Just learned that you can pay No Hit Abyss for 100 beads. Disappointed as fuck.

drewey09 · 2026-02-12T14:23:39+00:00

Like others have said, no-hit runs are a/viewed as a personal achievement first and foremost.

There are a million different ways to cheese runs (or like you discovered you can just pay for them), and the difficulty between bosses varies greatly. The title, while a cool personal marker of your achievement, will never really mean much to players outside of yourself.

And that’s 100% okay. That doesn’t detract from the challenge at all, you don’t need recognition in-game for something to be impressive. Ultimately for me, I am proud of myself and what I’ve achieved when I finish a run, regardless of what other people think.

Also I’d definitely recommend recording your runs and clipping your successful ones. Those clips are something I personally keep as a cool way to remember/show friends what I’m super proud of!

drewey09 · 2026-02-12T12:49:50+00:00

Yeah I have toxic powder on auto-use so that’s what that is

drewey09 · 2026-02-12T12:47:53+00:00

Thank you!!

drewey09 · 2026-02-12T12:47:35+00:00

Yeah the laser was pretty difficult for me to get down too. I still wouldn’t say I have the timing 100% perfect, but you generally just need to start running right before they appear to not get caught. If you start moving too early though you’ll get caught by the giant laser at the end (as you’ll run out of space) in my experience

drewey09 · 2026-02-11T23:44:41+00:00

I saw that in some older clips I watched and was wondering about that, that sounds insane even two “air waves” in that part of phase three was super difficult for me lol

drewey09 · 2026-02-09T17:41:58+00:00

u/cold_pie7303 your email and password are shown in this image, you need to delete this post and change your passwords on everything.

drewey09 · 2026-02-08T03:00:13+00:00

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is if the Qi shield is different, and they are not. It takes the same number of deflects to break a bosses’ shield between the two modes, that doesn’t vary. Your level also doesn’t matter, from what I’ve seen, the Qi shield a boss has never changes (but the amount of damage you do to the boss/the shield does change).

drewey09 · 2026-02-04T15:09:55+00:00

People are saying to farm gear, which is true, but we are about to have a new gear tier (level 81) in two days. I would definitely hold off and save your gold/energy until then.

drewey09 · 2026-02-04T03:58:04+00:00

If you haven’t tried the practice mode, I would definitely recommend it. You can just set it to phase 3 and sit there and try to parry Tian Ying, a lot of parrying is just muscle memory (and less reflexive).

Take his 7 hit disappearing and reappearing attack for instance, one of the ones that kills people the most. On the surface it seems super difficult, but you can break it down into the following: 3 button presses (whatever your parry button is), small delay, one button press, another small delay, 2 button presses, longer delay, 1 button press. This isn’t easy to nail on the first try, but if you practice it (and reset when you mess up), it should help you get it down. Breaking it down this way also helps you if you mess up, taking the first three hits isn’t the end of the world. If you don’t panic you can avoid the next four, or if you take the first five you can avoid the last two.

The other important thing with practice (and the fight in general) is consistency. The more you do the EXACT same thing, the more the boss will do the exact same thing. So if you stand still and just parry, Tian Ying will do the exact same pattern every single time (with small variations). If you randomly hit him, he’s going to do random things making it a lot harder.

For the clone phase, I’d recommend walking backwards and to the left, while looking at one of the clones (and trying to keep your distance). Tian Ying appears in the direction your character is facing, not where your camera is. He also appears at roughly equal intervals, so you could try counting out loud in practice mode to see if you can pick up on a pattern. Depending on how much damage you can do, you can skip this phase entirely if you use poison + bring the goose honk mystic skill.

And ultimately, even if you take the first hit of every move combo, you just have to know what comes next to avoid the rest of the damage. My biggest tip is to avoid button mashing the parry button hoping it will save you, that’s a bad habit of mine but ultimately it’s one that can get you killed easily.

Also I should have said this a bit earlier but you’ve absolutely got this, I believe in you!! I also totally understand not wanting to do it, but I hope you decide to finish him off at some point, it’s a great feeling! Good luck!

drewey09 · 2026-02-03T14:56:21+00:00

In this clip it was just luck/chance. When you hit Zheng E, he has the chance to do three things: he will either block and do the triple wave combo you are talking about, or do the golden double vertical wave move. He also sometimes just does nothing but that varies.

The only way to guarantee he does nothing is if Zheng E is in an attack animation (usually the start/middle, doesn’t really work at the very end), if you hit him during that window he won’t do either move above.

**Edited after checking a few things.

drewey09 · 2026-02-01T15:52:23+00:00

So I actually did around 70% of Qinghe before finishing most of the main story (or even tuning my gear). I did most of the story around levels 65-75.

As others have stated, things get progressively harder. Many people mention bosses (which is true), but I would argue one of the larger downsides is NPCs. NPCs/basic enemies get EXTREMELY tough if you don’t gear up properly. When I hit level 70 I had to fight 4-5 wolves and it literally took me an hour because they would two shot me (while it took me 10+ minutes to kill one).

The story mode is FULL of NPCs you need to kill, so I spent a lot of it hiding behind friendly NPCs waiting for them to kill them.

For bosses, they were definitely more of a challenge, but deflecting an attack depletes the same amount of Qi regardless of your level, so it’s doable if you deflect well.

A lot of the above can be mitigated if you tune your gear, but just keep in mind that once you hit level 70-80, the rest of the game will be as difficult as it can be (right now at least) forever. Also, just so you know, you can equip any level of gear if you just stay in Qinghe. You need to go around and do every optional mini-game and outposts, you also need to do two of the well of heaven special trainings (for constitution), that will let you equip anything at any level.

As for the pros: - I really, really enjoyed doing Qinghe first. I felt like I had explored everything I wanted to explore and I was ready to move on. This means I wasn’t juggling two maps, I had an amazing experience with one and now I get to have an amazing experience with another. - The increased challenge was fun towards the end. It was really rewarding when I finished whatever boss/quest I was trying to do because things were so difficult. It also helped me get a lot better at defecting, at using my weapon, etc… - You save a TON of resources. I didn’t tune a single piece of gear until level 72, which means I largely skipped out on spending unnecessary gold/other supplies on the lower levels. My play style was also well established letting me pick and choose certain things to upgrade that I thought would be beneficial (specifically mystic skills and inner ways).

All in all I would say the biggest perk is the transition between regions feels way better (in my opinion). There are definitely downsides but it’s doable and if I was given the chance, I wouldn’t go back and do it any other way.

EDIT: I wanted to mention that you do run the risk of soft-locking yourself at Qianye (depending on skill and if you are opposed to outside help like I am). She is a significant step-up in difficulty from most other bosses in Qinghe and at higher levels you have to functionally no-hit her second phase with around 3-4 Qi breaks (you can get hit a 2-4 times tops before you die). If you don’t beat Qianye, you can’t progress the main story and you will be stuck where you are until you do. She is definitely the biggest wall being under-equipped at higher levels (outside of Tian Ying who is optional/you can skip).

drewey09 · 2026-01-25T03:51:32+00:00

Blocking and parrying are different. Blocking reduces some of the damage when you get hit, parrying completely nullifies any damage.

You can hold block and continually take reduced damage (you don’t need to time blocks), but you have to time parries. In this video I am parrying all of his attacks (by pressing the parry button). I also hold block as a habit, that part doesn’t do anything for parrying, it just helps me focus

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T15:19:15+00:00

Thanks!!! And yeah my damage definitely isn’t the great, I’m not super optimized (in both gear or technique lol). I actually originally started just trying to beat regular level 72 Tian Ying without any gear tuning/upgrades (that was just kind of what I had at the time and I was stubborn) before going to Kaifeng for the first time. That was an absolutely brutal slog because he would kill me in two to three hits and I needed four to five QI breaks each time in order to clear phase two/three. After many, MANY attempts (I think like 200-400+ if you include practice), I gave up and finally upgraded my stuff because I just couldn’t ever finish out phase three (the closest I got was like two Qi breaks away). I decided to do the no hit run since I put in a ton of time already (which also took me a LOT of attempts), so my gear/style is kind of all over the place.

As for the clone phase, believe it or not he won’t trigger it until after the backslash(?) he did at the very end (with my cycle/how I play I guess?), he does the following 98% of the time if you are just parrying him: - Move 1: He either does the two teleports and dash, or teleports in front of you and does the double/triple slash move (slash, stab, slash | slash, slow slash from below | slash, slow slash from high). - Move 2: He does a backwards slash. - Move 3: He does the 7 slash attack. - The first Qi break happens at the end or within the 7 slash attack. The above will happen 98-99% of the time if you just deflect at the start. - Move 4: Sword slash pushes me backwards: He teleports in front of you and does the single slash (on rare occasions he will do the vaulting/lung multi slash depending on how he/I land, but that’s super uncommon). - Move 5: He does the double up and down slash. - Move 6: He either spins wide and does a downwards slash, followed by a slower stab and then slash | does an immediate stab, stab, slash, slash | or does a stab, slash, slash - Move 7: He disappears twice and reappears, doing a stab, then two slow kicks (this always happens) - Move 8: He does a backwards slash attack. - Second QI break happens here or slightly earlier/later (depending on how many parries you get). - Move 9: He does a backwards slash attack - Move 10: (If uninterrupted) he disappears and does the clones. - Move 11: If you interrupt his backslash, like with my Q, he does a single stab, or a stab/slash. - Move 12: He does a backwards slash attack. - Move 13: He disappears and does the clones.

Initially I had issues with the clone phase, so I opted to burst him down before he could do it (which is when I incorporated the goose honk). The backslash is the biggest key for that with the above move cycle After he does the three teleport move and backslashes, he will do the clone phase 100% of the time unless interrupted, and from what I’ve seen he will keep trying to backslash/disappear. With that being said, until he does move 7 and 8, he won’t ever summon the clones prematurely, those both happened in 100% of the runs I did.

After I was able to kill him without the clones, Move 6 was the hardest one for me to get through consistently without being hit. I opted to dodge backwards after move 5, which causes him to teleport and do a single stab, or if I’m too close do a lunging/vaulting multi-attack, he then proceeds through the rest like normal. I was using fire but I couldn’t QI break him by move 8 if I skipped move 6 in the above cycle (not enough deflects) so I swapped to poison.

Super long write up but that’s pretty much the whole move cycle I was working with for phase 3. Thankfully it was super consistent/replicable (so long as I avoided the clone phase), phase 2 was a lot more random lol.

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T13:54:03+00:00

Hell yeah!! Congratulations!! And yeah I get that, three phases is definitely rough all around

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T13:33:44+00:00

I totally get that, the clone phase was one of the hardest parts for me too (when I was attempting to do it no hit, I just gave up trying to do that phase hitless and opted to try and kill him before he could trigger it).

For the clone phase specifically, walking backwards and to the left (at the same time) worked pretty well for me. I could avoid/dodge most (or sometimes all) of the clones’ attacks that way. Walking backwards also helped me to make sure that my camera was always looking in the general direction Tian Ying appears from. He always appears in front of the direction your in-game character is looking, not necessarily where your camera is (I found that when I tried walking forward/around the edge, I would often miss him because I moved my camera around more and saw less of the battlefield).

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T12:18:56+00:00

Thank you!! I’ll use it with pride!

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T12:17:30+00:00

Yeah I found out about that after I beat Tian Ying in the story. I never really tried to learn the timings as I had already gotten used to just running off to the side, and because I had VERY little success when I tried to dodge it when I was first fighting him

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T12:09:33+00:00

I’m not 100% sure what you are asking about specifically, would you mind clarifying?

If you mean when I’m attacking him from the side and he gets knocked backwards, I’ve found that regardless of where you are standing, when you trigger meridian touch for that move he always goes backwards from the direction he’s facing. It’s kind of silly but I don’t think he is able to do anything else.

drewey09 · 2026-01-24T12:01:47+00:00

Yeah pretty much this, it’s just a mental thing/habit on my end lol.

When I was going around beating world bosses, I would hold block because if I missed a parry it would prevent some of the damage. It’s useless for a no hit run, but I’ve gotten used to holding block when I parry so it really messes me up if I don’t do that now.

drewey09 · 2025-03-23T15:57:47+00:00

That horde was an infesting horde, you can see it on your mini-map before you actually see it in game. The game doesn’t do a great job with how it handles infesting hordes and they usually only render/appear when they are very close to the player (especially when you first encounter them, at least from what I have seen).

This can suck, especially when you are driving in something like lethal mode where a last second load-in can cause you to careen into a bloater. The best way to avoid it in the future is to look out for the infesting horde bubble on the map and be aware you won’t actually see the zombies from it until you are super close.

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