The Hidden Ones Dungeon Guide: Xinyuan, Chentu Bailian and Luotian Dajiao

Xinyuan Secret Realm: 15 floors of affixes

You open Xinyuan Secret Realm by talking to Cheng Zhien at Jinzhou Port. It has 15 floors, and each floor rolls 2–4 random affixes on top of its base enemies. The affixes are the dungeon: the same floor can be routine on one attempt and a wipe on the next because of what it rolled.

Adjust your skill bar before you enter, not after the first death. Control-heavy affixes call for cleanse and movement skills, and a team that walks in with a pure damage setup spends the run reacting instead of fighting. The general route is also slower than it looks: pull one pack at a time, clear it, then move into the next area. Chain-pulling in an affix dungeon is how a manageable floor becomes a stamina problem.

A team of one controller and two DPS covers every affix combination. Zhuge Qing is the default controller because Wind Rope both groups enemies and interrupts them; Zhang Lingyu, Zhang Chulan and Feng Baobao are all fine DPS picks. Bring the characters you can play rather than trying to answer each floor with a different roster.

Affix answers that save the run

Each affix has one correct response. Recognizing it at the door is worth more than out-gearing the floor, because several of them punish damage racing rather than damage output.

Poison fog and electric demon are both time pressure in disguise. The longer the floor runs, the less room and the more damage you have to eat, so the answer is to speed up rather than to play safer. Shield demon is the opposite: it rewards patience and a specific guard-break tool over raw output.

The 3-second shield-break window

Xinyuan's damage windows are tight and specific. Enemies are briefly stunned after throwing a weapon, and the real burst window opens when a shield breaks: for 3 seconds the head weak point takes 30% more damage.

Build your damage around that window instead of firing ultimates on cooldown. Hold the ultimate until the shield is down, then convert the full three seconds. The weapon-throw stun is the smaller opening; use it to reposition and start a short string, not to spend a burst skill.

Chentu Bailian: the roguelike climb

Chentu Bailian is a roguelike tower: you climb, draft artifacts and buffs, and rebuild your damage profile every run. The team logic is stable even though the drops are not. Main DPS: Zhang Chulan or Zhuge Qing. Support: Xia He or Wang Ye. Flex: Feng Baobao, used for control and for covering gaps in the draft.

The three artifacts that define runs are Flowing Shadow Ember, which consumes stamina to stack 32% skill damage, the Skateboard + Oil Pot pair that supports Zhuge Qing's movement and combo loops, and Autumn Water Shear for ultimate damage. If you see Flowing Shadow Ember early, take it; the stacking damage is what makes speed clears possible.

Sustain is the other half of the draft. Pager + Sorrow-Forgotten Pot + Eight-Treasure Gourd is the triple-recovery setup, and it is the difference between a greedy damage build that dies on floor 9 and a slower build that reaches the top. A basic-attack build using Foe-Warding Helm + Ever-Pure + Mountain Ghost Coin is the alternative when the draft refuses to give skill damage.

Chentu rhythm and the stage-11 wall

Combat order matters more than raw numbers. In the early sections, kill ranged and summoning units first. In the middle, save the control chain for elite cast bars instead of spending it on trash. Against bosses, hold the ultimate until a shield break, the end of a red-circle sequence, or the sub-30% HP threshold.

Stage 11 is the common wall. Wang Ye is the first pick for add clearing, and the core buff is Light-Keeping Bracelet Core. Two 2-point doppelgangers fit the stage better than one expensive three-point pick, because the fight rewards repeated small tools over a single committed cooldown.

Kill the ranged enemies first, then the melee meteor-hammer unit. If the stage still fails, check three things before blaming the draft: the affixes on the floor, whether your artifact drops actually support your damage type, and whether your buffs overlap with the boss window. A run usually breaks because those three stopped working together, not because the enemy stats were too high.

Luotian Dajiao: schedule, tiers and format

Luotian Dajiao unlocks at the required level after the main story and runs on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. It has three tiers — preliminary, semifinal and final — and the format is consecutive defense: you fight a series of NPC opponents without a full reset between them. The main reward is Xuanhuang Yu, with breakthrough materials and high-grade inscriptions alongside it.

Because the format is consecutive, preparation between fights matters as much as the fights themselves. You can preview the next opponent's traits and swap characters and inscriptions before each match. Use that. The substitute rule is harsh: characters on the bench do not recover health naturally, so a swap is a resource decision, not a free reset.

Luotian teams and opponent mechanics

Three compositions cover the mode:

Feng Shayan opens with a wide burn. Close the distance and interrupt it rather than trying to out-heal the floor. Her half-screen attacks have a charge window before they fire, so run out of the area — above or below the line — while she is winding up. In the last phase, staying on the same vertical axis avoids much of her damage.

Zhang Lingyu activates a yin-thunder shield at half health. Do not dump damage into it; wait for the shield to break, then commit. Zhuge Qing and Wang Ye both punish careless positioning. Answer Wang Ye's grid seal by holding a super-armor skill for it; dodging after the lock lands is too late.

Inner Scenery Trial and Path of Conflict

Inner Scenery Trial is the early PvE loop that opens with main-story progress. It pays experience, gold and Inner Scenery data chips, and in the mid-game it starts dropping advanced enhancement stones and rare Heavenly Runes. The trap is treating it as a level check; it is not. Manually equip your high-tier skills, do not burn assist skills on cooldown, and trade early chips for purple and blue pieces as transitions instead of chasing perfect rolls.

Its first stage punishes standing in the red boxes around the water, and its final stage rewards step-dodging with a saved escape. If you are stuck, the fix is usually mechanical rather than numerical, which is why the combat system page is worth reading before you rerun it.

Path of Conflict exists for one job: validating a build cheaply. Before you commit resources to a new character or a new artifact set, test whether the playstyle actually works there. It is not a progression stop, and it is not a substitute for the affix floors — it is the cheap experiment that keeps you from wasting a week of materials.

For the surrounding resource plan, see the gear and progression guide; for the artifact picks that carry Chentu runs, see the artifact guide. If you are still choosing a main DPS for these loops, the Biyou Village guide explains the team logic that also applies to Luotian Dajiao.