How to unlock Stagnant Shadows in Honkai: Star Rail

Honkai: Star Rail Stagnant Shadows - Pom-Pom the conductor — (Image credit: miHoYo)

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The Honkai: Star Rail Stagnant Shadows are little battles that you need to complete if you want to farm up materials to ascend all those characters you've been getting. Like the Calyx or the Caverns of Corrosion, they require some of your Trailblaze power for each individual completion, rewarding you with materials in exchange once you're done.

That said, Stagnant Shadows are one of the latest, if not the last, of the game's features to unlock. Until then, you're stuck with your characters at their current ascension level, since you lack the materials to raise them beyond a certain point. So, here I'll explain how to unlock Honkai: Star Rail Stagnant Shadows so you can access character ascension materials and push on towards the game's harder content.

How to unlock Stagnant Shadows

Honkai: Star Rail Stagnant Shadows - Storm Eye material — To get the materials to ascend your characters beyond level 40, you'll need to unlock Stagnant Shadows (Image credit: miHoYo)

To access Stagnant Shadows you need to reach Trailblaze Level 30 and complete the ascension trial mission to get to Equilibrium three. As soon as you do, there's a short sequence where you're introduced to Stagnant Shadows and what they are. Before you reach Equilibrium three, there's a pretty hard gate on how high you can ascend and level your characters, since you don't have access to the ascension materials that the Stagnant Shadows provide. Once you reach it, however, all the Stagnant Shadows unlock, and you can view them in the Survival Index section of the Interastral Guide along with the Calyx and Caverns of Corrosion.

If you need to farm Stagnant Shadows for your ascension materials, I'd suggest picking a party that can cut through some of the enemy weaknesses—since these battles are harder than Calyx—then activating autobattle in the top right, along with the speed toggle, and just leaving your party to it. One of the biggest advantages of Star Rail vs. Genshin Impact is that you no longer have to spend all your time farming, since turn-based combat allows for speedy autobattle in a way that action-based combat doesn't.

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.