Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@kyleforrester87 yea that's how I'm playing it.. before i started this game, i loved the concept of an rpg where your party members point of joining is left to chance because of the variety between play throughs and i fully intended to play this game multiple times in my life so i don't care if i only have half the blades.. you can only use so many and it's annoying swapping them around too much anyway.. so why would i want to grind all the blades out that i don't even need when it would be 1000000x more fun to get them on a second play through and not knowing anything about their quests and affinity trees.
Not to mention opening core crystals back to back is boring af and i want to have fun so i only open a few at a time but i do open them all.. no way I'm going to grind them out, it's hard enough opening the ones i already get.

@Inertiacreep Yeah just play a 100 hour game again to save time. Good idea there.

@iLikeUrAttitude so you did basically everything and played 176 hours and you say you're "already burnt out"? Sounds like you got your monies worth my friend, time to wait for the DLC me thinks!

@kyleforrester87 Well pretty much, though I'm still going to do some sidequests and what not and get a few more hours worth. At least until I get another Switch game - specifically multiplayer: either ARMS, Splatoon 2, or Mario Kart 8 DX

Yep, time for me to sign out myself. 150 hours clocked on my Switch timer, 200 in game timer... until the DLC drops it's off to the races with Monster Hunter.

I'll be back when the new story content hits. But I will be making a point to revisit the original Xenoblade Chronicles on PC where I can enjoy it in 4K and a proper controller, and I'd also like to squeeze in the GameCube's Xenoblade before there was Xenoblade... Baten Kaitos. At some point this year anyways.

@AlternateButtons Fizz Juice isn't a staple food, it's a drink.

There's 2 types of pouch item requirements:

• Use [insert blade]'s favourite pouch items. ([insert category] category)
• Use [insert blade]'s favourite pouch item from the [insert category] category.

The former is just using any item from the specific category whereas the latter is finding out the blade's favourite item in a specific category.

@AlternateButtons Fizz Juice is her favorite for Drink Category, but she likes any Staple Food, just put in 4 staple food to tora's pouch and you are good to go

@AlternateButtons You're literally the first person I seen complain about field skills and get confused about pouch items.

Woot! Finally pulled Dahlia tonight! (and Finch, but who cares)

Also completed the sidequests that netted me Vess & Poppi QTπ. Although I can't awaken Vess yet.

@RR529 Hey I like Finch :/

@AlternateButtons Any staple foods worked, you just had to use staple foods a total of 4 times.

@AlternateButtons old school games used to make you figure out all kinds of things and that was half the fun.. now this generation of gamers cries if their hand isn't held in every game.

I've actually had good luck guessing characters' favorite pouch items so far.

Poppi has very Nopon like tendencies, due to her creator, and I've found that items from Argentum usually go over really well with her, for example.

@RR529 What are you talking about?! Finch is OP! xD

RIght now I'm down to three random Rare Blades.

To be honest, I personally think the rarity of Rare Blades is overblown... until you get down to like 5 or less Rare Blades left where THEN your chances plummet. As of now I haven't been going out my way to farm Legendary Core Crystals and I haven't boosted up my Luck as much as I could, so at the moment I'm not complaining yet. That may change if I go like 100+ Cores dry, but even so I don't see it detrimental for a main story playthrough. I went through the game just fine opening Cores when I got them and using them.

A bigger problem is the lack of plentiful Overdrive Protocols. During the story, you don't get a lot, and you won't know that you shouldn't bond Blades with Rex for optimal passing around of Blades, and you may want to use other characters aside from Tora. I personally think that it should cost you like 100k gold with a multitude of collectibles to make one while releasing 4-star common Blades with completed affinity charts give something else.

Wulfric is my fave Blade so far. Looking forward to unlocking some more

Update! Good news! After 510 or so crystals, I have finally pulled Newt! Now all that remains is, of course, Kos-Mos (Somehow I just knew I would get her last)

But, I have a good rythem going now, get home from work, eat dinner, turn on Netflix or Twtich, grind up 100ish core crystals and open them up. The Krabels from the dock in Mor Ardain basically always give at least a common. With Adiene's item boosting ability, they usualy drop a common and a rare. I buy 99 normal cylinders, salvage from the dock, deliberately mess up the button prompt by mashing A, this means I get no chest usually (though once I got a white gold despite this, lol) and only kill the krabbles. Takes about 2.5 - 3 hours to go through the whole process.

I am very stubborn, though I really hope it doesn't take this long, if it takes me another 2 weeks of doing this almost every day, well, I am gonna get Kos-Mos and I am gonna finish this game 100%! Or at the very least do all the quests and merc missions and get all the blades and do their personal quests. I don't know how silly this game is gonna get with post-game super bosses.

@EvilLucario I can't see them not changing the ability to switch Blades between Drivers in later updates.. or at least increasing the number of overdrive protocols.

@Tsurii I do have the spoiler blade in question, but I am only on chapter 8. The method I outlined gets me roughly 80-120 crystals with each haul and the time I described includes the time spent opening the Crystals. How many do you get using your method?

@Knighty_IX LOL