Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@Ryu_Niiyama Massive endgame spoilers for both Xenoblades 1 & 2 ahead: At the end of Xenoblade 2, when you meet the Architect and learn about the conduit, it's shown how half of Klaus is in a new dimension along with presumably the female scientist. I think that the other dimension is the world of Xenoblade 1, where half of Klaus and the female scientist became Zanza and Meyneth in that world (and also Shulk and Fiora), which may be why they're treated with a godlike status. Haven't played X so I don't know how that fits in.

@NinjaAceTrainer Yeah sounds about right. I do love how these powerful cpus make the game 3dprinters and petri dishes on steroids.

@EvilLucario Well yeah the science = divinity after a point and man becomes a creator of sentient beings in some point and chaos eventually ensues sounds about right.

I liked Xenoblade 2's combat system when I finally understood it. Some franchises should stay turn based forever though for the main games (e.g. Pokemon).

@AlternateButtons What do you mean by "there isn't enough time"? Is it that you're killing the enemy before you can get another orb or that you're not able to activate a stage of the blade combo in time?

If the former then you could try going against more difficult enemies, if the latter you could take advantage of Mythra's ability to recharge arts by a certain amount if you land a critical hit (Lightspeed Fury in the affinity chart).

@AlternateButtons It doesn't take too long to regain the bar lost by reviving though. You may want to look your party's accessories if you feel it does, there's an accessory for example which fills up the party gauge by about half a bar for every "excellent" special.

@AlternateButtons You can only have 1 orb of each element. I'll give an example, let's say you do Supernova followed by Nuclear Blast:

Photon (Light) -> Gamma Ray (Light) -> Supernova (Light)
Heat (Fire) -> Burnout (Fire) -> Nuclear Blast (Light)

You will still only have 1 orb circling the enemy because the final stage of both blade combos is light and you can only have a maximum of 1 orb for each element.

So you use the chart on the side of the screen to help you form combos of different elements, so say if you went with Mega Explosion (Fire) instead of Nuclear Blast (Light) for the 3rd stage of the second combo you'd have 2 orbs circling the enemy.

@AlternateButtons Wait a bit after each blade combo so that each party member can build up their specials. Also pay attention to whoever's special becomes ready first, as they can therefore charge their specials more quickly, and you can use them for the level 3 finisher, as they should have it built up. Your party members will always switch to a blade with an element that can carry on a blade combo, if they have a blade with the right element, so that shouldn't be a problem.

As mentioned above by GrumbleVolcano, criticals are amazing for refilling both the party gauge and special meter. I actually centered Rex around the use of criticals, with an accessory to boost crit rate and one to restore health upon critical hits, and seeing as I mostly used Mythra, Agate and Roc with core chips and aux cores centered around criticals, I restored health, dealt damage, filled the party gauge on virtually every hit and did all of the above and refilled the special gauge on every art, and refilled most arts on using arts. When combined with the arts chain affinity reward, I could just spam Double Spinning Edge and Rolling Smash, and Bold Tackle for Agate, fill both the party gauge and special meter and without the need to use any auto-attacks inbetween.

Long story short: exploit Rex's criticals. If you need more help, activate the Aegis' true form and your special instantly gets bumped up to level 3 and you can use any element to boot, so no blade combo is out of reach, especially with all the critical arts/special restoring shenanigans. Hope this helps!
EDIT: @GrumbleVolcano 's advice should also help in conjunction with this.

@AlternateButtons No problem. The game tells you about element orbs when you fight Akhos in Garfont , by the way.

@AlternateButtons Yeah, the tutorials are pretty awful, especially as you can't go back and view them like in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Speaking of things that are awful, does anyone else hate Aux Cores? Such a pain to equip, and even more tedious to activate. When I got to Indol, I decided for the first time since Torigoth to activate all of my Aux Cores. Took me an hour just to flick through the same menu over and over again. And by the end if the game, the Aux Cores that I have activated represent about 5% of all of my Aux Cores. Mathematically, it would take me 19 hours to activate all of them, just for some passive bonuses, and I've played for 150 hours, so just activating all of my Aux Cores would take up more than 10% of my playthrough. How ridiculous is that?

What's the point in refining and wasting materials on aux cores if you're not actually using them? I only spend a bit of time refining if there's cores I want on a fresh blade that aren't refined yet, then I scarcely need to touch them again.

@AlternateButtons The only things worth selling are treasures obtained from salvaging (preferably at various traders who accept different ''bundles'' for fat sums of cash and boosters) and accessories. Everything else offers too little to be worth selling except very early on in the game.

@meleebrawler It's also worth selling boosters if you have all the Rare Blades as reaching the limit of boosters means you can't trade things.

@meleebrawler That's the point. I refined all of the Aux Cores I had at Indol, then never went back to an Aux Core refinery, because I already had loads (even if 90% of them weren't very helpful) and didn't see the point in wasting materials for Aux Cores. I also couldn't be bothered, as not only was the prospect of 2-19 (2 for good Aux Cores only) hours of Aux Core refining, which is possibly a week's worth of playtime, unappealing, but I also didn't like equipping them, as most of them were tat, meaning that equipping them was virtually pointless, and flicking through more menus just makes it a chore. So I just didn't bother.

@NinjaAceTrainer You still didn't answer my question of what you do all your refined cores, since you can't possibly have all of them equipped at once if you've refined as many as you claim. Do you sell them? Or are they just sitting in your inventory? It's a complete and utter waste if the latter is true.

Scrolling through a very long list for the kind you want late in the game can be a bit tedious, but it's more than balanced by how infrequently I actually need to do so. I have hundreds of unrefined cores in my inventory, but only about 20 or so refined; that's not a testament to the dull nature of the activity, but simple frugality. Do you forge decorations in Monster Hunter just because you can?

@meleebrawler Sorry, didn't get the Monster Hunter analogy, as I don't play it, but yes, I do have a lot of refined cores just sitting around, I just keep them spare incase I need to give some to new blades, as I have so many Aux Cores. Honestly didn't even realise that you could sell them. Not a perfect system, but it's worked for me, and there's no reason for me to go back and refine good Aux Cores or sell ones that I don't need, because I'm done with the game until all/most of the dlc gets released.

http://www.siliconera.com/2018/02/02/monolith-soft-boss-talks...

Holy s*** Monolith Soft is only 100 people studio?! And they made XC2 with 40 core people and 40 extra from somewhere else... Damn. And it's still such a great game too...

@darkfenrir Yup. They're such an efficient studio.

Meanwhile you got Square Enix who took forever with Final Fantasy Versus XIII until it turned into XV which had a much bigger budget and stuff, and the Final Fantasy VII Remake that we still know next to nothing about.

When you look at the two and compare, it's pretty hilarious. Granted, Square does have much more polished games, but still the speed at how quickly Monolith works while still delivering quality is insane.

@EvilLucario Agreed completely. But then again, the bigger the studio, the more bureaucratic mess you have to deal that can make things into a mess... XD

Can't wait to try ffxv and see how it compares still really riding on the high of finishing xc2 haha

@AlternateButtons For the food sidequests, just buy the maximum amount of one kind of food, as it's easy to find atleast one kind, and they are usually inexpensive.
As for the rare blades, as far as I know, the only thing that you can do is increase luck and total idea points. Some deeds can increase Idea Point gains, such as Fishy Fishy in Argentum, and increasing trust on common blades by sending them on Merc Missions can actually gain the Idea Points, and accessories can be used to quickly boost luck. The odds are still stacked against you, annoyingly. If you are willing to use up your Overdrive Protocols, you can try to bond blades only to the driver who has the highest idea points and luck, then transferring the blade to the driver that you want to have that blade, but they are limited, so choose wisely. Not a great answer, but I hope that it helps nonetheless.

@AlternateButtons yea, the legendary core crystals shouldn't even be named that. It's stupid when you get a 2 star derp blade from a "legendary" item.

@AlternateButtons Yeah, I've used about 8 legendary cores and not one rare blade. I eventually just decided to sell them. Rare cores are just common enough to be used repeatedly for a while, and I've got 80-90% of my rare blades from them. Even more annoyingly, Tora has the highest luck stat...
Oh, and for the cooking, if you talk to Corrinne, you can get another recipe for free, aswell as some informants selling recipes, Torigoth's informant definitely sells one, which means that you can use some ingredients that you may already have on hand, instead of having to scavenge for them. If you want to make a Glitterbake, all that you need should be in Goldmouth Flight Deck and Gormott, particularly Dawnview Grotto for efficiency.