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You’ll face The Past, Present, and Eternal Show at the end of the fourth act of the Penacony story inHonkai: Star Rail, just before you face off against Sunday in the class that decides the fate of the land of dreams. And if you want some of the best Break Planar Ornaments in the game, you’ll be fighting thema lotbeyond their place in the campaign.
The trio of bosses is not, thankfully, the toughest challenge you’ll face, and they only get easier the more you progress and build your characters. We’ll go over everything you need to know here.
All Attacks From The Past, Present, And Eternal Show
The Past, Present, and Eternal Show has two versions: a two-phase encounter and a three-phase one. You’ll fight their two-phase version in thePenacony storylineand the upper levels ofMemory of Chaos.
Thethree-phasefight is unique to theSimulated Universe, and while it shares a lot of mechanics with its shorter variation, there are a few additional wrinkles in phase three.
Additionally, The Past, Present, and Eternal Show ismade up of three individual units. These are:
None of the individual boss’s attacks changeover the phases of the fight. When they work as a team, additional mechanics grant them new abilities.
These three boss enemies are dangerous on their own, buttheir move lists are fairly limited. When they work as a unit, they can become a problem.
All Past Confined And Caged Attacks
Past Confined And Caged isweak to Fire, Lightning, and Imaginarydamage.It also has high enough defenses that anyotherattacksoutside of those elements will dolittleto itshealth barandnothingto itsToughness.
The onlyexceptionsare abilities like Fugue’s, Acheron’s, or Rappa’s thatignore Weakness type.
Hits asingle characterwithmoderatePhysical damage.
This attackalways hits, soa Shieldfrom a character like Aventurinenullifies it.
Damage redirectsfrom Fu Xuan or healing over time from Lynx or Natasha arealso usable.
As aweaker attack, you canhold off healinguntil the other enemies act or if it takes its target characterbelow 50 percenthealth.
Admonishment of the Masses
Physical
Hits asingle characterand thosenext to themforminorPhysical damage.
As a multi-target attack,single-target healslike those from Lynx and Natashaaren’t ideal.
Aventurine’sshields do well, as does Fu Xuan’sdamage redirect.
Weak attackslike thisaren’t as important to healunless you have an immediate option like the one Lingsha provides with her Skill, Ultimate, and follow-up attack.
Shackle-Bearing Messenger
N/A
The bosslocks onto one characterand gains a number ofAttack Boost stacks.
Hitting the bosswillremove a stackandlock ontothe character thatlanded the hit.
Past Confined usesDesmios Evangelionon itsnext action.
Hitthe boss withas many characters as possibleto remove Attack Boost stacks andlower the overall damage dealt.
Desmios Evangelion
The boss hitsevery enemy it’s locked onto, dealingmassivePhysicaldamage distributed evenlyacross all targets.
This attackalways comes after Shackle-Bearing Messenger, so once you’vereducedthe boss’sAttack Boost stacksas much as possible, you’re free to heal if characters are at or around a 65 percent health threshold.
All Present Inebriated isweaktoPhysical, Fire, and Imaginarydamage.
Precious Blood Shed For You
Wind or Lightning
Thissingle-targetattack has a high chance ofreducing its targets Defensestat and applying aLightning or Wind DoT.
The Lighting DoT is calledCarousal of Revelry. The Wind DoT is calledCarousal of Wantonness.
Because this attackapplies DoT stacksand a Defense debuff, characters withhigh Effect RES are unlikely to be affected.
Supports like Gallagher, Lingsha, Luocha, and even Natasha cancleanse debuffs,making this attack less effective.
Feast That Is Set For You
This attacktargets your entire partyand attempts toapply either the Wind or Lightning DoTto them.
Lots of Effect RESis the best tactic here, and characters like Aventurine can grant tons of it for free so long as they’re shielded. Lingsha’s AoE heal can also work.
TheDoT damage of this and the single-target version stack, so you’ll want tohealafterone or two activationsor risk it getting out of control.
A Cup Runneth Over For You
This attacktargets your entire party,andattempts to apply either the Wind or Lightning DoTto them.
Present Inebriated alsoenters the Charging state, using Wash Away All Sins For You on its next action.
As this attack isfunctionally identical to Feast That Is Prepared For You, Effect RES and cleansing abilities are best.
However, you’ll want toheal up once this attack occurs, as a more powerful one is yet to come.
Wash Away All Sins For You
Wind and Lightning
Rather than applying a DoT effect, this attack causeseveryDoT currently active on each character to detonate, dealing their combined damage all at once.
Characters with anactive shieldcan negate a portion of the attack, as the shield willtank at least some detonated DoT damage.
Depending on your setup and the results of the detonation, you might need toheal immediatelyusing something like Lingsha’s Skill or Lynx or Natasha’s Ultimate.
Tomorrow in Harmonious Chords isweak to Physical, Fire, and Lightningdamage.
Imaginary
This attack deals amoderate amountof Imaginary damage toone character.
This attackalways hits, but itslower damagemeans even amodest shieldcan tank the hit.
Healfrom the damage dealt when a party member reachesno lower than 50% HP.
All Is Calm
This attack putsa characterin anAlien Dream,unable to take actionsbutregenerating a small amount of HPeach turn.
If attackedwhile under the effects of Alien Dream, thedamage they take is greatly increased, but they’llwake upand be able to act again.
Alien Dream is a debuff, meaning any character that cancleansesuch effects — Natasha, Lynx, Lingsha, or Gallagher, for instance — can remove it.
Tomorrow gains anAttack bonusforevery characteron the field afflicted withAlien Dream.
You’ll need tocleanseas many characters as you can to remove Alien Dream or wait for them to be attacked by a member of the trio.
Holy Night
The boss enters theCharging statebut does not attack. It will useSleep In Heavenly Peace on its next action.
This attack has ahigh chanceof puttingevery characterin theAlien Dream state.
Stackas much Effect RES as possibleon as many characters as possible.
Auto-cleanseabilities like those from Huohuo’s Skill or Lingsha’s follow-up attack are also effective and don’t require additional input.
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All The Past, Present, And Eternal Show Phase One Attacks
Phase oneof the fight against The Past, Present, and Eternal Show is a prelude for the next two phases, andthey only use their default attacks. However, there are two additional mechanics to make note of that carry over into future phases:
Counter Strategy or Ability Effect
Hearing, Together As One
The bossesshare a health bar.
Dealing damage to any one of the three boss enemies willdeal damage to their shared health pool.
Note thatsharing health doesnotmean they share Toughness or weaknesstypes. Those remain independent.
Appeal, Singular Grace
One of the bosses becomes Impresario,granting them anadditional actionandmildly increasing their Speedscore.
Ifoneof the bosses isWeakness Broken, theiraction is delayed, andImpresario movesto another one.
Ifallbosses areWeakness Broken,they immediately take alarge amount of additional damageand becomemore vulnerableto incoming damage.
Thefirsttocome out of Weakness Breakwill be chosen as thenew Impresario.
Hit each bosswith as many characters who can break its weakness as you can.Fire is optimalhere, as it’s theonly weakness all three share.
Ideally, you’ll also havea characteror characters who canhit more than one of the bosses with a single Skilluse, but single-target specialists like Moze or Topaz are more than usable.
All The Past, Present, And Eternal Show Phase Two Attacks
Phase Twois where this fight gets a little dicey. Not only are you dealing with all the bosses' default abilities, but there aretwo new mechanicsat play:Commandment and Dance for Synchrony.
Enact, Heed Thy Command
Commandment,the symbol with the puppet on strings, is added to the Action Order.
Whenever Commandment acts,it dispels all crowd control debuffs and Weakness Breakon all bosses.
Commandment’s action is slightly delayedevery time youbreak a boss’s weakness,provided the break occurs before Commandment acts.
Commandmentallows activation of the Dance for Synchrony attackat the end of its action.
The “counter” to Commandment is tobreak the weakness of all three bosses,. However, it cannot be removed from the Action Order, so it’s impossible to truly negate it as a threat.
Dance for Synchrony
This attackcombines the three bosses' ultimate abilitiesinto a single attack. It applies the following effects in sequence:
Dance for Synchrony is thetransition attackbetween phases one and two, soit’s impossible to avoid it entirely.
However, you canpreventthe Dance from happeningadditional timesbybreaking the bosses' weaknessesas quickly as possible.
All The Past, Present, And Eternal Show Phase Three Attacks
Phase three of the fight against The Past, Present, and Eternal Showonly adds a single mechanic, but it makes the fight quite a bit more dangerous.
Verdict, Eternal Life
Asecond instance of Commandmentappears in the Action Order.
There isno direct counter to this ability, as it affects the Action Order and not any of your characters.
However, as Commandment isstill subject to being delayedvia Weakness Break, you can make Commandment take more time to act byusing Fire, Lighting, and Imaginary damage. As before,fire is ideal.
Best Teams And Strategies To Beat The Past, Present, And Eternal Show
The best way to consistently and comfortably beat The Past, Present, and Eternal Show is tobring characters that can break its members' weaknessesand keep breaking them as often as possible.
That meansprimarily using Fire damage characters, with Imaginary and Lightning units as backups. You’ll want to ensure yourhighest-damage character has a higher Speed scoreas well to give them the best chance of acting before the bosses and starting to soften up their Toughness early.
