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I'm getting the games set up for our Christmas party next weekend, and, as you will all know, Super Smash Bros Ultimate released today. Super Smash Bros is much more fun with all of the characters unlocked, so I would like to have them unlocked by then. I've heard you can unlock fighters by playing World of Light, but I've also heard that takes 20 hours to do. I don't have that kind of time. How can I quickly fill out my roster of 69 fighters and their echo fighters?

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    It appears that there is some variety of unlock order at least in a google spreadsheet source
    – Unionhawk ♦
    Dec 7, 2018 at 19:37
  • One is to do a classic battle, then quit game and relaunch... rinse and repeat
    – A P
    Oct 26 at 12:43

5 Answers 5

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What I did was set up a 20 minute match and just play it and when its done you should get a new challenger. After you beat it, go to the home menu, close smash, then reopen it. This resets the 10 minute timer to a new challenger. Set up a match with one stock then immediately jump off the stage. You will then get a new challenger. After beating it, close the game, reopen and repeat.

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  • @Wondercricket. I thought 69 was the total number of fighters in Ultimate. Shouldn't the number of unlockable characters be way lower than that?
    – Nolonar
    Dec 7, 2018 at 16:44
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    @Nolonar You start the game with the Original 8 Characters from Smash 64 (Mario, Link, Pikachu, Samus, DK, Yoshi, Fox, Kirby) and then can unlock new characters in roughly release order (ie, we unlocked Ness, from 64, before Ice Climbers, from Melee) just by playing multiplayer matches
    – Malco
    Dec 7, 2018 at 17:39
  • Do you have a ballpark estimate on how long it would take to unlock everyone with this method? Or at least an approximate time/character?
    – ThunderGuppy
    Dec 7, 2018 at 18:07
  • @Malco fwiw, the anecdote that you unlock in release order doesn't seem to hold, considering my first unlock was King K Rool
    – Unionhawk ♦
    Dec 7, 2018 at 18:09
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    @Unionhawk The 20 minute match is some sort of primer to get your first challenge out of the box. There's also some mechanic involving time played or distance walked before you get your next encounter, along with the 10 minute space between encounters. I believe this method is so that you have enough distance traveled for the game to keep giving you new encounters after you finish the short games. I haven't tested it, but people online seem to be suggesting that without the 20 minutes first, you would stop getting encounters before you actually unlock them all (haven't tested myself).
    – JMac
    Dec 10, 2018 at 14:50
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TL;DR: If you're doing this with friends, the fastest way is to play short VS mode matches. If you're doing this by yourself, the fastest way is to beat Classic mode with every character.

IGN published a comprehensive unlock guide earlier this week, which details VS mode (and other playtime modes), Classic Mode, and World of Light as unlock methods.

According to the article, World of Light is the slowest way to unlock characters, and the fact that it unlocks characters at all is essentially a user-friendliness condolence. However, the unlock fights for the other two methods get progressively harder as you unlock more fighters, so WoL can be a good way to unlock the last few more easily, since not only do they keep their set difficulty level, you can also reattempt the fights there as many times as you like and can equip spirits to balance the fight in your favor.

The fastest way to unlock characters with multiple players is via playtime (VS is most common, but I've also gotten these fights on my way out of the Spirits modes). The game keeps track of how much players move their characters, which builds faster as you get more people. Once you get an unlock fight, however, you either have to wait 10 more minutes or close and reopen the game before you can unlock again. Characters unlocked this way follow a deterministic order, but not really any discernible pattern.

The fastest way to unlock characters by yourself is through Classic mode. Each Classic mode completion, regardless of the VS mode cool down, will present an unlock fight. This is also mostly deterministic - a few characters appear randomly, but most of the other characters are organized into "unlock paths" for each of the eight starting characters, in which the next character on the unlock path will present itself if you beat Classic Mode for the first time either with that starter character or anyone else on their path.

Note that with both of these latter two methods, the critical bit is being presented with the unlock fight, not actually winning it. If you fail an unlock fight, you reattempt it through the "Challenger Approach" mode, which appears intermittently on the Games and More screen as a set of double doors. In this mode, you can pick any character to do the fight with, so instead of being stuck with whoever you were playing as, you can approach the fight with your main or a hard counter to the character.

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  • FlatFoot's method is way faster than playing classic mode.
    – Seiyria
    Dec 8, 2018 at 5:02
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    @Seiyria I do mention game resetting in my answer, though admittedly not very clearly - I have heard differing opinions on whether or not that actually works, or if Nintendo had patched it out. If it does work, then cool, though in any case, this is still probably the fastest stable way to get all the characters, and is also the fastest way to get to a single specific character (e.g. Ganondorf, who comes 44th in the VS order but 4th in Yoshi's Classic Mode order).
    – TheHans255
    Dec 8, 2018 at 5:26
  • Resetting the game definitely works, but it seems to stop working for a while after you do it too many times in a row. Both methods are fairly fast. Classic mode has the advantage of allowing you to go for a particular fighter (see the spreadsheet in my comment above)
    – Unionhawk ♦
    Dec 8, 2018 at 12:12
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I've found a solution that might be labelled as a hack, yet it works just fine and I've not found any drawbacks yet.

  • Step 1 : Make a smash rule where you're limited to omega stages, with one life and no timeout.
  • Step 2 : Do a fight with these rules. (Suicide works, but it's less fun.)
  • Step 3 : Press the home button on your controller.
  • Step 4 : Restart the game. (so you've got to press x to quit ssbu then start it again)
  • Step 5 : Do another fight.
  • Step 6 : Challenger !
  • Step 7 : Repeat from Step 4 after beating/losing against the challenger.

In 2 hours or so you should have everyone unlocked.

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The fastest way I've found is by using World of Light to trigger approaching challengers. My workflow looked like the following:

  1. Go into World of Light and fight and win a spirit/character battle.
  2. Back out of world of light all the way to the title screen (where you are when the game first launches).
  3. This will trigger a challenger approaching battle
  4. Go to the Switch home page and quit the Smash Bro.'s software. (this will reset the timer)
  5. Open Smash Bro.'s Ultimate.
  6. Go back to Step 1.

I was able to unlock a challenger once every 5 minutes or so (depending on how hard the World of Light battle was).

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Go into Super Sudden Death and kill your opponent immediately. Now quit the game and wait ten minutes. Then go back into the game, do another Super Sudden Death, and the challenger should approach. Repeat the process.

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