What to expect from your Honkai: Star Rail birthday gift

What happens on your birthday in Honkai: Star Rail? When setting up your player profile in Honkai: Star Rail, you're given the option to give your Trailblazer a birthday. Using the YYYY-MM-DD date format, you can indicate when your main player character was born — and, if you're anything like me (incurably honest), you might be tempted to use your real-life birthday. Or, alternatively, you might elect to claim that your birthday is the day you started the game. What an amazing coincidence.

So what are the benefits of setting your birthday in Honkai: Star Rail? You can't change it once you've selected it, so you presumably want to know what you stand to gain before lying and saying it's today. Read on below for an overview of what you get on your birthday in Honkai: Star Rail.

Honkai: Star Rail player birthday gift

When you log into Honkai: Star Rail on your birthday (or indeed, the day you've claimed is your birthday), you'll receive 100 Stellar Jades and a Birthday Cake item via your in-game mail, courtesy of Conductor Pom-Pom.

The Stellar Jades are good for ⅝ of a pull on the gacha (gee, thanks Pom-Pom). The Birthday Cake is a limited-edition souvenir item with no in-game use other than being nice to look at. It references that this is your first birthday celebrated in Honkai: Star Rail, so expect that to change in future years.

One final word of warning: our experience of other HoYoverse games tells us that you can only claim your birthday mail if you log in and claim it on your actual birthday (or the birthday you've assigned to your account). Bearing in mind that in-game mail doesn't become available until you make it through the first hour or two of the game, it might be better to resist the temptation to just set it to today's date if you don't have long to play. However, unlike other HoYoverse games, HSR doesn't require you to set a birthday immediately, so maybe just hang fire on adding one to your profile until you can access your mail.

Honkai: Star Rail character birthdays

Unlike fellow HoYoverse RPG Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail doesn't give any indication of its characters' birthdays — or at least, that's the case in Version 1.0. Players who've crossed over from Genshin might have been hoping for the helpful resource drops that you get when you log on during any playable character's birthday celebrations. But alas, there's nothing like that in Honkai: Star Rail right now. No, not even for March 7th, as far as we know (although we'll need to wait nearly a year to find out for sure).

For more opportunities to claim lovely freebies in Honkai: Star Rail, take a look at our regularly-updated Honkai: Star Rail codes list, and our guide covering how to unlock every free character in Honkai: Star Rail.