UE 4.25.3 - can't make layered animations to work

Hello.

I want to make my character’s upper body animations not connected to the lower body. For example, I have this set of animations:
Running
Jumping
Crouching
Kick
Sliding
Idle with sword
Sword attack

I need the idle with sword and sword attack animations override upperbody for every other animation, but the slide and kick. So, I want my character to hold his hand with the sword in front and do sword attack even while running and jumping.

I tried using layered animation like in every tutorial on Youtube. I created the upperbody slot, created a montage for my desired upperbody animation, added the Layered blend per bone node in the animBP and set the bone there, but it doesn’t work. I don’t know if I’ve missed something.

state machine cache?

Could you screenshot your anim blueprint and tell us what actually happens? Does only the lower body anim play? Does only the upper body anim play? Does nothing play? What are the symptoms?