The Highlight Glitch

**The Highlight Glitch** is a glitch involving pressing the + button (on the Nintendo Switch) or the start button (on the Nintendo 3DS) (the button to exit highlight viewing) in the white screen right before a character gets his/her face back in a Highlight.

This glitch is also the biggest scale glitch known as of now due to the extent that this glitch can go to, such as crashes, softlocks, and boss skips, as well as the different ways the glitch affects the game.

## Highlights that can perform Highlight Glitch

Not every highlight in the game can trigger the glitch, in fact, only a select subset of highlights can do this.

The following Highlights can be used to perform this glitch:

* 053 - Greenhorne Royalty Again
* 054 - Genie of the Lamp Again
* 055 - The Fab Fairies Again

The reason that only these three can trigger the glitch is that all 57 other highlights in the game do not have the required parts needed to exploit the glitch, which is that the face recovery animation needs to play.

## Base effects from the glitch

* A darkened screen
	+ As this also happens in softlocks, the player will need to turn up their sound to detect if the player is softlocked or not.
		- Music = The game is still running.
		- No music = Softlocked.
	+ This also applies to battles and the world map, the only things that will be visible are the arrow, the banner that appears on the bottom screen from sprinkles/safe spot usage, and the Saving banner on the top left of the top screen.
		- The world map will require sound to navigate, as unless the player memorizes everything, there is no way to know exactly where the player is.
* The need to repeat certain actions, such as entering stages and leaving the highlights menu.
	+ This is actually important to test several actions of this glitch, in ways such as going into one stage, then going into a second stage, the first stage will play out normally, while the second stage will be darkened, and will also affect what happens.
	+ The glitches that happen in the highlights menu are due to the fact that two highlights are running at the same time, in most cases, the player won't see these highlights, but they will play in some cases.
* Wrong backgrounds for actions, such as the day inn exterior background for the main menu screen.
	+ These tend to softlock the players' game for unknown reasons, there's little known reason to why this happens, but it seems to have something to do with the way highlights are linked to several other things in the game.
* It is also important to note that:
	+ If the player tries to replay the same highlight, it will play twice.
	+ If the player tries to play another highlight, the first highlight will play, then the second one.

## Softlocks/System Crashes from the glitch

There aren't going to be real methods for this and the system crashes, as these happen interchangeably, and are very easy through exploring and playing around with Highlight Glitch.

The ways these happen are through multiple ways, being as simple as pressing Save and Quit right after preforming the exploit, for many reasons, this guide will not go over these.

That being said, there is one notable way that involves the Boss Skip this guide mentions in the next section, by preforming boss skip 3 consecutive times, once outside a level, once right before the boss trigger, and once after attempting the boss, the player will trigger a fake clear, and will either end up with a softlock upon the skip completing, or, the player can press X within an unknown number of frames after pressing A on the quest completed screen, which will always result in a System-Wide Crash.

## Using the Highlight Glitch to Farm EXP in the Otherworld

   The highlight glitch can be used when farming in the Otherworld's "Snurp hunt" spot. Activating the highlight glitch right before the Very Rare Snurp fight will result in the battle ending instantly. Full EXP from the encounter is earned as if the party successfully defeated them all.

## Boss Skip

Boss Skip is an interesting side effect from some of the affects of Highlight Glitch, with it being the only somewhat-useful thing that can be done with the Highlight Glitch, as the rest of the effects of Highlight Glitch do not physically benefit the user, it can be useful to "complete" district bosses as well as get through loads of extra quests that have difficult bosses.

To preform Boss Skip, here are the following steps:

1. Save and Quit at the boss the player is attempting to skip in case the player fails at the proper timing, making sure Highlight Glitch is not currently active.
2. Enter the Level with the boss the player is attempting to skip.
3. As soon as the player gains the ability to press X to go to the menu, go to the menu and perform Highlight Glitch.
4. Let the remainder of the level play out, ensuring that the boss does not start a battle (the player will see the screen fade black then return to a normal screen as if the boss was beaten), if it does start a battle, or the player miss the player timing, close the game and try again.
5. When the player arrives at the Inn, 4 possible outcomes may happen, all of which with a success.
	1. The Game Saves, then Softlocks.
	2. The Game Saves, then produces a Dark Screened Inn, which Softlocks after setting out.
	3. The Game Saves, then when setting out, Softlocks or produces a darkened world map, which eventually leads to a Softlock.
	4. The Game Saves, and the game will function normally, as if the player has not done Highlight Glitch.
6. If the player checks on the stage, with quests, the area will be gone. And with other bosses, the area will show a golden flag and will progress.

## Notes on Highlight Glitch

* The base effects are not necessarily notable, however, these are required to be listed off as there are some things that happen that will result in needing to know what to do.
* Almost all of these exploits will result in a sort of softlock or System-Wide Crash.

## Notes on Boss Skip

* This is the only thing about this glitch that isn't 100% consistent unless the player follows the exact guide.
* After triggering Boss Skip, the player can cancel Boss Skip by entering the highlights menu after the boss was supposed to trigger, doing this can cause several more glitches based on your outcome and whether it was a quest, story, or district boss.
* If the player has not already successfully done the boss before (mainly applies to District Bosses) the player will not gain the medal, the player will only gain the medal if it is legitimately beaten.
* If this glitch is preformed with Quest Bosses, the player will lose all quest rewards with select exceptions if the player alters the routing.
* The skip has a tendency (though it is not guaranteed) to softlock the game after the game saves, as long as the Mii's go back to the inn, (and/or the game visibly saves) (can be confirmed through sound) the player has successfully preformed Boss Skip.
* Boss Skip works on all Bosses after unlocking Highlight #53, as well as the final fights of every stage after Highlight #53 has been unlocked.

## Warnings

* There has been at least one instance in which a save file has corrupted or become unplayable either because of Highlight Glitch or something related to it, while the validity of this fact is uncertain, it is important to keep this in mind while performing and messing around with the glitch.