Topic: Looking for help on fighting tactics in xenoblade 2

Ok so I’m playing xenoblade 2, and I gotta say, I’m getting killed a lot!
I’m level 12 trying to save nia right now and I’m getting my ass whooped.
Is it just me, or is the fighting mechanics not making much sense?
It’s probably just me but anyone got any pointers?

have you got any healing blades from core crystals yet? you should spam anchor shot on rex and equip him with a healing blade for backup if you can (mostly recommended at this point because you dont have your healer, Nia, but when you have her you dont really need a healing blade on rex).. have you leveled up your skills at all? any time youre having trouble also go ahead and throw in some good pouch items. are you using what the game calls "cancel attack" which is using your arts when your attacks hit? youll know its successful because youll get a blue circle around your character when you hit it right and this will build up your special faster. (ive always thought calling this cancel attack is stupid because you dont cancel your attack so its confusing to be called that)
Im not going to go in depth about the combo system if you need help with that maybe someone feels like typing it out or you can google it, but you should learn and practice and it takes a little time to learn but after you do its ez.

Also if you want, try to move after your first attack just slightly, this will reset your combo to the start, but it's also quite fast. I find that I like to do this rather than just letting Rex do this three-combo since it's waaaay faster. (Kind of)

@Inertiacreep no that’s brilliant, I read your post and now I’m getting the A button art filled to higher levels faster with pressing the art exactly when you strike technique, so thanks I must have missed that in the tutorial?
No I have not got any healing crystals...so can I get that by Just salvaging?

What confused me is it’s hard to gage which art is more helpful then the other, as right now I’m about to go save nia so I’m heading to the ship..you may laugh but I’ve spent 20 hours getting to here lmao
I’ve done all the little side quests too.
Some of the explanations are not great, well at least not to me?! Also what the hell do boosters do? And how come I can’t unlock all treasure? It says all these things like superstrength level 2 and nopon wisdom level 2 for example on treasure chests, but where do I even check to level these traits?? Where even are they?! Sorry for so many questions you don’t gotta answer il just keep plodding on, it Just takes away from the immersion and flow of the game when it’s not explained great?
Again thanks for the help massively appreciated.

@darkfenrir haha that’s awesome because I’m using the exact same technique lol
I also find that I can time hitting the art button better with the first strike so yeah it’s defo a worthy technique for now thanks

@Deathwalka yep, also to answer the questions you had on top, you get healing Blade just from opening the Cores you already have. For now I think it's better to try getting a Nia though, having team of three helps, always.

Boosters are for raising the possibility of a certain elements when opening Cores iirc, but then again I'm not exactly sure, so take this with a grain of salt.

And those superstrength and nopon wisdom can be checked at your Blade's Affinity chart just check around there. The total adds up even though it's someone else (so for example, you have Rex with 2 units with Water Master lv1, and Nia only has 1 unit with Water Mastery lv2, you get Water Mastery Lv4, but if you don't equip the Blade it didn't count, so you'll want to spread Blades out, and save up the normal blades especially since those Mastery get stupid high at some things...)

1. Core Crystals - You use these to get more Blades (They should have given you one by now, to show you how they work). You can't get them from salvaging (from my experience), however enemies randomly drop them, and some treasure chests/barrels have them. It may be hard to get ahold of them at the point in the game you are, so if you didn't get a healing blade with your "test" crystal, it might be tough to get one.

2. Boosters - Enhances the chances (though doesn't guarantee) you'll get a certain type of Blade. However, no one really knows which boosters correspond to which Blade types. There are 4 types of boosters, but only 3 types of Blade roles, and 6 types of Blade elements.

3a. Field Skills - Your Blades will have 1-3 of these, and let you interact with certain objects in the overworld (Pyra for example, has Fire Mastery, Focus, & Cooking, while Poppi has Nopon Wisdom, Superstrength, and something else). You can level up these abilities by working on a Blade's skill tree, but any Blades with the same skill stack (so if level 2 of a certain skill is required, if you have two Blades in your party with the skill at level 1, it'll still work).

3b. However, most things (though not all) you run across that require Field Skills are optional, and you oftentimes will have to come back at a later point to interact with them.

@RR529 There's actually eight elements though?

fire-water, earth-thunder, wind-ice, light-dark. So the booster correspond with those 4, with bravery fire-water, etc, etc. You can kinda see it when you increase booster (the elements on the core correspond with this)

The Combat at the point in the game isn't too bad since I don't think blade combos and chain attacks are explained at that point, but I had to go to youtube and watch a few videos about it before it finally clicked, and it makes everything go way faster later on in the game, just hit level 46, and I'm really enjoying it, but you do hit a few walls here and there as far as combat goes, but I made a list done below of a few things that if you check on regularly will make the game easier.

But a few other things you can do that really helped me at that point in the game and later on as well are

1. make sure you have your best items are equipped
2. open your character menu and check to see if you can upgrade any of your arts with SP, and blade abilities with WP
3. while in the character menu select any blade select their affinity chart and check each blade you have to see if they learned/improved any ability's I don't think it count's till you open their chart so always check it regularly
4. make sure you are using pouch items, they can do a number of things like making your arts recharge faster ect, you can buy food/pouch items from just about any vendor
5. sleep at an inn, just by playing the game you build passive XP overtime not sure how it breaks down, if it's just by play time or killing mobs, completing quests ect, but the first time I went to an inn I had like 4 level ups waiting for me,

and later on don't feel bad if you have to watch a few videos on youtube breaking down chain attacks/blade combos once you have an small pool of different blades built up because that will help you out a lot.

but another thing that you will run into outside of combat and I'm going to warn you about is the way point system, it sucks at some parts of the game. Just wait till Chapter 4 not going to spoil anything, but if you can find out where you need to go without googling it you deserve a prize, it took me nearly 3 hours of running around before I had to look up a walk though maybe I'm just dumb and missed something a character said but you can't trust the way point system by it's self, I am trying to go though the game with out spoilers but I had to watch a video showing me where exactly where I had to go and it was really stupid and poorly thought out, the way point system ultra sucks. Just warning you now so you don't make the same mistake I made read everything they say during the story quests because you can trust the way point system by its self

Ah, so that's how it works! 7 Chapters and 60 hours in, and you're still learning new things when it comes to this game, lol.

@Deathwalka im glad I could help.. now you just need to learn blade combos and driver combos.... also about the field skills, when you go into the blade menu, hit L two times and this will show a blades field skills. Its kind of annoying you have to always swap blades out just to meet the requirements and then swap back... so a lot of the time you just equip the trash blades for this, and also even party members equipped blades who are not in your current battle party count toward this.

@Deathwalka and no no, i didnt say healing crystal.. I said core crystal. Go to the menu, blades, then bond blades. If you have core crystals you can get more blades. There are 3 kinds- Attack (like Pyra) Healer and Tank.... Its random what you get, but i was saying if you got any healer blades it could help you out if youre dying.

Honestly thanks everyone for the help, you have no idea how much I’ve evolved my character from all the advice
I’ve done everything you guys recommend and I’m about to go save nia now and I’m level 16 with all my points used, all xp used levelled up at inns, I’ve used some cores with boosters and I’ve have got stronger blades
Some of the expensive quests are a bit irritating as an npc is asking for help, so I’m going out of my way to help them but then I go to the quest and it turns out I also need to fork out money on their behalf! Yet on completion I only get a fraction of it back lol I don’t mind it but it just doesn’t seem very realistic?
I’ve also found getting money this early is difficult, I’ve had to end up selling all my items just to get the cash for the parts the nopon wants.

Also sorry one more thing, like I said I’m about to save nia... but I wanted to know ....how many blades can you equip to the dpad? As I only have 2 including pyra? But their is a space for the bottom dpad but I can’t equip a blade to it.
So I take it I can’t equip multiple blades this early in the game?
(Again massive shoutout to all you guys on this thread for helping, as i really was getting frustrated but now it’s all starting to click, well most of it lol)

@Deathwalka it's alright, this game slowly gains its pace as you put in more hours and continue forward in story (and yes, you'll be able to equip 3rd blade in the future)

Also your bonus exp will be saved for future characters that join you ^^b

Other than that, one of the easiest way for me to get money is to just farm it off salvaging... Right now I'm sitting at 4.9m Gold and maxed the dev level of all Titans I'm at so far.

@darkfenrir what! How much gold!? That’s ridiculous! The reason I haven’t salvaged that much because the cylinders seem quite expensive and the turnaround did not seem great? I’m obviously not doing enough then am I?

@Deathwalka i find it's better at a future Titan than the current one you're at... Around chapter 4. That new Titan will be better to farm ^^ (then another few more Titan and it makes it a cinch to farm even)

Some of the things with the beginning quests actually don't need a lot of money because you can either salvage (for the bios connector, iirc I went and saved before salvage, then if I didn't get it, I reloaded)