Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X - OT

@Crimsontadpoles I think I know what you're on about. Is it Alexa's first affinity mission? You shouldn't have a problem with the monsters it actually specifies, cause it has a level where you can't access it until you're at an acceptable level to beat it without massive difficulty.

Also, if you have 3 level 30 relatively equipped well equipped skells, there's a ridiculously easy way to level up from any level above 30, to the low 50s in a short space of time. Get your two highest levelled teammates, and Lin (Or anyone who gets aggro quickly). Equip the skells to the three members who aren't Lin, inside the barracks, and head to the South Cinderdunes landmark in Sylvalum. Head up the narrow path to the west, all the way to the top, where you should encounter a Level 60 Motorized Launcher Zig. It looks tough, but it's a cakewalk, really. You also may want to save outside the aggro range, (At the top of the path, before it becomes flat) to make sure that it works, and you don't get your skell wrecked. Your Ai companions should draw enough fire for you to not have to evacuate your skell. It doesn't really matter if their skells get wrecked (providing they still have insurance left), because you can simply quick warp back to the barracks to bring the Skell back. This is a far easier site than Oblivia's fortress to get to, plus, you won't have the problem of aggroing other high level enemies. (Providing you drive/walk, and not fly to the top.) This is really useful for Chapter 9 and 10's boss fights, as you may be somewhat underlevelled for those fights if you exclusively follow the story. This may also be useful for Chapter 11 and 12, but I couldn't tell you that, because I'm grinding affinity with Gwin to access chapter 11.

If anyone uses that method, please do inform me as to whether it works well for you or not. (It's worked well for me and a friend, but I really wouldn't call that verified...)

All I have to say is that I hate Spirit Wands and Nopoliths. I am trying to unlock all the arms manufacturers I can before progressing further in the story and all that stand between me and a corporation appearing are those two stupid items. I like being random and all, but running around in circles in the general area it is supposed to appear is annoying (not to mention dangerous since there is an enemy that is lower level than me, yet kicks the crap out of me and my skells.

@Operative
For my fourth member, if I'm not grinding for affinity, I usually keep L or Nagi. L has some pretty amazing quotes and Nagi is awesome. I sometimes switch in H.B. too. You'll need your Skell for hard to reach places(flying) and for combat in general. I'm excited for the Ares 90 skell in postgame.
@TheLastLugia
Haha, yeah. I haven't heard of XCX having many bugs, but there are a few. Glad you can join us on Mira in a week!
@TheXReturns
If you're strong enough, you can try the Joker method. He gives a ton of experience if you beat him, and grinding becomes less hard.
@Darknyht
Are you in the right location? Nopolith can be found in the water near the nopon camp. Spirit Wand can be found in Sylvalum waters.

@TheXReturns: Thanks for all the tips, it is indeed Alexa's first affinity mission I'm struggling with. I'm only at level 17 and have only done Chapter 4 so I don't have access to skells yet. I can only seem to defeat 1 or 2 of the small monsters out of the 5, and I can't yet get the bigger monster below 50% health, so I'll probably just end up dying a few times and then accept the prompt to lower the enemy difficulty in that mission.

You don't need skells for that mission. I had a little trouble with it and had to lower the difficulty too.

There was dialogue where Alexa spots a bigger monster and says that defeating it would provide a lot more research data and asks whether we should battle it. I said yes to also battle it. Perhaps you said no, only the required smaller enemies would be fine. Anyway, I've now got to defeat a large Lv 16 Trump Arenatect and 5 smaller Lv 16/17 Trump Papils, but at least I can battle the big one by itself away from the 5 smaller ones.

I'll do a little bit of level grinding next time I play and have a few more tries at it before accepting the lower difficulty prompt.

Edit: Awesome, I defeated 2 of the Trump Papils, and when I died there was still only 3 remaining. I was thinking that the number of smaller enemies resets back to 5 when I die. A bit of grinding or lowering the difficulty will still be needed for me to defeat the Trump Arenatect though.

Oops, sorry. I was thinking of Hope's affinity mission where you have to go to Cauldros. Alexa's affinity mission was a little hard for me. I had to lower his level too. The smaller ones I had no trouble with. Check your arts/ skills. If you have a somewhat decent build, the smaller enemies should be easier. I beat the bigger guy by using combos and healing.

"Day 2

This has been almost too much to take in. I need to write down what I need to remember in order to remember it, as this is a whole new world for me. Quite literally it seems…
Thankfully, after the previous entry, we did go for the high road. We did find actual people soon after, which I very much appreciated. They were soldier-like gear, making me think military personal are highly relevant to the remainder of humanity. It worries me how casually I typed the previous message btw. On the way to our destination, we encountered some pig and lizard type creatures, but definitely larger and more dangerous than the ones I’m familiar with. The lizards acted more like wolves, which I found interesting. But by this point, it was dark out and I was already exhausted so I wanted to head into civilization ASAP. But we had the worst luck! The gate wasn’t allowed to be opened at the time so Elma and I went to use the elevator. But it “glitched” apparently. So by that point, I decided to make some dinner out of the pigs we killed as I was starving. Elma was easily able to convince the soldiers to help cook. Thankfully there was an oven inside that large vehicle that they had been using. If we didn’t have that we might’ve just attracted more of these guys trying to cook outside on like a fire of some sort!

I fell asleep shortly afterwards and was woken around 7:00 by Elma. We could finally ride the elevator up and went inside. There, I was introduced to some soldiers I sadly can’t remember the names of at this time. It doesn’t surprise me that people follow her. She seems like a strong leader. Also, this “New Los Angeles” is crazy to me. I must have forgotten a lot because I could never imagine a city this big. Well…I could actually, but not a different planet! Or on a ship for that matter! I vaguely remember Skells but I’ve never seen that countdown timer before. I wonder what that’s about…

We met some other guy who apparently works with this girl named Lin. She’s supposedly some sort of mechanical expert and I’ll go along with it, but it is odd. She’s only about half my age! I could imagine her being ahead of people her age, but an expert?! Either that’s very weird or my memory is worse than expected. I don’t know…

I, Slider, am currently in the Administrative District or something like that. We took a ride from one side of this city to the other, and while it’s smaller than I initially thought, it’s still massive compared to what I would expect. I’m ending this now, in order to go to…wherever we are going."

Still doing this journal thing. It's funny because in actuality I am far ahead of this part.

Like literally about to start Chapter 4 soon (which is still probably slow compared to many people in this thread )

I didn't know arts could be levelled up. I switched them about when reclassing my character, but didn't know their level can increase. That may make things a lot easier for me now, thanks

Edit: As much as I love this game so far, there's so much information to take in. Even now, it still feels like there's vital knowledge I'm still missing.

@CrimsonTadpoles This is obviously bias, but keep at it, because I find Alexa to be a really useful character. I've kinda clicked between relying on her as a Samurai Gunner subsitute, and running my own varient on the Samurai Gunner with my main. Plus she has a personality that I actually like (Challenging you to a Human v Skell throwdown with no holds barred? Brilliant.), unlike one character I could mention. (Leaving a man to die because he's 'unimportant' - H.B.) She's my second highest levelled, and the one of the few A.I. that I find useful, due to her ability to capitalize on unstable opponents. (Another is Lin, who works almost like a Human skell. In some situations, I actually find it better for her to be out of the Skell.)

In terms of Help, what you level up will depend on what class you've become. If you went 'traditional', along the Duelist's path, level up your Assault Hammer. The lowered recharge will allow easier topples and more room to breathe. Combos work well too, like the early Duelist's Magnum Edge -> Rising Blade -> (Tornado Blade) -> Furious Blast, to double the power of the last move. Level-Up some skills too, because the first improvement only takes 2 AP for each skill.

@Eat_Pie Sure, I'll try Joker. That's just useful for grinding for the Chapter 9/10 Bosses, which I was hideously underlevelled for. While I've been attempting to be friends with Gwin, I've overlevelled slightly. I'm now at 43, I think. Shouldn't make it too easy though.

Thanks for the tips @TheXReturns and everyone else here. I'm now feeling much more confident about that mission and will give it another shot next time I play.

@CrimsonTadpoles Anytime. Back to levelling Gwin's affinity... I hate the forced affinity missions. I understand why a few of them are forced, due to events in Chapter 10, but I still hate them all the same... I haven't used Gwin for a while now, and my affinity to him is still low...

@TheXReturns
Joker grinding is also good for blade medal farming, if you're interested in battling the Global Nemesis. If you're not trying to unlock a skill, you can wait until postgame to finish the affinity mission. The postgame has a quest which raises affinity quickly. Other than that, you'll have to grind. I'm trying to keep an equal rotation of players, but there are some I prefer to others and have been favoring them.
@CrimsonTadpoles
Don't worry. This game is big and there are some confusing things. The guide really helps a lot! Good luck with this quest!

@Tsurii: Up the hill worked for me. @Eat_Pie I was in the right spot, just no luck. I actually had found them both in my wanderings before, but put them into the collectopedia. Now I just need to grind out some levels (and character affinity) before heading into Chapter 8.

@Eat_Pie Yeah, I just dislike the game for making me do Gwin affinity missions, (They're mandatory for chapter 11) as he's a character I haven't had in my team since really early on. I was on a roll, going through Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 over the course of two days, only to have to slow back down again.

I'm the opposite of you - you keep everyone on rotation, whereas I just go with the same characters time in, time out. I know that H.B's affinity mission isn't going to be done for a very long time...

@TheXReturns
Yeah. I know what you mean. I'm going to have to grind affinity later on for an affinity mission too. Gwin doesn't really fit on my team that much, so I've rarely been using him. My rotation isn't really an equal rotation. I have a bunch of characters that I like or fit what I'm looking for, then switch between them. There are definitely characters that get left out and ones that I favor over the others. I'm the opposite of you when it comes to chapters. I get about a chapter done every couple of days. In between, I do a ton of sidequests and some grinding.
@Tsurii
Nice! I just unlocked Overdrive recently. Since I haven't fully finished my build yet, I can't fully appreciate Overdrive.

All I have to say is that I stole Nagi's sword and he is not getting it back.

Bought my first new skell. Gave Elmo the default one and she went and lost it in about 20 minutes the silly bint.

Getting perilously close to unlocking the flight module. Can't wait to explore all of the remaining stuff. I wanna jump off some floating islands!

@Eat_Pie I finally got enough affinity, but now I'm back to being overlevelled again... I'm level 51 heading into the penultimate chapter... At least I got some Yggralith Zero kills with my new level. I really don't want to buy a level 50 skell, because A, by the time I've saved up, I'll be level 60, and B, because apparently it virtually breaks the final chapter, due to sheer overpoweredness.

Dang it Tatsu. He almost got me killed. Losing my arm and finding out I'm a robot while my human form is stuck in the Lifehold.The Chapter 5 plot twist was interesting. They hinted at it through the earlier chapters and some of the affinity missions. It makes sense.