Problem with z-indexes for a character with a beard and a mustache

[Xilexio]

I am making my first character mod, where the character has long hair, a permanent beard about the length of Wilson's largest beard, and a mustache. The natural z-index order of layers should be as on the first image below: mustache, nose and face on the top, then hair, then beard. However, the beard in DST is a layer above everything, so I put the beard into the headbase. Everything looks fine from the front and side, but when looking from behind, it turns out that headbase is in front of arms, resulting in beard appearing in front of arms. I made my character from the Extended Sample Character template.

How can I fix that? Ideally, I'd like to change the z-index of headbase to be behind arms when facing upwards.

I already tried a few things:
1. OverrideSymbol("beard", ...) - like Wilson's beard - this did not work well, because it was in front of mustache and hair. When I made mustache part of beard, it was even more messed up, because it was getting separated from the nose when the character was "breathing" or doing emotes, and still was in front of the hair.
2. Editing z-indexes, ordering on xml elements and pretty much everything possible in scml file - I was editing the xml manually in various ways, but the changes were present only in Spriter, not in the game. I think the game does not care at all about ordering and z-indexes of layers in Spriter, and has real z-indexes hardcoded for each layer. Is that the case?
3. Making front and side like described above, and using Wilson-like beard only when the character is facing upwards. I based this idea on assymetric character design posted on this forum. I did this by AnimState:Hide("beard") (and Show), depending on the direction the character was facing during locomote events. However, it does not work when character is doing some kind of animation when facing upwards (e.g. talking), because then he has a double beard when facing front, because last locomote event indicated going upwards.
4. Splitting beard or mustache in 2 or more layers - it just does not work, since the layers are moving in different directions in game (e.g. when the character is "breathing"), messing up the lines.

How can I make the beard show properly below hair and mustache during all animations?

[Andreasgamming]

The best thing I can tell you is editing the sprite it's self to compensate for the arm. how dst puts the character together in game is different from what it looks like in spriter. I have a similar problem with my character. Make sure you back up your original sprite in case it doesn't look right in-game.

[Xilexio]

You mean that I should draw arm over the beard in headbase when facing upwards? This won't work, as the arm is constantly moving, and sometimes it's holding items. It'd look like an arm and parts of another arm then. It'd be even worse than occasional double beard when facing front.