Honkai: Star Rail's Version 4.5 moved into its second phase on September 12, swapping in a new five-star warp for Aventurine • Waveflair alongside a rerun banner for Ashveil. Both run through September 27, giving players roughly two weeks to decide where to spend their Stellar Jades before the next update cycle begins.
Waveflair is the version's final new character reveal and its headline pull. He's a Quantum unit on the Path of Elation, built as a main damage dealer whose kit revolves around a resource system the game calls Punchlines and Fervor — he builds Fervor through his own skills and his teammates' attacks, then cashes it in for a burst of concentrated Quantum damage. It's a different rhythm from the follow-up-attack DPS units HoYoverse has leaned on recently, giving teambuilders a genuinely new engine to plan around rather than another variation on an existing archetype.
What's in the second half
- Aventurine • Waveflair: new five-star Quantum Elation main DPS, warp titled "Over the Gilded Tides"
- Ashveil: returning five-star, paired in the same banner phase
- The Finale of a Lie: Ashveil's limited signature light cone, back in the warp alongside Aventurine SP's cone
- Banner window: September 12 through September 27
Pairing a brand-new limited character with a returning fan favorite in the same phase is a pattern HoYoverse has used consistently since Star Rail's mid-life patches started running two banner phases per version, and it lets the studio test a new kit's popularity against a known quantity in the same pull window.
Why the pacing matters
Two-week banner phases are now the default rhythm for Star Rail, and Version 4.5's split follows the same structure as the versions before it: a first-half character (already spent by mid-September) and this second-half pairing to close things out. That predictability is useful for players budgeting Jades across a patch, since it means the next major shift — Version 4.6, expected to open with a warp featuring the Ice Elation character Pearl — lands on a schedule players can plan around rather than guess at.
For anyone sitting on saved pulls, the practical decision is straightforward: Waveflair's Elation kit is the only way to get his specific damage profile until a rerun, which for limited Star Rail units has historically taken several patches at minimum. Ashveil's rerun is the safer, lower-urgency pull of the two, since returning banners tend to come back more frequently than fresh releases.
Version 4.5 closes when this banner phase ends on September 27, at which point Version 4.6 maintenance should begin. Expect HoYoverse's pre-patch special program in the days before that to confirm Pearl's kit and the version's story content in full.
