HoYoverse flipped the switch on Honkai: Star Rail's Version 4.2 Phase 2 yesterday at the usual server-time reset, and the second half of the third-anniversary patch is now live across iOS, Android, PC, and PlayStation. The headliner is Evanescia, a brand-new five-star Hunt resonator on the Wind path who debuts with her own banner, the Crimson Moon's Hunt, and a new signature Light Cone called Until the Flowers Bloom Again. Sharing the spotlight is the Indelible Coterie banner — a triple rerun of Tribbie, Sunday, and Feixiao that has not been on the same rate-up window in nearly a year.
Both banners run from May 13 through June 1, which lines up with the rest of the anniversary celebration timeline and the studio's standard three-week phase rhythm. Mobile players in particular have a clean window to plan jade and tickets before the next version drops.
Evanescia herself is the marquee addition. HoYoverse has been teasing her since the version 4.2 livestream, and the trailer above pulls together her kit — a blade-of-roses signature attack that fires off quick-strike combos with bonus damage scaling against enemies stacked with her Crimson Moon mark. The four-star rate-up companions on her banner are Guinaifen, Lynx, and Sushang, which is one of the more useful four-star piles HoYoverse has shipped recently for a new account.
What the Crimson Moon's Hunt actually does
Evanescia is the first Hunt-path five-star released since the Mistveil Adjudicators arc began, and her kit is built around stacking marks on a single primary target before unloading. Her basic attack applies a stack, her skill spreads that mark to nearby enemies in a small area, and her ultimate triggers a multi-hit follow-up that scales with the number of stacks on the primary target at activation. The signature Light Cone, Until the Flowers Bloom Again, boosts her crit damage when she has at least three stacks active and refreshes one stack on basic attack hits.
The interesting wrinkle is her trace tree. One of the major traces awards extra action advance when she lands an ultimate, which makes her play more like a fast-cycle DPS than a typical setup-and-payoff Hunt unit. Early server-time builds out of CN have already paired her with Robin and Bronya for double-buff burst comps, and with Tribbie's Quantum Harmony banner running in the same phase, the Robin-Tribbie-Bronya support trio is suddenly very pullable.
Tribbie, Sunday, and Feixiao reruns are the value play
The Indelible Coterie banner is the kind of multi-rerun that does not show up often. Three rerun characters share one banner with their respective Light Cones available on the Brilliant Fixation track. Tribbie is a Quantum Harmony unit, Sunday remains the gold-standard Imaginary Harmony, and Feixiao is still one of the best Wind Hunt picks in the game even after the meta has shifted.
For mobile players who skipped earlier patches, this is the most efficient way to fill three different team slots from a single pull pool. The catch is that the rate-up only weights toward "one of the three" — not a specific character — so dedicated pulling for a single rerun unit is more expensive than a normal solo banner. Most account-building guides are recommending players hard target one of the three first and stop the moment they land it, rather than chasing all three.
The anniversary rewards stack on top of all of this
Version 4.2 is officially Honkai: Star Rail's third-anniversary patch, and the Phase 2 launch reopens the anniversary login event, the Star Rail Pass commemorative reward track, and a fresh wave of free Stellar Jade tied to event quests. The total free-pulls count from the patch sits comfortably north of the equivalent of 100 warps when stacked across the login rewards, the Path of the Trailblazer mission, and the anniversary-specific event chain.
For new accounts or returning players, the standard banner Stelle's Memoir selector — which lets newer players grab one of a curated list of older five-stars — also returned with Phase 2. That is a real welcome-back hook for anyone who left during the early Penacony arc.
Performance and storage notes for mobile
The Version 4.2 patch on iOS and Android is roughly the same size as previous version drops, and Phase 2 ships as an in-version content unlock rather than a separate download. Players who downloaded Phase 1 on May 1 should not need to redownload anything to access Evanescia or the rerun banner.
One thing worth flagging — HoYoverse has continued to roll out resolution-scaling settings for newer flagship Android phones, and the May 13 update bundled a small device-detection fix that should resolve the lingering frame-pacing issue on certain Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 devices that showed up during the Phase 1 window. iOS performance on iPhone 14 Pro and newer is unchanged, which has been a strong baseline for the patch.
What to watch through June 1
Evanescia's banner closes on June 1 alongside the rest of Phase 2. The next phase rotation will bring Version 4.3, and HoYoverse has already teased a continuation of the Foxian Tail of Romance arc in the next livestream cycle. Players who are jade-strapped after pulling Evanescia or one of the reruns will have a full version cycle to recover, but the standard advice applies: cash in event jade as early as possible because retroactive claim is not a feature in this game.
For now, the anniversary celebration is in full swing and one of HoYoverse's most ambitious five-stars in months is finally pullable. If Evanescia or any of the three rerun units have been on your wishlist, the May 13 to June 1 window is the only one you are going to get for a while.
