The best Honkai: Star Rail Qingque build

What is the best build for Qingque in Honkai: Star Rail? Qingque is the eighth and final free character you can claim in Honkai: Star Rail, "final" being the operative word. She's given away as a reward for clearing the Forgotten Hall, which is Star Rail's endgame challenge as things stand in Version 1.0.

You're unlikely to see Qingque for a while, in other words, and if you interact with the gacha the odds are good that you'll pull her before receiving her free unit (in which case, you'll receive some of her special levelling materials instead upon finishing Memory Stage 3). But if you're an F2P player, unlocking Qingque will be an important expansion of your team composition potential, especially since she's the only Quantum-aligned character out of all the freebies. So read on for our best Honkai: Star Rail Qingque build advice, including relics, light cones, and more.

Honkai: Star Rail best Qingque build

Qingque path and element

Like her fellow free units Herta and Serval, Qingque follows the path of the Erudition, making this easily the most-represented F2P character type in the game. These multi-target DPS specialists are also some of the hardest to build effectively, but can pay off very rewardingly. You'll probably only want one per team, but of the three, Qingque stands up as quite possibly the best choice once you have her.

Qingque's elemental affinity is with Quantum, which applies some special debuffs on hit enemies, in addition to dealing them damage both in the moment and over time. Enemies hit with Qingque's Entanglement debuff have their combat turns delayed, which can be a huge factor in turning a battle to your favour.

Best light cone for Qingque: Night on the Milky Way

• 4-star alternative: Today Is Another Peaceful Day

To maximise Qingque's AoE DPS potential, Night on the Milky Way is a top choice of 5-star light cone. For every enemy on the field (up to a maximum of five, which tends to be the largest enemy group you'll encounter most of the time anyway), Qingque will gain a 9% increase to her basic attack damage. Furthermore, when an enemy's weakness is broken, Qingque's next attack will enjoy a massive 30% boost.

If you're looking for a 4-star alternative, look no further than Qingque's own signature light cone Today Is Another Peaceful Day. Designed specifically around Qingque's unique kit, this light cone increases her damage based on her max energy when she enters battle, by 0.2% per point of energy (up to 160 points). Qingque's unusual ult can be somewhat random in its effectiveness, so a strong base boost to her ordinary attack skills never goes amiss while you're fine-tuning.

Best relics for Qingque: Genius of Brilliant Stars

This one's a no-brainer for Qingque, especially if you're an F2P player with only Qingque to equip your Quantum-specialist relics on. Genius of Brilliant Stars carries a two-piece set bonus that increases Quantum damage by a base 10%, while the four-piece set bonus allows Qingque to ignore 25% of the DEF of any enemy with a weakness to Quantum.

For a full picture of which characters you might want to add to your Honkai: Star Rail crew, be sure to check out our Honkai: Star Rail best characters tier list. For F2P character builds you can begin putting into practice as soon as you start the game, take a look at our favourite builds for the Trailblazer, March 7th, and Dan Heng too!