Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@jtmnm The reinforcements (Ghost Elma) are the cause of the lock, defeat them and you remove the lock.

What I did to beat her the second time was use the custom difficulty maximizing player benefits and minimizing enemy benefits leading to repeatedly using light combos with Mythra being an easy way to win. It's a cheap method but someday I plan to beat it normally.

@Grumblevolcano Got it! Thanks for clarifying that. I guess I managed to beat Elma the first time around without her using Ghost Factory. Wasn't aware that's what locks the party gauge! I may have to do what you did, too.

I did it, guys!

EvilLucario's advice really came in handy. I'll re-post it for any other potential challengers.

This provides an excellent foundation for anyone struggling with the challenge. As EvilLucario suggests, definitely use a dark seal as soon as possible, and then focus on the ghosts. I found Nia's Blade form (Still worth keeping secret?) to be more helpful here because of the passive health regen and healing art. Spamming Sword Bash from behind also proved to be useful while Tora and Morag tanked everything.

Anyway, now to journey out with Elma. Thanks again, guys! Good luck, everyone else!

I just saw the game now has Elma? AND Shulk? I saw shop with all three of them standing together. I've been totally out of the loop ever since I beat the game.

When the DLC drops that's going to be my excuse to go back and unlock these characters.

@JaxonH Took this earlier. I think you can appreciate it!

It's surreal, speaking—er, writing . . . as a Xeno fan since the PS1 days. I hope we'll see Fei, though it's probably unlikely due to the Xenogears license belonging to Squeenix.

I've been fiddling with Elma's Overdrive ability. It's almost as if they copied and pasted it directly from XCX. Not only is it crazy good, but it's just nice to see. This is the best DLC support I think I've ever seen.

@jtmnm I wish we can have Xenogears representation. The closest we got was Zeke's costume that makes him look more like Bart.

Alas, the most we'll probably realistically get is more indirect references and callbacks to the game, like how the World Tree = Eldridge, Jin = Krelian, Poppi = Emeralda, and how Xenoblade 1's endgame is literally Xenogears.

I completed the vanilla version 100%, all 47 vanilla blades at S+ Rank.
Can't wait for the physical Torna Expansion to get on with the rest of the game.

Anyone got good tactics for getting lots of Flawless Noponstones fast. Right now I'm using Torna's Finest on Easy which gives 5 each time and takes me 4-5 minutes. I checked and difficulty (Easy, Normal, Bringer of Chaos, Custom) doesn't affect the number of Flawless Noponstones received.

Chickenheart is giving me 10-15 each time.

@Trajan Thanks, that helps a lot. I guess it gives that much for the other level 99 challenges too but Chickenheart is by far the easiest of the bunch.

Are extra Aux Core and accessory slots a NG+ thing?

I'm trying to get a good enough team to handle stuff like Poisoned Paradise but the swimsuits are taking up too many slots.

Finally finished all the open quests, so I closed out the main story. Still a love hate relationship with Xenoblade. I love everything except the secondary mechanics . I have batches l maybe 8 rare blades. Did most of their quests. Screw Ursula. And grinding theorys quest by grinding praxis to trust lv5 aint happening. Yet i feel empty without the game.... Debating grinding non fun quests, ng+, it just doing octopath and squeezing Titan quest in until the 21st when torna physical arrives. (Darn all those loose ends in the story, though... )

@NEStalgia There's not really a lot of loose ends in the story tbh. Pretty much everything has closure in some way or form.

@Tsurii
It took you 2 hours on easy? Damn.

@EvilLucario there's lose ends, it at least incomplete pieces. The fact that a certain someone is even speaking to another certain someone at the be aion scene is interesting, where's #3 (unless that's a reference to alvis?) And if course we were intentionally not given details of the facts at the final scene, it the state of the current world which is ripe for a sequel now...

@NEStalgia #3 is indeed most likely a reference to the first game, so that aspect isn't really sequel bait. The ending could be if you wish to view it that way I suppose, but the overall story is still a complete one.

As for the first thing though, I didn't really think much of that personally. Is it a bit weird? I guess so. But it's not so much of a loose end as much as a weird thing that happened.

It may seem silly but I was very satisfied. I got 4 elemental orbs onto a special monster and it allowed me to rack up nearly 1 million damage at level 60 roughly. Felt good to pull it off. I wish I sadly couldn't swap to pyra for super saiyan form, so I imagine I could have reached 1 million with it.

I've been doing lots of quests before moving on. I haven't yet cashed in any xp at an inn, and I'm sort of considering not ever doing it since it seems that I'm getting enough xp doing the quests and going through the story.

At what point do you get access to the item(whatever its called) that lets you swap blades to new drivers? I have a really nice unique attack blade on nia I had hoped I'd get for zeke, though I might keep it with nia for extra deeps. But I did get ursula on zeke...and I want her elsewhere.

Also been lamenting the choice of nia driver or not. The internet seems split on how to have her. It just sucks that dromach is such a good base healer. I know mythra is broke as a joke, but I thought about making rex my main healer to swap to healing blades since I can use ursula with him that way and then just keep rex on mythra when the team doesn't need heals. Is that a decent plan? It seems pretty good to solve my problems right now, but I'm unsure. I'm using morag as a 3 tank user and is the only character I feel %100 locked into. Got lucky and have 3 unique tank blades on her, and I refuse to use tora so that is out of the question since I don't want to grind tiger tiger and its been fun since I gave up on tora.

@hirokun You looking for an Overdrive Protocol? They're rare consumables where you can only get 3 in the game by just finding in chests. Otherwise, you get one after finishing a Driver's skill chart, and you can farm them by training up 4-star common Blades, finishing their affinity chart, and then releasing them. Or just straight-up buy in NG+ for 1 million bonus XP.

Yeah, that system sucks. Overdrive Protocols shouldn't have needed to exist in the first place, or at least have had an easier way of getting.

About Nia, both options are good. I generally don't play with any healers at all after Chapters 5-6 to be frank, but both can make you immortal when you know what you're doing. Blade Nia is stupid good by endgame though, as with the proper build you can literally AFK bosses if you use her... at the cost of taking like a bajillion years.

Honestly, the combat is malleable to be whatever you want. Ursula is also another fantastic healer if you have an Overclocking Bangle, so you can just swap to her if you need quick party-healing, then swap back to a DPS Blade. There's a lot of possibilities that can work to your advantage.

@EvilLucario okay right on. Thanks for that. I just get nervous about things that way. I kind of like just using nia as is anyhow. I got Zenobia on her.....Each character has at least one unique blade healer. I just kept rolling them so eveyone has one. I thought I might just roll through the game that way too having rex zeke and morag. I might trim more fat though and just not use nia ever and get all the rare blades on zeke and morag, then since rex can use anyone's blade use him to borrow from those two. Good plan or not? It seems decent enough, but I don't know.

Still, I'm just catching up on side quests right now and trying to get level 5 dev on everything. Though I can't go back to indol at the moment. I literally decided right during that climax I wanted to meander through the world. I did the same thing in Xenoblade 1. I just want to explore and the quests are actuall cool and heart to hearts are voiced in this one so its way more interesting even than the first game. Heh. The war can wait.

@hirokun Sounds good to me. Rex + Zeke + Morag is a really good core that will serve you well for pretty much everything.

As far as sidequests go though, just do whatever you want to do. It's your own pacing after all.