Infinity Nikki’s styling challenges are the centrepiece of the experience and the best way to put all the outfits and clothing pieces you collect and craft to good use.
Players will encounter a lot of these challenges during the main story, but there are also a number of side challenges in each major location where players must excel at making Nikki’s outfit score as high as possible based on the challenge criteria.
There are five outfit or clothing types in total: Elegant, Sweet, Cool, Fresh, and Sexy. There are also five score categories that each outfit will factor into during the final assessment of each challenge: Hair, Clothes, Shoes, Accessories, and Eureka (the fairies flying beside you). The score meter will get a boost if your outfit is “Cool” as the challenge criteria displays, but also has a decent score level to get you through the assessment.
To get through the assessment, Nikki’s clothing has to pass the Perfect mark (in the main story challenges) or at least pass the Normal mark (in side challenges). There are actually four different assessment levels in side challenges: Normal, Average, Great and Perfect. But players don’t have to worry about getting Perfect in them. The catch is that the score requirement for Normal in these side challenges is usually higher than in the main story challenges and requires more effort and upgrading/customization to get your score to the required number.
The question is, how do you win these challenges in a smart way, without draining all your resources and time?
The first thing that players often overlook when deciding on an outfit is that “not every outfit needs to be upgraded or even fit the challenge criteria to pass“. Personally, I have passed many challenges just by upgrading my Eureka and footwear, and some others just by investing in my hair and a few accessories. There are some challenges that require you to fulfil a dual criteria, such as being “cool” and “sexy” at the same time, but these are very few and far between and are limited to side challenges, so you will never come across something like this in the main story.
This leads us to the second important point, which is “Do not do the side styling challenges until you have reached the end of the main story”. There are many advantages to doing this. First, you will have accumulated enough Bling, Purity Threads, and Shiny Bubbles by then to upgrade your clothing pieces and get a good score without doing too much effort. Second, as you travel, you will explore many locations and acquire many clothing pieces and sets from secret chests around the world. These can save you the hassle of having to upgrade something to a certain level when you can just utilize clothing pieces with higher scores from the start.
It should be noted that for players to know if a clothing piece is good or not, they have to look at the rank of the criteria (cool, elegant, etc..) and check its grade (whether it is B, A, S or SS). The highest is SS and that’s what players should aim for when choosing their clothes. There’s also a button that allows players to filter their clothes based on the grade/criteria and another button that allows them to review previous challenge scores and find out where their outfit is.
The third thing that comes from starting these advanced side challenges later in the game is that you unlock the Challenge Realms, which allow you to easily grind the materials you need to upgrade your clothing. The Realm of Escalation gives you generous amounts of Bling, Thread of Purity, and Shiny Bubbles in exchange for crafting materials and crystals that regenerate daily. In your first few days with Infinity Nikki, you may be confused by the amount of currencies and interconnected systems at play. If you are confused, just focus on collecting daisies along your journey or any flowers and regularly trading them in for the aforementioned items; it will come in handy later in the game when you need to unlock the Miracle Outfit and win the styling challenges.
Finally, and this is probably the most important item on the list, when you get access to the game’s skill tree (called the Heart of Infinity), try to unlock every node on the right side as much as possible. These are all skills that will give you extra bonuses for your stylish challenge scores and outfit pieces. I spent most of my time early in the game grinding and unlocking them so I wouldn’t have to stop every now and then because I didn’t have the right outfit for every challenge or, more specifically, outfits with a good score level.
Of course, let’s not forget that Infinity Nikki is first and foremost a Gacha game. So there’s a couple of ways to just get good outfits with good grades, and it depends mostly on your luck. The first way is to use diamonds to roll the banners and get unique clothes with high stats or parameters. There’s also the bling gacha machine, Surprise-O-Matic in the first town, Florawish, which can give you clothes in exchange for Bling. Don’t forget that you can grind as much bling as you can for cheap materials in the Realm of Escalation.
There is a way to evolve your outfits in the evolution menu using a currency known as Calm Thoughts, which you can get more of after chapter 7 in the Realm of Breakthrough. But keep in mind that these evolutions are for cosmetic purposes and don’t affect your score or ranking. You will want to focus more on the Shining Particles from the Mira Journey (similar looking to a Battle Pass), as they are the currency used to upgrade Eurekas, an important aspect of winning Styling Challenges.
Following these tips should give you a great edge in the many styling challenges throughout Infinity Nikki; also, keep an eye out for any redeemable codes that may give you extra currency.
