Honkai: Star Rail Warp Math: Stellar Jade Needed for Full Pity

One warp costs 160 Stellar Jade, so a full 90-pull hard pity on a limited character banner costs 14,400 Jade. Soft pity usually resolves a 5-star before 90, putting the real average near 10,000 Jade — and about 15,000 Jade for a guaranteed featured character once the 50/50 is priced in. For the detail behind that, see Honkai.

That gap between the worst case and the average case is the entire point of doing warp math. Most players who feel "unlucky" are not unlucky at all; they simply budgeted against the wrong number. This guide walks through the conversion rate, the pity curve, the 50/50, the light cone banner, and how to turn your own monthly Stellar Jade income into a pull forecast you can actually plan a patch around. Every number here is a mechanic-level number from HoYoverse's in-game warp details panel, not a leak or a community estimate, and anything that shifts between versions is flagged as such.

How many Stellar Jade does one warp cost in Honkai: Star Rail?

One warp costs 160 Stellar Jade, and a ten-pull costs 1,600 Stellar Jade. There is no bulk discount in Honkai: Star Rail — a ten-pull is exactly ten single pulls priced together. The only difference is the guaranteed 4-star or higher that lands within every ten-warp window.

Stellar Jade is not what the banner consumes directly. The banner consumes passes: Star Rail Special Pass on the limited character and light cone banners, and Star Rail Pass on the standard Departure and Stellar warps. When you warp with Jade, the game silently converts 160 Jade into one pass behind the scenes. This matters for budgeting because passes you already hold are effectively pre-paid pulls, and any calculator that ignores your pass stock will under-count your real pull ceiling.

So the honest formula for "how many pulls do I have right now" is:

• Total pulls = (Stellar Jade ÷ 160) + Star Rail Special Passes held
• Jade-equivalent = Stellar Jade + (Special Passes × 160)

A player sitting on 8,000 Stellar Jade and 12 Special Passes has 50 + 12 = 62 pulls, not 50. That is a difference of roughly 1,900 Jade in purchasing power, and it is the single most common omission when players sanity-check their own totals.

Oneiric Shards, the premium currency, convert into Stellar Jade at a 1:1 rate. Undying Starlight — the compensation currency you receive from duplicate pulls — buys Star Rail Passes for the standard banner in the Embers Exchange, but it does not buy Special Passes for limited banners. Treating Starlight as limited-banner currency is a second common source of inflated forecasts.

How does warp pity change the real cost of a 5-star?

Pity converts a flat 0.6% base rate into a near-certainty by a fixed pull count. On character banners the hard pity is 90 warps, but the rate begins climbing sharply from roughly warp 74 onward — the soft pity window. Because most 5-stars actually resolve inside that window, the average cost per 5-star is far below 90 pulls.

The mechanic works in three layers, and each one changes your budget differently:

• Base rate. The advertised 5-star rate on a limited character banner is 0.6% per warp. On its own, that would be brutal.
• Soft pity. From around the 74th warp without a 5-star, the per-pull rate escalates steeply with each additional pull. This is why so many 5-stars land in the high-70s and low-80s rather than at 90.
• Hard pity. At warp 90 the 5-star is guaranteed outright. The counter then resets to zero.

HoYoverse publishes a consolidated rate of 1.6% for 5-stars on the character banner, which already folds pity into the advertised figure. That consolidated number is the one worth budgeting against, because 1 ÷ 0.016 gives roughly 62 warps as the expected cost of any 5-star. At 160 Jade per warp, that is about 10,000 Stellar Jade for an average 5-star.

The 4-star layer runs on its own independent counter: a 4-star or better is guaranteed at least once every 10 warps, with a consolidated rate around 13%. That counter does not interact with the 5-star counter, so a 4-star landing at warp 10 does not "use up" or delay your 5-star pity in any way.

Two practical consequences follow. First, pity carries over between banners of the same type — your character-banner counter persists when a new limited character arrives, so pulls you spent last patch are not wasted. Second, pity does not carry between banner types: the character banner, the light cone banner, and the standard banner each track their own counter independently. If you want a deeper walkthrough of how these systems slot into overall account growth, our HSR progression guide covering levels, warp and characters maps the whole chain.

What does the 50/50 mean for your Stellar Jade budget?

The 50/50 is the rule that a 5-star pulled on a limited character banner has a 50% chance of being the featured character and a 50% chance of being a standard-pool 5-star instead. If you lose it, your next 5-star on that banner type is guaranteed to be the featured unit.

Budget-wise, this means the featured character is not a one-5-star purchase — it is a 1.5-5-star purchase on average. Half the time you get the character on your first 5-star; half the time you pay for two. The expected number of 5-stars needed is 1.5, which is why the planning figure for a guaranteed featured character is roughly:

• Average case: ~62 warps × 1.5 ≈ 93 warps ≈ 15,000 Stellar Jade
• Worst case: 90 + 90 = 180 warps = 28,800 Stellar Jade
• Best case: a single early 5-star that wins the 50/50 — occasionally under 1,600 Jade

The standard-pool characters you can lose the 50/50 to are the permanent 5-stars — Bronya, Gepard, Clara, Yanqing, Bailu and Himeko among them. Losing a 50/50 to one of these is not a wasted pull in account terms: standard 5-stars still hold real roster value, and duplicates convert into Undying Starlight. It is still a 10,000-Jade detour from the unit you actually wanted, so plan for it rather than hoping around it.

The guarantee flag persists across banners and across versions. If you lose a 50/50 in the second half of a patch and stop pulling, that guarantee is still waiting for you when the next character you want arrives — which makes "lose the 50/50, then bank" a legitimate strategy rather than a consolation prize.

How much Stellar Jade do you need to guarantee a limited 5-star?

To guarantee a specific featured character with no luck at all, budget 28,800 Stellar Jade — 180 warps, covering a lost 50/50 at hard pity followed by a guaranteed pull at hard pity. If you already carry the guarantee flag, that number halves to 14,400 Jade.

Those two numbers are the only true ceilings in the system, and they are what a serious saving target should be built around. Everything else is probability. Here is how the practical tiers break down:

• 14,400 Jade (90 pulls) with guarantee active — mathematically certain. This is the cheapest genuine certainty in the game.
• 28,800 Jade (180 pulls) from a fresh 50/50 — mathematically certain regardless of outcomes.
• ~15,000 Jade (93 pulls) — the average-case cost. Roughly half of players will need less than this, half more.
• ~10,000 Jade (62 pulls) — enough for one 5-star of some kind, but only a coin-flip on getting the one you want.

If you are planning for Eidolons rather than a single copy, multiply from the guarantee tier, not the average tier — the variance stacks badly across multiple copies, and E1 or E2 targets routinely run past what an average-case plan predicts. Our breakdown of how Eidolons work and which ones actually matter is worth reading before committing a multi-patch budget to duplicates, because several characters gain very little between E0 and E1.

Is the light cone banner cheaper or more expensive to plan for?

The light cone banner has a lower hard pity at 80 warps and a more forgiving featured rate at 75%, but it runs on a completely separate pity counter. It is cheaper per 5-star and cheaper per guarantee, yet it is genuinely a second budget rather than a discount on the first.

The differences that matter for math:

• Hard pity 80 instead of 90, with soft pity beginning around warp 65.
• 75/25 split instead of 50/50 — three in four 5-star light cones are the featured one.
• Base 5-star rate of 0.8%, with a consolidated rate near 1.87%, giving an expected cost of roughly 53 warps per 5-star.
• Worst case guarantee of 80 + 80 = 160 warps = 25,600 Stellar Jade.
• Average guarantee cost of roughly 66 warps ≈ 10,600 Stellar Jade.

The trap is that the separate counter means running both banners in one patch is not a 15,000-Jade plan — it is closer to a 25,000-Jade plan at average luck, and 54,400 Jade at the absolute worst case. For most players, most of the time, the correct answer is to fund the character fully and treat the signature light cone as optional. A well-chosen 4-star light cone frequently delivers the bulk of a 5-star cone's value, and our guide to light cone paths, superimposition and rarity covers which substitutes hold up.

How do you turn your monthly Stellar Jade income into a pull forecast?

Add your recurring monthly Jade sources, divide by 160 for pulls per month, then divide your target by that figure to get the number of months you need to save. A moderately active free-to-play account generally lands in the 6,000–8,000 Jade per month range, which is roughly 37–50 pulls.

The recurring sources worth counting, named by their in-game systems:

• Daily Training — a fixed Stellar Jade payout for completing the daily activity bar, the single most reliable line item in the budget.
• Simulated Universe — weekly point rewards, repeatable every reset.
• Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction and Apocalyptic Shadow — the endgame rotations, each paying out per cycle based on stars earned. These are the largest swing factor between accounts, because clear depth scales directly with roster strength.
• Nameless Honor — the battle pass track, delivering Star Rail Special Passes and Undying Starlight rather than raw Jade.
• Express Supply Pass — the monthly subscription, paying an immediate Oneiric Shard lump plus a fixed daily Jade trickle for 30 days.
• Events and Trailblaze Missions — the most variable line. A patch with a major story chapter pays substantially more than a quiet one.

Because event income swings hard between versions, forecast conservatively: build your plan on the guaranteed daily and endgame sources and treat event Jade as upside. A budget that only works if the next patch is generous is not a budget. If you want a source-by-source accounting of what a disciplined save actually yields, the 15,000 Stellar Jade monthly free-to-play walkthrough lays out the full checklist, and the Stellar Jade saving guide on how veterans keep pulls ready covers the habits that keep a stockpile intact between patches.

How should you plan a warp budget across two patch halves?

Work backwards from the guarantee ceiling, not forwards from your current balance. Decide which single character in the next two patch halves is your priority, confirm you can reach 14,400 Jade with the guarantee or 28,800 without it by that banner's window, and refuse to spend below that line.

Each version runs two banner phases of roughly three weeks each, so a full patch is about six weeks of income. At 7,000 Jade per month, six weeks yields roughly 10,500 Jade — about 65 pulls. That is enough for one average 5-star and nothing else, which is exactly why the discipline matters.

A workable planning routine:

• Check your guarantee flag first. Carrying a guarantee effectively halves your next target and should be the deciding factor in which patch you pull.
• Set a hard floor. Never let your balance drop below the amount needed to reach hard pity on the banner you are currently pulling. Stopping at 60 pulls is the most expensive mistake in the game, because it discards accumulated pity that was about to pay out.
• Count passes, not just Jade. Special Passes from Nameless Honor and events materially change what a phase can afford.
• Skip decisively. A skipped patch is roughly 10,000 Jade banked. Two skipped patches fully fund a guarantee from a cold start.

New accounts have one extra lever: the Departure Warp offers a discounted rate and a guaranteed 5-star within its limited pull count, which is worth exhausting early. Players still getting oriented will find the fundamentals covered in our HSR beginner's guide to warp, characters and Stellar Jade.

What mistakes make Stellar Jade calculators give the wrong answer?

The most common errors are ignoring held passes, treating the average as a guarantee, forgetting that the 50/50 multiplies the cost by 1.5, and assuming pity carries between banner types. Each of these produces a forecast that is optimistic by thousands of Jade.

Specifically, watch for these:

• Averaging the average. Roughly 62 warps is the expected cost of a 5-star, not your 5-star. Half of all outcomes are worse. Saving to the average and no further leaves you short about half the time.
• Forgetting the 50/50 multiplier. Budgeting 10,000 Jade for a featured character rather than 15,000 is the single most frequent miscalculation.
• Mixing pity pools. Character-banner pity does not help the light cone banner, and standard-banner pity helps neither.
• Counting Undying Starlight as limited-banner currency. It buys standard passes in the Embers Exchange only.
• Assuming event income repeats. Anniversary and major-story patches pay far above a normal version, and building a forecast on those figures inflates every projection downstream.
• Ignoring the pass conversion. Ten pulls always cost 1,600 Jade. There is no ten-pull discount to factor in, in either direction.

Rate details, pity thresholds and consolidated probabilities are published by HoYoverse in each banner's in-game Details panel. Values can be adjusted between versions, so check the panel on the banner you are actually pulling rather than relying on a figure memorised from an older patch.

Frequently asked questions

Does pity reset when a banner ends? No. Character-banner pity carries over to the next limited character banner, and the guarantee flag carries with it. Only the counter for a different banner type is separate.

Is it better to pull singles or ten-pulls? Mathematically identical for 5-star odds — 160 Jade per warp either way. Ten-pulls only guarantee a 4-star or better within the batch, which single pulls reach on the same counter anyway.

Do I lose progress if I stop pulling mid-pity? Not permanently. The counter is stored on your account and waits for the next banner of that type. You only lose value if you never return to that banner type.

How many months should a new player save before pulling? Long enough to reach 14,400 Jade if you hold a guarantee, or realistically two full patches from a cold start. Exhausting the Departure Warp first is the exception — its discounted guaranteed 5-star is the best value in the game.

Does losing the 50/50 make the next one more likely to win? No. Losing the 50/50 sets a hard guarantee, not an improved probability. Your next 5-star on that banner is the featured character with certainty.

Where to Find Honkai Star Rail Accounts and Top-Up

On GameMarket.gg you can browse Honkai Star Rail accounts from verified sellers, use Honkai Star Rail top-up options if you would rather build on the account you already have, or look through the Honkai Star Rail market hub for everything else available right now.

If you would rather top up your Stellar Jade directly than wait out another two patches of saving, browse the Honkai: Star Rail top-up options on GameMarket.gg and pick the package that matches the pull target you calculated above.

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