The Honkai Star Rail 1.6 update has been live for a few days. It features a new Trailblazer story quest involving new character Ruan Mei and Dr. Ratio, as well as a challenging boss fight.

The main obstacle in 1.6’s story quest is the Starcrusher Swarm King, an abomination hiding in the depths of the space station you’re based in. And it’s a tough boss fight unless you have specific heroes in your party. Thankfully, the only heroes you need are already at your disposal since almost all of them are given to you free of charge.

Here’s how you can defeat the Honkai Star Rail 1.6 update’s big bad boss using a free-to-play party.

Starcrusher Swarm King Boss Guide

This battle is all about the right party setup. You need the following:

-Physical, Ice, and Imaginary element characters. The key to beating Starcrusher is to break its weakness as consistently as possible.
-DPS characters; you need characters who can break elements easily.
-Preservation and Abundance characters, so that you can double-sustain your team. Simply put, a combination of tanking hits and healing said tank.

As for the boss itself:

-When Starcrusher has its special Multiply shield up, hitting it will summon extra mobs that can hinder you. However, breaking its weakness while it has its shield up will have it cause an explosion that breaks its own allies.
-If you don’t want to be overwhelmed, just attack its allies while its mobs are up.
-If you see an orange bug popping up (usually at the second phase of the fight), break it & kill it ASAP. No matter your party setup, you will lose if it explodes in your face.
-Keep a Skill Point or 2 free for healing and Preservation sustaining.

Our personal F2P setup is as follows. If you’re pretty far into the story and have played this game for a month, you have 90% of these characters by now:

–Serval, Natasha, Fire Trailblazer, and Pela (or any Ice/Physical/Imaginary DPS character).
–Herta, Natasha, Fire Trailblazer, and any Physical/Ice/Imaginary DPS character).
–Physical Trailblazer, March, Natasha, and any DPS character you have.

Here’s a video from NJMH Gaming that shows the F2P party in action against the Starcrusher.

Here’s what you can achieve with a full 5-Star character party.