Serval Guide and Build | Honkai: Star Rail | Prydwen (2024)

Serval is a freely available 4-star Erudition unit thanks to the pre-registration milestones. She is a competent early damage dealer who remains decent throughout with sufficient investment. Serval revolves around applying Shock to enemies and dealing additional damage to all Shocked foes. Because of this, there is some ramp-up to her damage, but is generally reasonable to maintain after passing this initial stage. Despite having a DoT effect, she is more akin to a traditional damage dealer, preferring CRIT stats over raw ATK.

The much-loved Belobog mechanic and hard rocker, Serval is an accessible Lightning damage dealer that will see a lot of use especially early on. It is highly advisable to invest in this character at least a little bit so that you’re not left struggling against the many Lightning-weak foes the game throws your way in Belobog.

Serval’s main goal is to apply Shock to as many enemies as she can and keep the debuff going as long as possible, and this is because of her Talent’s effects. When Serval attacks, she will deal an additional instance of Lightning DMG to all Shocked enemies, up to 72% ATK.

Interestingly, this will proc even on enemies that you do not directly hit with your attack, so for example if you Basic ATK one enemy, but all five enemies are Shocked, this additional Lightning DMG will trigger on all five foes. Do pay attention to the term ‘additional’ because it is essentially adding a separate hit to Serval’s attacks. This extra hit is also eligible for CRIT hits.

Serval’s Skill is a Blast AoE dealing up to 140% ATK to the main target and 60% to adjacent enemies. This Skill has an 80% base chance to Shock enemies hit for 2 turns, with the Shock dealing up to 104% ATK at the start of the enemies’ turn. This is the only way for Serval to inflict Shock on enemies without Eidolons. Serval’s Ultimate deals up to 180% ATK to all enemies on the field, and any enemies that already have the Shock debuff on them will have the debuff extended by 2 turns. This extension applies to all instances of Shock, not just her own personal one.

Considering a significant portion of Serval’s damage comes from her Talent, having an 80% base chance to apply Shock with her Skill is somewhat pathetic, actually. This is so low that you’ll be missing the Shock application on the pitiful level 40 Automaton Beetles from the story, so you can imagine how frustrating it can be to try and land this Shock on endgame opponents. Additionally, because of her Skill’s targeting method, Serval can struggle to apply Shock to more than 3 enemies at a time, and because of the aforementioned low base chance to Shock in the first place, this can compound into an incredibly unfavorable repeating instance of failing to apply and extend Shock.

However, it is also possible to get the Shock applied quickly and then extending it is relatively simple; the very first Shock application of the fight is the hardest. As long as Serval is able to get frequent Ultimates, it will be challenging to drop Shock from that point on. Especially since Serval’s Ultimate has a very low Energy cost of 100, this should be fairly achievable even with lower investment thanks to the wonders of the Passkey Light Cone or by pairing her with the likes of Tingyun or Huohuo.

Serval’s A2 is the most important of her Bonus Ability Traces as it increases the base chance for her Skill to inflict Shock by 20%, for a new total of 100% base chance. This now matches the typical base chance for most debuffs to be applied, and reduces the required Effect Hit Rate for a guaranteed application to be about 67%. A4 grants 15 Energy at the start of battle, and A6 grants a 20% ATK boost for 2 turns after defeating an enemy.

Serval’s design is honestly a little bit confusing. She’s an Erudition unit who plays more like an odd mix of Nihility and Destruction, but unlike some of the other Path outliers like Qingque, Serval does not manage to run away with it. Honestly the Destruction-esque targeting of her Skill is not the biggest offender, it’s her reliance on DoT whilst still being shackled to CRIT.

The fact that her Talent has the ability to CRIT but requires enemies to be Shocked first is such a peculiar choice because it raises the floor on Serval’s necessary stats to an entirely unreasonable level because you have to choose between a guaranteed Shock application or good CRIT stats. You would need god-tier level Relics to be able to get both and I’d honestly rather have that luck for other far stronger characters who can do more with that level of crazy investment like Qingque or Xueyi.

Usually, by this point, I’d have already mentioned Eidolons but I’ve left it for last for Serval because she may be the only character I would say is heavily reliant on Eidolons to perform up to par with other characters — most characters don’t need Eidolons to be competitive, and there’s a select few characters for whom Eidolons do not bump them into ‘viability’, but for Serval the difference between E0 and E6 is incomparable.

E2 and E4 in particular completely change the way you go about executing Serval’s gameplan; E2 grants 4 Energy each time her Talent deals damage, and E4 will allow her Ultimate to have a 100% base chance to apply the same Shock as her Skill to any enemies not yet Shocked. This immediately reduces the stat requirements to a far more reasonable level while also increasing Serval’s overall damage output, and most importantly of all, reducing the possible causes of frustration when attempting to play her.

Personally, I would not even try to use Serval at endgame without at least E4, but if you’re prepared to suffer for your queen, you go right ahead. She’s pretty decent either way and you’re likely to have her at least somewhat invested due to her being a free character.