Honkai Star Rail Gold and Gears Explained: The Simulated Universe Dice Expansion

The Simulated Universe has grown several expansions, but Gold and Gears — added permanently in version 1.6 — is the one that changes the game under the game. Instead of simply walking from domain to domain, you roll dice you designed, steer a strange cognition meter, and negotiate with the final boss's buff before you fight it.

How to unlock it

Clear Simulated Universe World 5 first. Gold and Gears then appears as an option through the 'Simulated Universe Expansion Module' entry in the Simulated Universe menu, sitting alongside the regular worlds as permanent content you can revisit whenever you like.

Choosing a Path — and banning two

As in the base Simulated Universe, you pick one Path for the run, and the Blessings of that Path will appear more frequently. Gold and Gears adds an active condition per Path: choose Preservation and your shields grow stronger, choose The Hunt and your team gains Crit DMG, choose Nihility and your damage over time swells — every Path tilts the run towards its own playstyle. You then ban two other Paths, removing their Blessings from the pool and tightening what the run can offer you.

Dice Faces: the heart of the expansion

Before the run, you assemble a die from Dice Faces — individual effects that fire when the die is rolled as you travel between domains, influencing movement and what happens in the domains you land on. This is the big contrast with the earlier Swarm Disaster expansion, where dice were random per Path: here, the set is yours, and more faces unlock as you progress through the expansion, so your dice genuinely improve the more Gold and Gears you play.

Inside the run, you move by clearing domains and using the Communing Device, which rolls your die and lets you choose your next domain — part board game, part roguelike.

Intra-Cognition: the meter you must babysit

Gold and Gears tracks a numerical value called Intra-Cognition. Special planes can raise it by 20 or drop it by 20, and your job is to keep it near the recommended target for your run. Doing so unlocks the expansion's real prize for lore fans: hidden secrets and story fragments about the Aeons, including the fall of Tayzzyronth, the Aeon of Propagation. Ignore the meter and you can still clear runs — you just leave the story behind.

Resonance Extrapolation: the boss's blessing

The final plane's boss carries Resonance Extrapolation, a buff that works like a Path Resonance but empowers the enemy instead of you, with the nastiest versions attached to the Abundance and Destruction paths. After beating the second plane's boss, you get a genuine choice: disable the extrapolation for a safer fight, or leave it running in exchange for taking another buff or debuff into the finale.

Rewards

First-time clears across the expansion total some 4,000 Stellar Jade, alongside Relic Remains, Tracks of Destiny, a Self-Modeling Resin, Star Rail Passes and upgrade materials. Between the jade haul and the dice customisation, it remains one of the richest permanent modes in the game for newer accounts catching up.