Apocalyptic Shadow Guide and Rewards in Honkai: Star Rail

The current Apocalyptic Shadow Phase is the Cutting Mistral of Version 3.3. This phase will last from May 26, 2025 until July 07, 2025. Each phase lasts about six weeks, and will reset on a Monday at 04:00 server time.

In order to unlock Apocalyptic Shadow, you need to reach Penacony and complete the Grim Film of Finality in Dreamflux Reef. The very first stage will be accessible once you talked to Elegy.

Apocalyptic Shadow is located in Dreamflux Reef in Penacony:

Apocalyptic Shadow is one of the available endgame modes in Honkai: Star Rail where you face off against 2 different bosses featuring new combat mechanics.

Apocalyptic Shadow can be a relatively challenging mode if you come unprepared. You will need two fully leveled and properly equipped teams as you will have to beat two different bosses.

The two bosses you have to face are essentially projections of the Finality: it's bosses you already encountered during previous quests. However, this time they function differently than their normal version: they are stronger, more tanky, and have different attacks. The amount of new mechanics depends on the stage/difficulty level of the current fight.

When you enter the main menu, you can view the current Phase, the remaining time for the active phase, and the two current bosses you need to face.

Each Apocalyptic Shadow Phase has a total of 4 stages you need to complete. Each stage ramps up in difficulty. Defeating the two bosses of a difficulty will unlock the next one. The difficulty is not set by Equilibrium Level. It's fixed difficulties for each challenge.

Apocalyptic Shadow also has specific rules:

• Ruinous Embers - Each Phase has a different Ruinous Embers which are specific effects taking place during the battles.
• Finality's Axiom - Those are three different buffs that are available for each Phase. When you pick your team for a boss, you can choose which buff you want active. Pick wisely depending on your team's strength and the available buffs.
• Boss Trait - Each boss will have specific additional abilities or effects compared to their normal version. As you go up in difficulty, they also gain more traits.

Apocalyptic Shadow works with a value timer. Every time allies or enemies take action, the corresponding values is deducted from the timer. Your goal is to defeat the boss before the value timer is depleted if you want to get the most points. The points you get at the end of a battle depends on the percentage of HP left on the boss, and the remaining Action Value after successfully defeating the boss.

This means that the less HP the boss has left, and the faster you defeat him, the more points you will get at the end of the fight.

If you want the max rewards for a stage you need to reach a total of 60,000 points at the end.

If you don't defeat the Boss, you get less points. You can rechallenge each boss as many times as you want in order to try and get a better score. Just know that once your team is used, it is recorded for that stage. If you want to swap the team for any of the two bosses of one difficulty, you will have to reset both bosses of that same difficulty. Otherwise you have to retry with the same team and same equipment on both bosses.

When a new Phase starts, everything resets. However, if you complete with 3-stars each challenges, you can directly challenge the higher difficulties which will then automatically unlock the rewards for the previous ones if you manage to complete it with 3-stars again.

The Current Phase is called Cutting Mistral and the two bosses you have to face are Cocolia and Kafka.

5.

Bosses, Mechanics, and Recommended Teams

Here is a breakdown of both bosses, as well as recommended teams and best tips to get the maximum points!

Cocolia Kafka

5.1.

Cocolia – Annihilator of Desolation Mistral

The first boss you can face is Cocolia:

• Recommended Elements: Fire, Lightning, Wind, Quantum
• Resistances: Imaginary, Physical, Ice
• Cocolia is immune to Control Effects

5.2.

Boss Traits

Boss Trait	Description
Steadfast Safeguard	Boss Mirage takes 50% less DMG. After Weakness is broken and action gets additionally delayed, additionally increases DMG taken by 100%.
Battlefield Transfer	Gepard will join the battle and provide protection for Cocolia. Cocolia will Transfer its own Weakness Type to summons, but when those summons are defeated, her Toughness will be additionally reduced.
Nowhere to Escape (Difficulty 3+)	Cocolia's summon marks 1 target. After the Boss uses a single-target ability, it will deliver a Follow-up Usage on the marked target. Follow-up usage basically just means that Cocolia will attack the marked target a second time with the same attack.
Tenacious Resolve (Difficulty 4)	Reduces DMG received by all enemies, but every Weakness-Type they have increases DMG received.

5.3.

Special Mechanics

The first thing to remember is you have to defeat the summons first in order to weaken Cocolia. Since she gives her weaknesses to her summons, defeating those will give them back to Cocolia and allow you to Weakness Break her.

Cocolia has 2 Phases:

• Phase 1 - Cocolia will Freeze and deal DMG. Once Gepard is summoned, he will shield her on his second turn if you did not break Cocolia's Weakness before. You will have to break the shield and defeat him fast. Cocolia will also summon Ice Edges, you need to defeat those quickly as well.
• Phase 2 - Cocolia will constantly use her Last Choir of Genesis attack which deals massive DMG. Her summons will also inflict heavy Crowd Control, so again, you need to deal with those first. Focus the summon that has a weakness corresponding to your characters, in order to destroy it fast. Once we Weakness Break Cocolia, you can unleash your DPS.

5.4.

Finality's Axiom

The current Finality's Axiom are:

• Call of Dawn - Increases Memosprite's Weakness Break Efficiency by 50%. Ignores 20% of the target's DEF when Memosprite deals DMG. This one is great for teams that use memosprite-based damage.
• Barren of Life - When characters attack Weakness Broken enemies, all DoTs currently applied to the enemies will immediately deal DMG equal to 80% of the original DMG. This effect can trigger a max of 2 times on each character in a single turn. This one gives a very good bonus to DoT teams.
• Sweeping Force - Increases the CRIT DMG of Ultimate DMG dealt by 30%, with an additional increase of 30% against enemy targets that are Weakness Broken. This buff is useful for characters who focus on their Ultimate DMG.

5.5.

Recommended Teams

Finality's Axiom	DPS	Support/Sub-DPS	Support	Sustain
Call of Dawn	Castorice	Remembrance Trailblazer	Tribbie	Hyacine
Call of Dawn	Castorice	Mydei	Tribbie	Gallagher
Call of Dawn	Aglaea	Sunday	Robin	Huohuo
Barren of Life	Kafka	Black Swan	Ruan Mei	Huohuo
Sweeping Force	Acheron	Jiaoqiu	Cipher	Aventurine

5.6.

Kafka - Soulhook Sovereign

The second boss you can face is Kafka:

• Recommended Elements: Fire, Physical, Wind, Imaginary
• Resistances: Quantum, Lightning, Ice
• Kafka also resists the Frozen effect

5.7.

Boss Traits

Boss Trait	Description
Steadfast Safeguard	Boss Mirage takes 50% less DMG. After Weakness is broken and action gets additionally delayed, additionally increases DMG taken by 100%.
Battlefield Transfer	Boss Mirage summons 2 Elite Enemies to assist in battle. Boss Mirage will transmit its own Weakness Type to summons, but when those summons are defeated, Boss Mirage's Toughness will be additionally reduced.
Stellar Aegis (Difficulty 3+)	For every unit on the enemy's side of the field aside from Boss Mirage, all enemies receive less DMG.
Turn Back the Tide (Difficulty 4+)	When the Boss Mirage uses Puppet Understudy in its second phase, it will apply Enhancement effects to all summons.

5.8.

Special Mechanics

We recommend you head into battle with characters that have high Effect RES, in order to be less affected by Kafka's Dominated status. Once you defeat one Summon, the others take more damage, so take advantage of that and focus the summons first. Defeating them will also give back their Weaknesses to Kafka.

Kafka has 2 Phases:

• Phase 1 - Kafka summons 2 Elites: Blaze Out of Space, and Ice Out of Space. Prioritise defeating those two first so Kafka gains her weaknesses back again. She will often cast Dominated, which can control your characters. Either increase your Effect RES, or use dispel abilities.
• Phase 2 - As the second phase begins, Kafka will again summon two adds: Dreamjolt Troupe's Beyond Overcooked, and Memory Zone Meme "Shell of Faded Rage". Similar to first phase, you want to defeat the summons first. When the Dreamjolt Troupe's Beyond Overcooked is Charging, stack 6 Stove Heating in order to dispel the charging state and inflict DMG + Weaken effect to all enemies. Any attack or DoT can add Stove Heating stacks.

5.9.

Finality's Axiom

The current Finality's Axiom are:

• Crimson Tide - Increases Physical DMG dealt by all allies by 50%. When a unit uses a Skill, restores 20% of that unit's HP. Useful for Physical teams, or if you need more healing.
• Turn of Luck - Follow-up ATK DMG dealt by characters ignores 15% of the enemy target's All-Type RES and can also reduce the Toughness of targets that do not have the corresponding Weakness, with the effect being equivalent to 50% of the original Toughness Reduction from the ability. Great for follow-up teams.
• Rime Piercer - Increases all enemies' Break DMG taken by 10%. After Breaking an enemy's Weakness, increases all allies' SPD by 20% for 2 turns. Better for Break focused teams.

5.10.

Recommended Teams

Finality's Axiom	DPS	Support/Sub-DPS	Support	Sustain
Rime Piercer	Firefly	Fugue	Ruan Mei	Lingsha
Turn of Luck	Feixiao	Topaz & Numby	Robin	Aventurine
Rime Piercer	Rappa	Fugue	Ruan Mei	Lingsha
Rime Piercer	Anaxa	Sunday	Robin	Aventurine
Crimson Tide	Boothill	Fugue	Ruan Mei	Gallagher

Each time the Apocalyptic Shadow resets, you will be able to obtain the following rewards. These are split into Kalpa's Gift and Finale's Gift with Kalpa's Gift being for each Star obtained and Finale's Gift being for each stage cleared.

Clearing Difficulty 2 of Apocalyptic Shadow for the very first time will allow you to claim Xueyi for free! On top of that you will also obtain 300 Stellar Jade and 1 Self-Modeling Resin.

For more information on the other free characters, you can check out our dedicated guide:

Jaymo

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