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In His Own Image, awarded for completing Valor Mortis, is the set’s hardest trophy overall. It is not a single secret boss trick: you must maintain reliable parries, posture breaks, Critical Attacks, equipment choices and resource management throughout the campaign. The one trophy that can permanently block a clean sweep is Abyssal Eviction, because Shield Transmutation must reach level 5 before the two available maximum-level materials are spent elsewhere. Once the full arsenal is unlocked, Jackknife becomes a controlled late-game challenge rather than a blind story attempt.
What makes Valor Mortis’s hardest trophies difficult?
Valor Mortis has a compact trophy list, but its difficulty is concentrated in execution and planning. PowerPyx estimates the complete set at about 5/10 difficulty and 15–25 hours for a platinum run. There are no difficulty options and no online trophies, so every combat requirement is earned under the same gameplay rules. Most trophies are tied to story progression or exploration; the demanding exceptions test either campaign consistency, scarce upgrade materials or disciplined use of the complete weapon roster.
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| Set fact | What it means for your run |
|---|---|
| Total trophies | 39 |
| Platinum | 1 |
| Gold | 3 |
| Silver | 14 |
| Bronze | 21 |
| Estimated difficulty | About 5/10, according to PowerPyx (2026) |
| Estimated platinum time | 15–25 hours, according to PowerPyx (2026) |
| Missable trophies | 1 |
| Online trophies | None |
The practical difficulty comes from converting defense into damage. A successful parry reduces an enemy’s posture; when the posture bar breaks, the resulting Critical Attack window is your safest opportunity for major damage. Bosses also punish a fixed loadout, so a weapon or Transmutation that works in one encounter may be a poor answer in the next.
How the combat system supports trophy progress
Parry until posture breaks
Against a difficult enemy, do not treat the parry as a one-time counterattack. Build a repeatable loop: read the incoming strike, parry, confirm the posture loss, then continue until the break occurs. Use the Critical Attack prompt immediately when it appears. Practise this rhythm on ordinary enemies in each chapter before attempting a boss. The goal is not merely to survive; it is to make posture damage predictable enough that a boss attempt has a plan.
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- HARNESS CORRUPTED POWER - Each death is a chance to grow stronger. Master a combat system of parries, dashes, and visceral finishers across a variety of weapons. Channel your power to enhance attacks and unlock new supernatural abilities to inflict upon your enemies.
- SECRETS LITTER THE BATTLEFIELD - Navigate a 19th-century alternate history where the costs of endless war have corrupted the landscape. Use your newfound mobility to outmaneuver the plague-ridden abominations of Napoleon’s Eternal Guard and uncover environmental secrets that may increase your chances of survival.
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Use Target Lock and Combat Assist deliberately
Target Lock keeps your character aligned with a selected enemy, which is especially useful when a boss moves around the arena or when a parry attempt requires precise facing. If your attacks regularly miss because of spacing or camera movement, enable Combat Assist rather than repeating the same failed input pattern. These tools do not replace timing, but they remove avoidable alignment errors that can turn a successful defense into a whiffed punish.
Recognise attacks that cannot be parried
The combat guidance demonstrates at least one ranged attack that cannot be parried. When an attack has that property, forcing a parry is a losing trade. Create distance, dodge through the attack if the timing is safe, or reposition until the projectile or line of fire is no longer a threat. Learning which animations require movement is part of the same discipline as learning a parry window.
Exploit the healing rule
Melee strikes restore health, while Ferrofluid Flasks no longer heal. Survival therefore depends on accurate aggression rather than waiting for a flask to rescue a bad exchange. After a successful parry or posture break, stay close enough to land reliable melee hits, but disengage when the enemy begins an un-parryable sequence. Trading damage randomly is not healing; controlled melee pressure is.
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For difficult fights, prioritise Catalysts for Maximum Health and Melee Damage. More health gives you room to learn a pattern, while melee damage shortens the number of cycles required to reach a posture break or finish a vulnerable phase. This is a general build priority, not a requirement for every trophy; change it if your current loadout solves a specific encounter more effectively.
Hardest trophies by execution, preparation and failure cost
| Trophy or group | Requirement | Primary demand | Best timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| In His Own Image | Complete the game | Sustained execution across the entire campaign | Story completion |
| Abyssal Eviction | Upgrade Shield Transmutation to level 5 | Resource planning; only two maximum-level materials are available | Before those materials are committed elsewhere |
| Jackknife | Deal damage with every melee weapon, firearm and Transmutation without dying | Full-arsenal preparation and a no-death sequence | Late-game or post-story cleanup |
| Story boss trophies | Defeat the bosses on the campaign route | Learning each boss’s attack pattern and adapting equipment | During the relevant chapters |
| Exploration and side-content trophies | Find the required areas, Ambers or activities | Thorough revisiting rather than combat mastery | After the final boss, where applicable |
This ranking explains why In His Own Image is called the hardest overall trophy even though it has no special unlock condition. A single difficult encounter can be retried; a full completion requires you to keep the combat fundamentals working through every later chapter. Abyssal Eviction has the highest planning risk, and Jackknife has the clearest failure condition once the story is finished.
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Boss progression and a safe story route
Know the early sequence
The roadmap identifies General Lothaire as the first main boss, The Iron Marshall as the second and the Sphinx as the third. Later chapters continue the same story-driven boss progression. Boss trophies are attached to this route, so defeating the required encounters normally awards them without a separate challenge mode or alternate difficulty.
Prepare before entering an arena
- Spend available Catalysts on the health and melee-damage improvements that support your current build.
- Review your Transmutations, firearms and inventory items instead of carrying the same setup by habit.
- Enter with Target Lock enabled if camera alignment has caused missed attacks.
- Identify the boss’s ordinary parryable strike and its movement-based or ranged attacks.
- Use the first attempts to map timing and spacing; do not burn every resource trying to force a fast kill.
Xbox’s launch guidance emphasises that every major boss has a strategy that works best against it. In practice, that means changing the counter-plan when a fight stalls. A different Transmutation may control distance better, a firearm may punish an opening that melee cannot reach, and an inventory item may let you reset the tempo. Repeating an ineffective loadout is not persistence; it is a diagnostic signal to change something.
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Turn each failed attempt into one adjustment
After a death, record the specific cause: missed parry, incorrect response to a ranged attack, poor spacing, or insufficient damage during a vulnerability window. Then alter one variable. If you change the weapon, Transmutation, camera aid and approach simultaneously, you will not know which decision helped. Controlled adjustments make the campaign’s later bosses easier to read and directly support the consistency required for In His Own Image.
Abyssal Eviction: secure the only missable trophy
Understand the material limit
Abyssal Eviction requires Shield Transmutation to reach level 5. PowerPyx reports that only two maximum-level upgrade materials are available, making the trophy missable if those materials are spent on another upgrade first. This is the one requirement that should remain visible on your checklist from the start of the campaign.
Use this tracking procedure
- As soon as a maximum-level Shield Transmutation material appears, note that you have obtained it rather than assuming more will drop later.
- Keep both required materials reserved for Shield Transmutation; do not spend them on a competing upgrade while the level-5 requirement is incomplete.
- Check the Shield Transmutation upgrade screen after each major chapter to confirm the current level and remaining material requirement.
- Before confronting the final boss, verify that Shield Transmutation is level 5 and that the trophy condition has registered.
The broader cleanup plan is forgiving: prior areas remain accessible after the final boss, and the roadmap does not require a level-select system for general cleanup. That flexibility does not restore materials already consumed, which is why Abyssal Eviction must be handled before you commit scarce resources.
In His Own Image: the campaign-long endurance test
Completing the game awards In His Own Image, the trophy identified as the hardest in the set. There is no separate difficulty setting to lower and no online assistance to substitute for execution. Your best strategy is to make every chapter a training loop for the next one.
Build consistency on regular enemies
Use common encounters to practise the exact habits that bosses demand: wait for the attack cue, parry instead of panic-dodging, continue until posture breaks, and take the Critical Attack without overextending. This also teaches which ranged animations cannot be parried and how much melee pressure is needed to restore health safely.
Keep your setup adaptable
Do not lock yourself into a single Transmutation or firearm combination because it succeeded earlier. Carry options that cover close-range pressure, distance and crowd control, then select the combination that matches the next encounter. When a boss repeatedly survives with a sliver of health, increasing Melee Damage or changing the damage tool can be more effective than attempting a riskier parry chain.
Protect the run from avoidable deaths
Deaths do not create a special campaign penalty for In His Own Image, but they cost time and can derail a later Jackknife attempt. Treat unfamiliar attacks as information, not invitations to trade hits. Re-enter an arena only after you can explain what killed you and what input will answer it next time.
Jackknife: a controlled full-arsenal cleanup
Wait until the arsenal is complete
Jackknife requires damage with every melee weapon, every firearm and every Transmutation, with no death during the sequence. The index labels it as a late-game cleanup trophy. Attempting it before the full arsenal is available creates unnecessary backtracking and makes it easy to forget an item.
Make an inventory checklist
- List each melee weapon and mark it only after a confirmed damage hit.
- List each firearm and verify a damaging shot rather than a miss or a blocked projectile.
- List every Transmutation and record a successful damaging activation.
- Keep one safe, controllable encounter available for testing so you are not experimenting in a lethal arena.
Run the sequence without gambling
- Choose an area where enemy behaviour is familiar and there is enough space to recover from a missed input.
- Equip one item from the checklist and deal confirmed damage.
- Retreat, change to the next item and repeat; avoid unnecessary kills or risky shortcuts.
- If an enemy becomes unpredictable, reset the encounter rather than improvising a dangerous exchange.
- Continue until every melee weapon, firearm and Transmutation is checked and the trophy notification appears.
The no-death condition changes the objective. You are not speedrunning damage; you are eliminating uncertainty. Target Lock can prevent a weapon swap from turning into a missed attack, and Combat Assist is reasonable if alignment is the reason an otherwise safe test keeps failing.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Post-story cleanup and revisiting earlier areas
Most ordinary boss, exploration and side-content trophies can be cleaned up after the final boss because earlier areas remain accessible. Use that access to collect missed Ambers, revisit side paths and finish any non-missable combat tasks. The exception is the Shield Transmutation material economy described above; post-game access does not create replacement maximum-level materials.
A practical cleanup sweep
- Finish the story only after confirming the level-5 Shield Transmutation requirement for Abyssal Eviction.
- Return to earlier areas and clear unexplored branches, optional rooms and visible Amber pickups.
- Review the trophy list for any story boss entry that did not register and revisit the relevant route if the game allows it.
- Complete Jackknife with the full arsenal if it was not already earned.
- Use the remaining revisits for side content, checking each trophy immediately after its stated action.
Because there is no online trophy dependency, this sweep can be completed entirely through the single-player campaign and its accessible areas.
Troubleshooting difficult combat attempts
“My parries are late or inconsistent.”
Stop attacking first and watch the enemy’s release animation. Practise against one ordinary enemy until you can identify the moment the strike becomes active. Then apply the same timing to a boss rather than trying to learn parry timing while also managing several targets.
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Assume the move may be un-parryable, especially if it is ranged. Create space or reposition instead of forcing a counter. Change your firearm or Transmutation if the boss spends too much time outside reliable melee range.
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“I run out of health despite using Ferrofluid Flasks.”
Ferrofluid Flasks no longer heal. Recover through accurate melee strikes after a safe opening, and use Maximum Health Catalysts to increase your margin for error. If you cannot create safe melee openings, revisit the parry-and-posture loop rather than relying on consumables.
“I keep missing attacks after a successful defense.”
Enable Target Lock and consider Combat Assist. Confirm that the Critical Attack window is active before committing, then make sure your character is facing the staggered target. Alignment problems are often mistaken for damage or timing problems.
“I spent a rare material and now Abyssal Eviction is impossible.”
The trophy is missable because only two maximum-level materials are available. If both have been committed elsewhere, a normal area revisit will not replace them. Preserve a backup save where possible, or restart before the irreversible expenditure; do not assume the post-game cleanup route can repair the resource mistake.
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A trophy-focused order of operations
- Begin the campaign with the Shield Transmutation level-5 requirement written into your checklist.
- Practise parries and posture breaks on regular enemies in every new chapter.
- Use Target Lock or Combat Assist when alignment, not timing, causes misses.
- For each boss, identify the parryable attacks, the moves that require movement, and the loadout that creates the safest damage windows.
- Reserve the two maximum-level materials and confirm Abyssal Eviction before the final boss.
- Complete the story to earn In His Own Image, the hardest overall trophy.
- Unlock and catalogue the complete arsenal, then perform the no-death Jackknife sequence in a familiar area.
- Revisit earlier chapters for remaining Ambers, side content and ordinary trophies.
Following this order separates the three different kinds of difficulty: campaign endurance for In His Own Image, irreversible preparation for Abyssal Eviction, and controlled execution for Jackknife. It also leaves the forgiving exploration cleanup until the story route is complete.
Availability and equipment requirements
Valor Mortis is listed for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Game Pass. The trophy requirements described here do not depend on a particular physical edition, accessory or multiplayer service. A standard controller and the game’s built-in combat aids are sufficient; the deciding factors are timing, resource tracking and choosing an appropriate loadout for each encounter.
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