Search and Hide Actions (HALP)

[Spiritchaser]

Being unseen (i.e. heavily obscured) is pre-requisite to being hidden (ignoring specific exceptions that allow you hide while only, partially obscured, like lightfoot halfling and wood elf racial abilities),

Well, no.

The requirement in the PHB, pg 177 is that you can’t hide from creatures that can see you CLEARLY (emphasis mine)

Now, early copies of the PHB lacked that critical word “clearly”, however this was corrected in errata.