When Once Human launched, reaching six-star weapons and armor felt nearly impossible. Leveling a legendary blueprint from one to six stars requires 29,600 experience. Even with double XP from same-name blueprints, it still takes 493 of them, or 986 if they’re not an exact match. For most day-one players, that meant waiting on the Wish Machine to rotate limited-time draws, walking weapons up slowly to two or three stars, or burning legendary blueprints on mismatched weapons.
That grind defined the early game until December 2024, when Starry Studios introduced major updates: new ways to earn Starcrom and the Blueprint Conversion System. These changes let players transfer star ratings between blueprints, accelerating progress and making six-star gear much more achievable.
To get a six-star weapon, you need a lot of fragments and a lot of Starcrom. It takes 493 legendary blueprints to upgrade from one star to six. Now that I’m writing this after making the video, I realize new players will still face delays. They won’t have access to free blueprints, which means they can’t buy fragments from the Wish Machine. Instead, they’ll have to purchase the base weapon first. Not to be discouraged, let’s see how close to that six star weapon we can get.
Starcrom
If my math is right and your RNG is kind, a new player should be able to do this within their first month. It takes about that long for the entire Stellar Stairway to unlock, which provides up to 66,000 Starcrom. On top of that, Starry frequently hands out extra Starcrom through livestream giveaways, downtime compensation, battle pass rewards, and other events.
The Wish Machine
Understanding the Wish Machine is important, as many new players don’t realize it has two functions: press F to "Make a Wish" (the mini-game), and G to access the Blueprint Shop.
To get started, new players will need 8,000 Starcrom to buy their first weapon from the Blueprint Shop. This unlocks that weapon’s blueprint at one star.
After that, they’ll need around 54,000 more Starcrom to gather a solid batch of fragments.
First, you will spend 10,000 Starcrom on the Echoes of Rift category. Clearing this guarantees one legendary weapon. Whatever weapon you receive will unlock that one-star blueprint. Then, head to the Blueprint Shop and purchase that same weapon for 8,000 Starcrom—even if it isn’t the one you actually want. Because you already own it, this will give you 80 legendary fragments for that weapon. Don’t use them yet—just hold onto them.
Next, return to the Wish Machine and clear out the limited-time prize pool that includes a weapon. For 10,000 Starcrom, you’ll get a one-star blueprint and 10 to 15 fragments. Spend another 8,000 Starcrom to buy that same weapon from the shop, and you’ll now have 105 legendary fragments for it. Again, don’t use them yet.
Repeat this process one more time with the other limited-time category that includes a weapon. You’ll end up with another one-star blueprint and 105 legendary fragments. By this point, you will have spent a total of 62,000 Starcrom.
Since you only get 66,000 Starcrom in a season, and there is still one more limited-time category to clear out (which, by now, you can see is incredibly valuable), you will need to be strategic with how you finish your first month. If you reach at least level 55 in the battle pass, you will earn an extra 6,000 Starcrom. That is just enough to clear the final limited-time category for the cycle, but it still will not be enough to take your weapon to six stars.
Getting More Starcrom
There are often Starcrom rewards for downtime. You can also find Starcrom in the Starwish Shop, and the Collection level in the blueprint menu grants 500 Starcrom periodically as you level up blueprints.
If you’ve followed the plan so far, you should now have:
- Echoes of the Rift weapon and 105 legendary blueprint fragments
- Limited-Time Weapon 1 and 105 legendary blueprint fragments
- Limited-Time Weapon 2 and 105 legendary blueprint fragments
You can add an additional 80 legendary fragments to one of these categories if you manage to get 10,000 more Starcrom and a Wish Stone.
The Wish Stone
If you are able to get 10,000 more Starcrom, you can finish off that six-star blueprint by purchasing a Wish Stone. To do this, press ESC, go to Scenario Challenge, then to the Challenge Shop, and look under the Other category. There, you can buy a Wish Stone for 100 Mitsuko Marks.
What you wish for will depend on how your blueprint fragments are distributed, what fodder fragments you have from previous Wish categories, and what blueprint fragments you’ve looted from Mystical Crates in the world.
When you wish for a specific weapon that you already own, you receive an additional 80 fragments for that weapon. That means you will end up with 185 legendary fragments for one weapon, 105 for a second weapon, and 105 for a third. At this point, RNG needs to be on your side. The XP Math
When figuring out whether you can finish your six-star weapon, you need to run the numbers. It takes 267 legendary blueprints or 134 same-name legendaries to go from four to five. It takes 334 legendary blueprints or 167 same-name legendaries to go from five to six. That is a lot of fragments.
XP needed to level blueprints:
- One to Two: 1,600
- Two to Three: 4,000
- Three to Four: 6,000
- Four to Five: 8,000
- Five to Six: 10,000
XP granted per fragment:
- Same-name legendaries: 60
- Legendary (Yellow): 30
- Epic (Purple): 10
- Fine (Blue): 3
- Common (Green): 1
Now let’s work the math backward.
Five to Six
To go from five to six stars, you need 10,000 XP. You should already have a weapon category with 185 legendary fragments, and since it only takes 167 fragments to reach six stars, this level is covered.
Four to Five
The next step, from four to five stars, requires 8,000 XP. With 105 legendary fragments, you already have 6,300 XP. The question is whether you also have 170 purple fragments in that same category. If you do, you are good to go.
If not, do you have a mix of purples, blues, and greens in either of the categories where you have 105 legendary fragments, enough to give you the missing 1,700 XP? If not, you are stuck for now. You will need to find a way to make up the difference. You can farm more Mystical Crates, wait for the month to reset and earn more Starcrom, or hope some gets handed out for downtime.
If you find yourself unable to go from four to five, you can, in theory, load whatever blueprint fragments you have into your weapon and push it to level five. Then, when the next limited-time category rotates in, you can repeat the buy-the-weapon and clear-the-category combo to get another 105 fragments. The problem is, you might come up short again. Personally, if you cannot complete the upgrade, I recommend saving your fragments in both categories. Wait until next month, clear the categories again, hope for blueprint fodder, and use the next Wish Stone to close the gap.
Three to Four
This step is actually a walk in the park if you have 105 legendary fragments. That gives you 6,300 XP, and you only need 6,000. It will use up everything, but you are covered.
Two to Three
This might be a bit tight. If you’ve cleared your Mystical Crates and finished four rounds through the Wish Machine, you should have a decent mix of purples, blues, and greens. The issue is that they may be spread out across the six categories.
The category with 185 legendary fragments should have a surplus of 1,000 XP from the leftover 18 fragments. The question is whether you have a combined total of 3,000 XP in purples, blues, and greens. If you do, you can push through this step. If not, I recommend waiting rather than risking fragment waste or breaking your flow.
One to Two
This only requires 1,600 XP, but by now, your fragment supply is likely running low. Don’t get discouraged. If RNG has not been in your favor, you’ll just have to work with what you’ve got. However, I’ll leave you with one more ray of hope that might give you just enough fragments to pull the whole chain together.
Use an Alt on a different scenario for Starcrom and Fragments
If you find yourself just a little short on fragments, you can make an alt on a different scenario that you haven’t previously cleared and hunt down any Starcrom or Mystical Crates. This works especially well with Way of Winter if you’ve never played it before. Find a WoW server that’s just starting, drop a character on it, and corpse-run around to gather Mystical Crates and Scenic Viewpoints. Each viewpoint gives you Starcrom, and since fragments and blueprints are account-shared, you can collect everything on your alt and funnel it back to your main.
You can use this site to find all the Scenic Viewpoints and Mystical Crates:
https://mapgenie.io/once-human/maps/nalcott - Once Human Interactive Map
Does this work for the other Southern Nalcott scenarios like Primverse Clash or Evolution’s Call?
No.
Here’s how the grouping works:
- Novice is considered one group.
- All scenarios on Southern Nalcott (Mannibus, Primverse Clash, Evolution’s Call) share crate progress.
- All scenarios on Way of Winter (WoW and Endless Dream) also share progress.
This means once you clear a Mystical Crate in one scenario, it’s considered cleared in all others within that group. I confirmed this on 26 June 2025.
If you still can’t progress from one to two, two to three, or four to five stars, I’m sorry RNG hasn’t been in your favor. However, after using the alt trick, you should at least be able to go from one to two stars—and likely all the way to four—before needing to pause. At that point, if you're stuck, it’s better to wait.
Does this work the same for armor?
It absolutely does. The process is identical, but the good news is armor is cheaper. Key armor pieces cost 8,000 Starcrom, and individual pieces are just 3,000. Once you clear out the limited-time category for armor, you can begin swapping pieces around to improve their star ratings. This video is designed to teach you what you don’t know about builds, including armor:
I won’t rehash that guide here, but if you’re building a Burn, Frost, Blast, or Shock set, you will need six-star armor pieces to benefit from PSI Intensity. If you're running anything else, PSI Intensity doesn’t matter.
If you have questions, you can find me on Discord as Jahlon, leave a comment on my YouTube channel (any video is fine), swing by my Twitch show, or email me. All those options are in the page footer.
As personal editorial on this change:
When this change first happened I was adamantly against it, and I remained against it until yesterday when I started doing the actual math for this video. If you obtain 105 Legendary Blueprints for every Limited Time draw, and you need 493 legendary blueprints, it would mean you would need that weapon to be featured on five different occasions in order to draw enough blueprints to level it to six-stars. I understand that between purple, blue, and green fragments it is highly possible that that five occasions would drop to four, and maybe even three, but still with the number of weapons in the game, and the time between those categories changing, the earliest players could have earned six-star blueprints without wasting legendary fragments on non same-name weapons would be a minimum 12 if not closer to 18 months. That interval was destined to get longer each time Starry introduced new weapons, as new weapons were being given the Limited Time Draw.
So after nearly seven months of saying something was a bad idea, I’m ready to embrace it as my own math has proven the effectiveness of the idea.