When you cross the Xianzhou Loufu Honkai: Starway, you’ll once again encounter Kafka, the manipulative Stellaron hunter from the game’s tutorial. This time she is your opponent and you must fight and defeat her in a challenging boss fight to advance. The boss version of Kafka also has a few extra tricks up its sleeve that the playable is sorely lacking, meaning you’ll need to be prepared. This guide explains everything you need to know to beat Kafka.
Honkai: Star Rail Kafka Boss Guide
Boss Kafka is a very different beast than the playable version you got a taste of at the start of your playthrough. She hits harder, can act twice in a turn, and has several extra attacks that make her far more troublesome than she would ever be in a player’s hands.
Kafka is also weak to Wind, Physical, and Imagination, so bring Destruction Trailblazer, Sushang, Dan Heng, World, and the like to the table. Don’t rely too much on a single character for anything. Kafka can pit your teammates against each other. If she does this to your only damage dealer, there will be problems. She is also flanked by two Cloud Knights, whose attacks make Lightning vulnerable, and since Lightning is Kafka’s element, she deals additional damage to each character affected.
All of Kafka’s attacks in Honkai: Star Rail
Mental Whisper: Kafka pulls purple threads of energy and dominates a member of your team, causing them to attack other members for two turns. When the Trailblazer is in your group, they will always be the first target. Kafka also tends to prioritize dominated targets, so keep them healed even if they’re attacking their friends. If you can remove debuffs, like from Natasha’s Calming Trace, you can remove the effect.
Caressing moonlight: A quick three-hit combo that inflicts Shock and also damages the closest members of your team. It doesn’t deal much damage, but building up Shock status can snag you in the long run.
Midnight Pandemonium: A two-hit combo that also inflicts Shock, this attack is faster and doesn’t hit as hard as Caress Moonlight, but it still applies another stack of Shock, and Kafka often uses it as a follow-up to her harder Shock attacks.
SMG shot: Kafka’s only unnamed attack, she aims her silver submachine gun at a target and fires three times, activating Shock on each hit.
Silent and sharp mockery: One of Kafka’s stronger attacks. She pulls the pins on four grenades and leaves them at your team’s feet, dealing heavy Lightning damage and inflicting Shock when they detonate. She also uses this attack as a follow-up attack. So if one of your teammates is low and you know Kafka has an extra move, you can interrupt him with a healing ultimate if you have one.
Kafka is one of the tougher story bosses in Honkai: Starway and the best way to defeat them is to exploit their weaknesses and make sure all your teammates are healed. There isn’t a lot of nuance here as this fight is a gear and DPS check. You’ll probably want to find a way to remove the Dominated state, but it’s not strictly necessary if you have more than one damage dealer on the team. Make sure you get her two mook allies out of the way as they will only add to the pain Kafka can dish out.
My strategy was as simple as it gets: Have Soul and Physical Trailblazers and buff whoever isn’t dominated. I hadn’t unlocked Natasha’s Soothe Trace yet. Once I had Kafka alone, I buffed my Trailblazer for single target damage and weakness break as much as possible. Bronya was my fourth, and her buffs were essential to balance my damage with Kafka’s.
If you have a team with far better DPS than mine (not hard where I am) I have no doubt you can beat Kafka. If there are other areas Honkai: Starway that are giving you trouble, we’ve covered topics like ranking the best four and five star cones, all upcoming charactersand more inside our HSR leads hub.
