HSR Memory of Chaos: Category Mistake review – Supreme Daniel

Memory of Chaos: Category Mistake has replaced Pillar of Genesis in Honkai: Star Rail as of October 27, 2025, bringing a new round of combat challenges to the endgame mode.

The latest iteration of the formula increases the damage dealt by characters and their summons in addition to dealing True DMG to all enemies at the start of each cycle. The amount of damage instances goes up based on the number of summons on the field.

The wording here is important: Naturally, Memosprites of Remembrance units are destined to be of great use here. However, entities like Jing Yuan’s Lightning Lord are categorized as summons as well, enabling them to trigger the stage effects — an important piece of information in regards to team-building.

Similar to last time around, I want to review my successful run through MoC: Category Mistake to see if we can learn anything that might help you on your own attempt to challenge the lethal gauntlet.

Category Mistake – Stage 9

• Team 1: Castorice [E1], Trailblazer (Remembrance) [E6], Evernight, Lingsha
• Team 2: Kafka [E1], Hysilens, Black Swan, Permansor Terrae
• Cycles: 0 (3/3 Stars)

I’ve pretty much tried to maximize the stage buff across my teams for this entire MoC run, using as many characters with summons as possible. Naturally, this Castorice team is exactly the kind of composition you want to field for that. Trailblazer (Remembrance) provides buffs and a bit of turn manipulation for Castorice, Evernight puts out tons of damage along with eating up a lot of her own HP to accelerate Castorice’s Ultimate, and Lingsha delivers reliable healing and some useful Break DMG buffs. All of them have summons, maximizing the extra damage and buff.

Ice DMG teams around The Herta or Jingliu as well as any Quantum comps should also make short work of this half.

Aside from Jing Yuan, this would have been all the summon characters on my roster until Version 3.6, which of course provided us with a free Dan Heng - Permansor Terrae. Why not put him to work, eh? If you’ve read the guide for the previous MoC, you’ll know that I love Huohuo to death, but I decided to swap her out for Permansor Terrae for this run to get that stage boost — a move that worked out surprisingly well. While I was sorely missing Huohuo’s extra Energy for Hysilens’ Ultimate uptime (certainly a headache in the later stages), Permansor Terrae did his job on the defensive side pretty much without the need for Skill Points, giving Black Swan more leeway than she usually has. Plus, his boosts being ATK-related is fantastic for a DoT team.

Any Break DMG composition, a Counter-based team with Clara / Yunli, or Phainon squad will fare well here, too.

Category Mistake – Stage 10

• Team 1: Castorice [E1], Trailblazer (Remembrance) [E6], Evernight, Lingsha
• Team 2: Kafka [E1], Hysilens, Black Swan, Permansor Terrae
• Cycles: 1 (3/3 Stars)

Not much variety here compared to the previous stage — the Weakness Types have lined up perfectly for both of my teams to get another piece of the action. Quantum is definitely the way to go in the first half, so break out that Archer team with Sparkle and Silver Wolf or Cipher if Castorice isn’t at your disposal.

The second half favors a Physical DMG composition, especially a Phainon-based team, but a Feixiao Follow-Up Attack crew is definitely capable of winning in time. If you have Hyacine and don’t need her in the first half, she’s a really fun character to send out in this second half: The stage buff really amps up her fat little friend’s damage output. Calculate that one, Lygus! As we discovered last time, Saber is also capable of making short of our android friend.

Category Mistake – Stage 11

• Team 1: Kafka [E1], Hysilens, Black Swan, Permansor Terrae
• Team 2: The Herta, Jade, Trailblazer (Remembrance) [E6], Lingsha
• Cycles: 4 (3/3 Stars)

The first half of Stage 11 is basically made to be taken apart by a DoT or hypercarry comp with Jing Yuan or Aglaea at the helm. In my case, moving my DoT squad up was an easy decision: Aventurine isn’t much of a pain when everyone on the team has some AoE attacks to win the dice mini-game. And Permansor Terrae’s shielding? It holds up very well.

The Banacademic Office Staff appearing in the second half can be a very annoying enemy thanks to its Energy-reducing components, but I trusted in the overwhelming firepower of The Herta and Lingsha to keep everyone Broken for the most part, leaving my Energy reserves untouched. Lingsha with the damage buff from the stage is actually quite scary — you can essentially use her as a Main DPS in combination with Trailblazer (Harmony) and Ruan Mei.

A Firefly or Rappa Break DMG team would definitely be my second choice to tackle this stage.

Category Mistake – Stage 12

• Team 1: Castorice [E1], Trailblazer (Remembrance) [E6], Evernight, Lingsha
• Team 2: Kafka [E1], Hysilens, Black Swan, Permansor Terrae
• Cycles: 9 (3/3 Stars)

There’s a variety of options on how to tackle Flame Reaver and friends. While I opted for the Castorice composition once again to put those buffs to work, teams around The Herta, Aglaea, or Jing Yuan are capable of causing this enemy pain, despite his abundance of HP. I actually had a couple of dangerous moments there with Evernight, because her HP consumption can easily get out of control if you don’t pay attention and Flame Reaver does quite a bit of damage, so watch out for that.

DoT (with Supreme Daniel) returned for the fourth time to deal with the second half — that hideous new boss Evernight sent against us in the story. Phainon is once again a strong alternative alongside Break DMG teams or an Archer composition with Silver Wolf to get Quantum Weakness implanted, even if the latter might be a little squishy. 

As you can see, it took me quite a bit of time to chew through the HP of both bosses. I think the missing Energy regeneration from Huohuo definitely hurt the DoT team’s combat flow, although Permansor Terrae exceeded my expectations in terms of performance — really strong shielding, basically no Skill Point consumption needed, and solid help with breaking down that Physical Weakness. Make sure to build him if you’re struggling with this MoC.

As always, my final piece of advice is not to stress out about zero-cycle nonsense: Focus on winning in ten cycles to score the maximum rewards and everything below that is a bonus.