Version 4.3 Preview Notes: Mortenax Blade, Himeko Embarking, and the New Starward Wall

Version 4.3 Preview Notes: Mortenax Blade, Himeko Embarking, and the New Starward Wall

Star Rail is barreling toward another two-patch stretch, and the 4.3 special program landed with enough leaks, kit teases, and freebie codes to keep the timeline spinning for a week. Release day is locked for June 3, 2026, the codes are already burning a short fuse, and the new endgame layer is finally giving the dust-collecting bench characters something to do. Here's the full sweep, with a focus on what actually matters for pulls, jade math, and team building over the next two patches.

Three Codes, 300 Jade, Short Fuse

The special program codes are the usual three-pack, and they're worth grabbing in the next coffee break rather than after work. The redemption window slams shut on May 23, 2026 at 23:59:00 UTC+8, which is the standard 24-hour panic period after every preview stream. Here's the full payout:

That's exactly 300 Stellar Jade plus the side materials, and it stacks cleanly with whatever Trailblaze Power resources you're sitting on. Nothing exotic this time — no Lost Crystals, no event-currency goodies — just the standard jade-and-mats bundle that gets thrown around at the end of every preview broadcast. If you're the type who waits and then forgets, the codes have a track record of expiring well before people realize. The shorter the fuse, the more likely the official channels rotate them out without a grace period.

For free-to-play accounts trying to scrape together a 90-pull guarantee, three hundred jade is two pulls. Doesn't sound like much in isolation. Stacked on top of the standard preview mail (usually 600 more), the daily login chain, and whatever event currency 4.3 ships with, it adds up to roughly half a multi by the time the banner rotates. Worth the thirty seconds it takes to paste them in.

The codes also serve as a useful date anchor — anything past the May 23 cutoff is "after the dust settles," meaning leaks past that point tend to be confirmed kit info rather than speculation. If you're reading roadmap chatter and trying to figure out what's solid versus what's wishful thinking, that timestamp helps you filter.

One small note for newer players: codes only redeem once per account, and they don't carry over between server regions. So if you have a stash account on a different region for stockpiling jade, each one needs the codes punched in separately. Easy to forget, irritating to realize a week later when the window has closed.

The community trend over the last several patches has been for the special program to drop precisely three codes worth 100 jade each, plus a small bonus material. 4.3 holds that pattern, which strongly suggests the format is now permanent rather than a one-off. Plan your jade math around it from here on — every preview is reliably a free two-pull, no more, no less.

Mortenax Blade Headlines Phase 1

The first half of 4.3 belongs to Mortenax Blade, the Fire Nihility unit that's been floating around leak threads as "SP Blade" or "Nihilux Blade." Phase 1 runs from June 3 to June 24, giving roughly 21 days to clear the banner before Phase 2 takes the slot.

His kit reads like a hybrid that's hard to slot under a single label. Damage scales off Max HP rather than ATK, which already pushes the build sheet in a non-standard direction. The Ultimate inflicts a debuff called Balefire Bind that lowers enemy DEF and increases DMG taken, then consumes 30% of his own HP to deploy a Zone and put him into an Infinite Fury state. Inside that state the team gets +50% DMG while the Zone is active, he can fire off a 0-SP-cost Skill, and his Energy can overflow up to 80 above his cap. On top of that he accumulates charges that fire off free Follow-up Attacks.

The signature Light Cone is built around the same loop — it boosts Max HP, raises damage versus debuffed enemies, hands him ATK and Crit DMG inside Infinite Fury, and adds an independent multiplier when the target is debuffed. It's an extremely on-brand BiS, the kind that usually pulls more than the character it ships with.

The character art has been the talking point since the leaks started circulating. He's wrapped in red and white bandages over black trousers and combat boots, with intense flame visibly bursting from his heart. The teaser line "A body like spring wood, a heart like dead ashes" leans hard into the contrast between the literal fire in his chest and whatever emotional state he's been written into. The background art also shows a mysterious male figure that the community widely believes to be Shuhu, the Emanator of Abundance — interesting framing for a Nihility character to be associated with.

Functionally he's a top-tier Nihility support whose pitch is built around stacking Vulnerability debuffs and feeding team attack buffs through the Zone. If you've ever wished a damage debuffer could double as a real DPS without splitting your itemization, that's the niche being filled here. Not every hyper carry comp needs him, but any team built around exploiting Fire weakness with a vulnerable target gets a meaningful chunk of damage from his presence alone.

The one wrinkle is the 30% HP consumption on Ultimate. Combined with HP scaling, that puts a real premium on healing and shielding — running him with a sustain unit that interacts with his Max HP cleanly is borderline mandatory rather than nice-to-have.

Himeko Embarking and the Robot Riddle

Phase 2 of the 4.x cycle is shaping up around Himeko's alternate form, currently going by Himeko Embarking. So far the official drop has been just the character art, which means we're reading tea leaves on the actual kit. The promo line "but my robot is above yours" sits next to a piece of art with a white robot perched behind her, and from there the speculation forks into three reasonable possibilities.

The first option is straightforward summoning — she uses a Skill in combat to call the robot in for direct damage on enemies. Clean, simple, easy to balance, doesn't break any existing combat conventions. It would also make her play very differently from her original Erudition kit.

The second option is the Jing Yuan model: the robot exists on the action bar as a separate entity, and Himeko's Skills trigger its actions rather than her own attacks. This is the most mechanically interesting version because it gives her a second clock to manage. Jing Yuan's Lightning Lord works exactly this way — it starts at a base 60 SPD with 3 Hits Per Action, each hit lands Lightning damage equal to 33% of his ATK on the main target plus 25% of that on adjacent enemies, and the Hits Per Action can scale up to 10. His Skill adds 2 Hits next turn, Ultimate adds 3, and Technique adds 3 on the first turn of next battle. If Himeko Embarking inherits this template, it would mean stacking hit counts and feeding the summon energy through her own rotation. The pattern is well established and the community already knows how to build around it.

The third option is the straight-line Erudition take: the summon as a separate mechanic and just channel it as visual flair while she deals direct damage like every other Erudition unit. This would be the least surprising design, the easiest to slot into existing teams, and the most disappointing to anyone hoping for a fresh archetype.

The character art itself is the strongest reading material. The white robot is too prominent to be cosmetic, and the explicit teaser comparing it to "your robot" implies a direct callback to existing summon designs in the game. A separate action-bar entity feels like the most likely landing spot, but that's reasoned speculation rather than confirmed kit info.

What's worth noting is that 4.4 is currently shaping up to ship her as the marquee unit, with possibly only one other new character alongside her. If that holds, the rerun slate gets generous (more on that in the closing section). If a second new unit materializes, the rerun pool tightens. Worth keeping an eye on as 4.3 unfolds and the 4.4 stream gets closer.

The Red-and-White Team System

Side by side, Mortenax Blade and Himeko Embarking look intentional. Both pieces of character art carry identical English text and an identical train icon, which is the strongest visual evidence that they're being designed as a unit. The color palettes also line up — red and white run through both outfits, with the same kind of stripe-and-bandage motif tying the two designs together.

Reading from kit info: Mortenax Blade is a support-leaning DPS whose damage hooks into his own HP pool, his Ultimate sacrifices 30% of his HP to deploy the Zone, and the character art literally centers a burning heart. The mechanical signal is loud. He wants a partner who can either keep him alive through the HP drain or who benefits from the team-wide +50% DMG buff inside Infinite Fury, ideally both.

If Himeko Embarking lands as a summon-based DPS, she fits the second slot cleanly. The Zone buff doesn't care whether the damage comes from her or her robot — it just multiplies what hits the screen. Her own action economy isn't constrained by his Skill Point usage either, since his Skill goes to 0-SP cost inside Infinite Fury. That removes the biggest source of conflict between two damage-focused units sharing a team.

This is also where the "burning blood team" tag starts to make sense. If both characters interact with HP — his Ultimate sacrifices it, her kit potentially scales with it or refills it — the team archetype starts to look like an HP-economy comp rather than a standard DPS-plus-sustain build. That would be genuinely fresh territory for the game, which has mostly stuck to ATK-scaling, Break-scaling, and DoT comps so far.

A short comparison of the framework as it stands:

The unknowns on Himeko's side of the table are real and worth respecting — none of her stats or scaling have been confirmed in any official drop. But the visual coupling is too clean to be coincidence, and the leak conventions for Star Rail over the last two years have been remarkably accurate when twin character arts share signal flags this strong. Plan jade reserves for both if you want the full archetype.

Starward Mode Adds 100 Jade Per Cycle

The big systemic change in 4.3 is the Starward Mode addition to Treasures Lightward — meaning all three endgame modes (Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction, Apocalyptic Shadow) get a new top difficulty layer. The format replaces the highest difficulty of each mode with a 3-team, 3-stage challenge: one new Starward Stage plus two regular stages. The Starward Stage itself is described as slightly harder than the regular ones, and teams can be assigned strategically across the three stages with the option to retry stages individually.

The reward math is simple and welcome. Full clear nets an additional 100 Stellar Jade per mode on top of the existing 800 — so 900 total per mode if you max out, and 300 jade extra per full reset cycle across all three modes. The previous 800 is still attainable without engaging the Starward layer, which matters because the new difficulty is explicitly aimed at people with deep rosters.

The design logic is transparent. The three-team requirement exists to push you into pulling and leveling more characters than the standard two-team setup demanded. Up to now you could comfortably clear Memory of Chaos with one main DPS team and one Break team, leaving most of your roster on the bench. Three teams means three carries, three sustains, three support cores, and probably two or three different element coverage profiles. That's a real spend across relic farming, light cone choices, and trace materials.

For free-to-play accounts the message is mixed. Good news: the floor hasn't moved, the 800 jade is still there for two-team clears. Bad news: the ceiling has moved up by 100 per mode, which means anyone chasing maximum jade efficiency now needs to invest in a third team that may not be fully optimized.

A quick efficiency read:

• Full Starward clear on all three modes: 900 × 3 = 2,700 jade per cycle
• Standard clear without Starward: 800 × 3 = 2,400 jade per cycle
• Difference: 300 jade per full cycle, or roughly two pulls

Two pulls per cycle isn't enormous in isolation, but compounded across a year of patches it's meaningful — somewhere in the range of 18-20 extra pulls annually for accounts that can sustain three-team clears.

The retry-individually feature is the quality-of-life addition that makes the mode bearable. Bricking a run because team two didn't quite have the damage check would be miserable; being able to retune that one stage without restarting the whole gauntlet means experimentation doesn't cost a full attempt cycle. Use it freely while you're learning the new layouts.

Fate Collab Part 2 Closes Phase 2

The second half of 4.3 runs from June 24 to July 14 and continues the Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works collaboration that started in the first wave. Two leaked units are headlining: Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes Archer-class Servant, and Rin Tohsaka, Archer's master. Both are expected as 5-star limited collab characters, with Rin floated as a potential free 5-star giveaway through event participation rather than a paid pull.

The first-wave collab banners — Saber and Archer — are described as remaining available, which is genuinely unusual for a Star Rail collaboration. Most cross-IP events have hard end dates that force pulls into a narrow window. Letting the original Fate banners stay live through the second wave gives players who missed Phase 1 a real chance to back-pull, and it also stretches the jade-planning horizon further than usual. The collab event itself is also expected to have an extended or no fixed end date, which compounds the flexibility.

Launch timing lines up with the third-anniversary celebrations, projected for late June 2026. Anniversary periods historically come with extra freebies — selector tickets, login chains, mail jade — so the second-wave collab will be hitting at the same time as the heaviest jade rain window of the year. Plan accordingly.

A pull-priority sketch given current information:

• If you missed Saber in wave one and want her, the standing banner gives a second chance.
• Gilgamesh as a 5-star limited Archer is a hard pull-or-skip decision depending on element and path coverage in your roster.
• Rin Tohsaka being a possible free 5-star changes the calculus on whether to spend on Gilgamesh — getting her free leaves more jade on the table for other targets.

Without confirmed kit details on either Gilgamesh or Rin, the recommendation has to stay framework-level. What we can say with confidence: Phase 2 is going to ask for jade. The combination of two new collab 5-stars, possible standing reruns from wave one, and the anniversary patch's usual generosity means accounts that have been stockpiling since 4.1 will have a meaningful but not unlimited budget to work with.

Fans of the source material should also note that the collaboration extending into Phase 2 confirms the partnership is being treated as a major flagship event rather than a one-patch promotion. Future cross-IP collabs being structured similarly is now a real possibility — worth watching how engagement metrics shape what HoYoverse greenlights next.

Rerun Planning for 4.4

The rerun arithmetic for 4.4 depends entirely on whether Himeko Embarking is the only new unit in that patch. If she's the sole new release, the slate opens up to 3-7 rerun slots for older 5-stars. If a second new character is announced, that pool tightens to 2-6 slots. Either range is generous compared to recent patches, which have been running closer to two reruns per phase.

The standing advice for free-to-play accounts remains: pull new, skip old, wait for the shop. Stellar Jade is hard to come by, and characters rotate into the standard exchange shop eventually. The exception is when you specifically need a unit to complete an existing team archetype — that's the one case where spending on a rerun is mathematically defensible rather than emotional.

A general rerun-decision framework:

• New character first if the kit fits your account's gaps
• Rerun only if it slots a missing piece in an active team you're already running
• Skip if the rerun is a duplicate-role unit you already own a substitute for
• Skip if you're under 60 pulls of jade reserves regardless

The third anniversary windfall plays into this too. Anniversary patches historically deliver selector tickets, free pull events, and increased login rewards on top of the standard patch jade. If 4.4 launches in or near the anniversary window, the effective pull budget for the patch is larger than the raw jade total suggests — which means accounts that normally couldn't afford a rerun and a new unit in the same phase may suddenly be able to.

There's also a longer pipeline to watch. Pearl and Opal — both IPC Stonehearts — are tentatively positioned for 4.3 but may shift to 4.4 or later. Sampo SP, Mysterious Galaxy Ranger, Beatriz, Stephen Lloyd, Mr. Reca, and Screwllum have all been mentioned as future playables without confirmed patch slots or kit info. Don't burn jade reserves chasing 4.3 reruns if any of those names is a higher priority for you, because they could realistically show up within two or three patches.

Castorice is the other one to keep on the radar. She's confirmed as a playable Quantum / Remembrance unit, the daughter of the River of Souls, and a Chrysos Heir seeking the "Death" Coreflame — a demigod of death tied to Aidonia, the land that reveres death where snow falls endlessly. As a key figure from Amphoreus with that kind of narrative weight, her eventual banner is going to be a major jade sink whenever it lands.

Final read on jade reserves heading into 4.3: keep at least 80 pulls in the bank after spending on Mortenax Blade. The 4.4 and 4.5 pipeline is dense, the third anniversary will land somewhere inside that window, and the worst feeling in this game is watching the unit you actually wanted go up while you're recovering from a 50/50 loss.