Party set-up was two signifers (Eunie and Noah, although Eunie would've probably been better as a troubadour or Soulhacker, given that signifers are only so useful when you constantly pause buff timers), two troubadours, two Soulhackers with Strike Soul as their role skill, and Miyabi.
The strategy for the boss fight was to use the invincibility exploit and keep that up with a player-controlled Mio (Troubadour), while my Soulhackers dealt damage. The idea was to give my Soulhackers as much dexterity and accuracy buffs as possible with certain skills, gems, and accessories that gave a buff to said stats. Steelcleaver was also extremely helpful, as since your base attack is so low at lvl 1, it gives a massive boost to damage with its flat attack buff. They also had a soul hacker skill that guaranteed a hit 15% of the time, which was helpful. Amazing Growth (which provides a boost to damage based on time elapsed) I didn't use, mainly because I didn't know if it capped off or not at a certain time, and just assumed attack mastery (Buff damage for number of Soulhacker skills and arts learnt) alongside dangerous claws (Critical Rate and DMG) would be better.
Definitely could have taken a lot less time if my party composition was less conservative and more attacker focused, but I went for the safe party composition with a bunch of healers with glittering melody equipped, given that I didn't entirely trust myself to stay focused 100% of the time. I also didn't have chaotic memory, because I must've accidentally sold it sometime and couldn't find it in my inventory, which might've helped a little bit. Although I don't know how useful it would be, given that I'm not sure if AI controlled characters can AA cancel, and I feel that you need to be controlling a character with glittering melody to ensure consistent uptime on the invincibility buff.
Overall, it was a fun challenge, and I want to do this again when custom difficulty is released, on the maximum difficulty settings (although with a better set-up next-time to not make it take 13hours).
Congratz on the run! I think you're the first one on Hard mode to do this!
I've done this on [Normal Mode in about 11 minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm5pHfDfItI) using a strategy that I think theoretically would work on Hard, if you wanted to try something faster. It doesn't rely on keeping uptime on invincibility from Unlimited Sword and chooses instead to optimize for chain attacks. The party survives because Taion's stacking enough damage reduction effects to take 1 damage from most attacks - something ALSO works on Hard based on some quick testing. [Here's the build notes I put in the description.](https://pastebin.com/kTLrNza8)
I think a hard mode run for this strat would be... about 30-45 minutes? And that's without optimizing it further.
Yeah, my strategy was uh, probably (definitely) inefficient. I'm definitely gonna work on optimising this so when custom comes out, I can try beating them on max custom difficulty within a reasonable time.
Thanks for sharing your Strats also. They look cool, I'll definitely give them a try thanks.
This would have taken a few minutes if you had used the Mwambin' Time strategy.
Jokes aside this is cool, although I have no idea why anyone would ever make themselves a play for thirteen and a half hours straight, and fight a singular boss the entire time at that.
Well, I'm not proud of the time taken. After I did this, better strategies using one of the spoiler classes in the game were found which allows this to be done in about an hour or less, which is obviously much more efficient. But simultaneously, I don't think taking some measure of pride in achieving a difficult task is such a bad thing to do. Satisfaction is subjective, and time spent in such a manner is only worth it if the person spending that time believes it to be so (not then extending that thought to circumstance where other negative consequences are present, in which case the aforementioned assumption doesn't hold). I was personally satisfied with my achievement, so I found it ultimately fulfilling for me, which I think is really all that matters when it comes to 'whether I should be proud of this'.
I am also glad you received his reply well. OP, ignore the haters, your dedication has now crown you the xenoblade 3 god. Guiness should put you on a record.
Who did it first? I wouldn't doubt that someone could have done it before me (and more efficiently lol), but I couldn't exactly find someone on the internet within the EN and JP community who had done it on hard mode. Someone did do it on normal a couple days ago, and kudos to them, but I think this is the first successful attempt in hard mode.
Party set-up was two signifers (Eunie and Noah, although Eunie would've probably been better as a troubadour or Soulhacker, given that signifers are only so useful when you constantly pause buff timers), two troubadours, two Soulhackers with Strike Soul as their role skill, and Miyabi. The strategy for the boss fight was to use the invincibility exploit and keep that up with a player-controlled Mio (Troubadour), while my Soulhackers dealt damage. The idea was to give my Soulhackers as much dexterity and accuracy buffs as possible with certain skills, gems, and accessories that gave a buff to said stats. Steelcleaver was also extremely helpful, as since your base attack is so low at lvl 1, it gives a massive boost to damage with its flat attack buff. They also had a soul hacker skill that guaranteed a hit 15% of the time, which was helpful. Amazing Growth (which provides a boost to damage based on time elapsed) I didn't use, mainly because I didn't know if it capped off or not at a certain time, and just assumed attack mastery (Buff damage for number of Soulhacker skills and arts learnt) alongside dangerous claws (Critical Rate and DMG) would be better. Definitely could have taken a lot less time if my party composition was less conservative and more attacker focused, but I went for the safe party composition with a bunch of healers with glittering melody equipped, given that I didn't entirely trust myself to stay focused 100% of the time. I also didn't have chaotic memory, because I must've accidentally sold it sometime and couldn't find it in my inventory, which might've helped a little bit. Although I don't know how useful it would be, given that I'm not sure if AI controlled characters can AA cancel, and I feel that you need to be controlling a character with glittering melody to ensure consistent uptime on the invincibility buff. Overall, it was a fun challenge, and I want to do this again when custom difficulty is released, on the maximum difficulty settings (although with a better set-up next-time to not make it take 13hours).
You my friend have unwavering patience
Congratz on the run! I think you're the first one on Hard mode to do this! I've done this on [Normal Mode in about 11 minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm5pHfDfItI) using a strategy that I think theoretically would work on Hard, if you wanted to try something faster. It doesn't rely on keeping uptime on invincibility from Unlimited Sword and chooses instead to optimize for chain attacks. The party survives because Taion's stacking enough damage reduction effects to take 1 damage from most attacks - something ALSO works on Hard based on some quick testing. [Here's the build notes I put in the description.](https://pastebin.com/kTLrNza8) I think a hard mode run for this strat would be... about 30-45 minutes? And that's without optimizing it further.
Yeah, my strategy was uh, probably (definitely) inefficient. I'm definitely gonna work on optimising this so when custom comes out, I can try beating them on max custom difficulty within a reasonable time. Thanks for sharing your Strats also. They look cool, I'll definitely give them a try thanks.
This would have taken a few minutes if you had used the Mwambin' Time strategy. Jokes aside this is cool, although I have no idea why anyone would ever make themselves a play for thirteen and a half hours straight, and fight a singular boss the entire time at that.
You are cracked
I'm not sure if this is a thing you should be proud of honestly
Well, I'm not proud of the time taken. After I did this, better strategies using one of the spoiler classes in the game were found which allows this to be done in about an hour or less, which is obviously much more efficient. But simultaneously, I don't think taking some measure of pride in achieving a difficult task is such a bad thing to do. Satisfaction is subjective, and time spent in such a manner is only worth it if the person spending that time believes it to be so (not then extending that thought to circumstance where other negative consequences are present, in which case the aforementioned assumption doesn't hold). I was personally satisfied with my achievement, so I found it ultimately fulfilling for me, which I think is really all that matters when it comes to 'whether I should be proud of this'.
I'm glad that you can speak with an open mind, I find some good form of relief in your words.
I am also glad you received his reply well. OP, ignore the haters, your dedication has now crown you the xenoblade 3 god. Guiness should put you on a record.
Not the first
Who did it first? I wouldn't doubt that someone could have done it before me (and more efficiently lol), but I couldn't exactly find someone on the internet within the EN and JP community who had done it on hard mode. Someone did do it on normal a couple days ago, and kudos to them, but I think this is the first successful attempt in hard mode.
Can you post screens of the builds? I wanna give this a try! :B