My New 3DSXL is very hacked and is very much region free but it was not the easiest of hacks to follow and did end up updating my o3DSXL instead of updating the Emulated Nand (Red Nand I think it was) hence I sold that and got a New 3DSXL and hacked it the same day I got it
My Vita is also Soft modded though that was very very easy to mod, takes seconds to do, you basically visit a web page, but you must be on a certain firmware, I also dpne my Playstation TV with the same soft mod (it's a TV box not an actual TV) it's basically a Vita that connects to a TV again very easy to do
Wololo is your best bet for hacking the 3DS though just be careful with it and take each step slowly re-read and double check everything as you go, though there is an emu-nand guide for playing region free also but that has a bit involved in it and again only doable on certain firmware versions not all and reasonably easy to mess up
Region Free patching is very much an option though and a reasonably simply process, but you do need to decrypt the game before you can get to the patching stage but has no chance of effecting the 3DS in any negative way
Youtube may have region free guides though I would be inclined to patch the games for your region rather than region free that may not work with the kit you are using (Just Decrypt a game from your region first take note of the Hex located in the same pos as the guides state to change and copy that into any game you want to change the region in)
the 3DS tool called regionthree is also worth a look at and is another more simple way to play region free including from the Sky3DS kit
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