughly 12-16) forces you to pick which chests are actually worth opening instead of opening everything. So a strategy that works fine at low Difficulty (going all-in on one familiar Path) can backfire at high Difficulty once that Path gets banned — always have a backup Path ready before attempting the hardest score-farming tier. (official in-game figures.)
How the weekly score bar works, and the Divergent Universe variant
The Simulated Universe weekly score bar is split into several evenly spaced tiers — per the official data, each Difficulty has 10 reward tiers, starting around 350 points and topping out around 3,500, with each tier exactly 350 points above the last. Points are earned from runs you complete that week (the more Worlds you play and the more Bosses you beat, the more points you rack up), converting into Stellar Jade and Herta Shop currency. Since the bar resets every Monday, the sensible goal is to play enough runs to hit the top tier each week before it resets, rather than binge-playing and wasting the overflow (leftover points don't carry over to the next week).
Beyond the base Simulated Universe covered in this article, the game also has a variant called Divergent Universe, with its own Aeon-selection rules and interactions that are noticeably more complex than the base mode. Since that's a big enough system to deserve its own explainer, this article won't cram both modes into one place — if you need to look up the full list of Blessings and Curios across both modes (now thousands of entries in the official data), check the combined data page at /hsr/simulated-universe.
| Score tier | Points needed |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 350 |
| Tier 5 | 1,750 |
| Tier 10 (max) | 3,500 |
5 common mistakes when farming the Simulated Universe
1) Grabbing Blessings spread thin across several different Paths instead of committing to the Path you're actually running — the result is never having 3 matching Blessings to unlock a Resonance, missing out on the single biggest damage/support boost that run could have had.
2) Grabbing Curios on a whim without reading the description — since you can only hold 3 at once, one bad pick takes up a slot a better Curio could have filled later.
3) Avoiding every fight to "play safe" while HP is still healthy — the more fights you take, the more Blessings and Curios drop, so over-avoiding leaves your team noticeably weaker by the end of the floor from missing out on stacking power.
4) Claiming Planar Ornaments the instant you find the first terminal instead of clearing every Elite/Boss in the run first, then cashing in once — wastes clicks and makes it easy to miss rewards on a later floor.
5) Jumping straight into the highest Difficulty on the final World the very first try — dying partway still means redoing the whole floor from scratch, while picking a Difficulty you can actually handle still pays out steady weekly score and Blessings/Curios far more reliably than repeatedly losing at a tier that's too hard.
The 3 Blessing rarity tiers: Common, Rare, Legendary
Blessings in the base Simulated Universe fall into 3 rarity tiers — per the official data, the base mode has roughly 73 Common Blessings, 63 Rare Blessings and 97 Legendary Blessings (counting distinct entries, not the level-1-to-4 upgrade tiers of each one). Common tier is usually a flat stat buff (ATK/DEF/SPD); Rare tier starts adding special effects tied to how that Path plays; Legendary tier holds the strongest effects, often changing how you play entirely (doubling a damage type, or granting immunity to a debuff, for example).
Since Legendary is actually the largest of the 3 tiers by count (97 out of 233 total), the odds of seeing a Legendary Blessing in your 3 random picks aren't nearly as rare as the name "Legendary" makes newcomers assume — but you should still prioritize matching your current Path first, since a Legendary Blessing from the WRONG Path still won't help you collect 3 of a kind to unlock Resonance. (official in-game figures.)
FAQ
Does playing the Simulated Universe normally cost Trailblaze Power?
No. Walking the map, fighting, and collecting Blessings or Curios during a run costs zero Trailblaze Power. You only spend 40 Trailblaze Power each time you interact with a terminal to claim Planar Ornaments, and that only becomes available from World 3 onward, after beating an Elite or Boss.
Which Path should I pick first as a new player?
Preservation is the easiest pick: its Resonance deals AoE damage scaling off your team's total Shield, so simply focusing on shielding up already produces damage without needing complex combos — a forgiving way to learn Simulated Universe mechanics before trying other Paths.
How do I unlock the Path of Abundance?
Just win your first battle wave in World 5 of the Simulated Universe, and the Path of Abundance is permanently unlocked for all future runs — even if you fail to clear the rest of World 5 that attempt, the unlock still sticks.
How many Paths (Aeons) can I pick in the Simulated Universe?
In the base Simulated Universe, the official data confirms exactly 9 Aeons, one for each Path: Preservation, Remembrance, Nihility, Abundance, the Hunt, Destruction, Elation, Propagation, and Erudition. Not every Path is unlocked from the start — Abundance, for instance, only unlocks after winning your first battle in World 5.
How many Curios can I hold at once?
A maximum of 3 Curios at once per run, per the official configuration. Unlike Blessings, Curios don't upgrade, so once you're holding 3, picking up another means dropping one you already have — weigh the effects carefully before swapping.
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