Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@NEStalgia Though this is completely unlike the other advice, I beat it by focusing Nia and Mòrag on the weapon, and Rex on the core. This was so Mòrag could take the aggro and Nia could build her healing arts up. It doesn't really matter which Nia attacks, so long as she builds arts to help Mòrag out. With Rex on the core, he can deal a lot of damage without the risk of gaining aggro and dying. It's been a while, but that's what I did in a nutshell.

@EvilLucario @Ralizah Wake up call, my bum-bum. The thing's an obscene difficulty spike of the worst kind (not that that's unusual for XC overall) with a grotesque AoE attack.

I was trying to fight it normally for a while. I didn't understand about bursting orbs etc at all (the tutorial explained it badly), and I can't get orbs on it reliably (does it ever actually show you anywhere what orbs are accrued? Hard to tell when to do the burst and what to prepare for. I still don't fully understand it, but even before posting here I'd read that on some walkthroughs, started bursting 2 orbs....and still got wiped 40 seconds later with him at 10-15% health, and thanks to the combo, no revives (I hate using combos due to it erasing your revives....)

Finally I remembered you can just change the difficulty on the fly so I cheesed it for that horrible thing on Easy. If the game keeps doing that, it's going to get frustrating fast.

@NinjaAceTrainer I think that's the first battle, this is the second when there's only the weapon. The one in between the two was annoying too because the enemy kept running around and making me chase, meaning I charged no arts, and then kept spinning my whole party in the air. But that was merely annoying rather than obscene like this one.

@NEStalgia You should be able to tell on the combo paths which elemental orbs you've slapped on it based on what abilities you've sealed. Or just look at the color of the orbs orbiting around it.

Anyway, worry not! I can't speak to anything in New Game+, but that stupid core was easily the worst boss fight in the game.

@NEStalgia Once you place an orb, they revolve around the enemy as a visual indicator. Or you can just immediately Chain Attack after placing an orb with a strong enough party and just repeat it multiple times, though your overall damage won't be as good.

In your Chain Attack, attack the orb with the opposite element. So if you got a Fire orb on, use Water Blades in that round to guarantee destroying it.

If two orbs aren't enough, get a third one off before your Chain Attack.

On that note though, I honestly don't remember any bosses that are extremely annoying to kill in any of the series, except for the superbosses. Only in Xenoblade X with the boss in Chapter 9 gave me a lot of trouble, but 1 and 2 are just really easy in general with no problematic bosses.

@Ralizah I felt Chapter 7 had more annoying bosses.

@Ralizah That would be great if that was the worst. The middle of the 3 bosses was annoying, frustrating, infuriating, but I still took him out in a few tries. That freaking core was obnoxious beyond imagining. Glad I cheesed it! Video games shouldn't require that much stress

@EvilLucario Oh, somehow I haven't actually seen them revolving yet! I did get the "opposite element" part, but one annoying thing was, not knowing what orbs I had on it, I had a dark orb on it, but not knowing that, I entered chain with my fire rather than my light blade in tow. Luckily I still broke it since I also had a fire orb to hit with Dromarch and it continued it to damage through attrition, but it was frustrating. When do orbs magically go away? Because I keep hitting combos, but then when I go to chain only one or two orbs remain on it. I've yet to have 3 no matter how many combos I do.

In XC1 there were numerous difficulty spike bosses. The problem was the way the game funneled you you didn't level up without going back and grinding. So it would be easy, easy ,easy , impenetrable wall. Go grind for an hour, then easy. XC2 has much better pacing, but this boss was an unexpected spike.

@Grumblevolcano ruh roh.

@NEStalgia You can have up to 8 orbs, but you can't stack the same type of orb. You can't have two Fire orbs, for example. So you can have a Dark, Light, Fire, Water, Wind, Ice, Earth, and Electric orb all on one enemy.

They never go away as well. They're permanent. They only go away when you break them in a Chain Attack.

@EvilLucario Hmm maybe that explains it, I have more water and wind blades than I know what to do with. Every freaking core I bond with ends up that way, even if I try to influence it And of course I tend to rely on my Pyra mostly as she's the most upgraded, and the second "story" blade is still weak until the merc guild is more leveled. I have no electric except for the first primary story party member with electric you get. No ice (at all).

@NEStalgia Well you can already pull off a lot of combos. Using Rex, Nia, and Tora, you have Mythra, Pyra, Roc, Dromarch, and Poppi α/QT, and you can already do Light, Water, Fire, Earth, and Wind combos right off the bat with no RNG needed.

Light: Light -> Light -> Light
Water: Light -> Light -> Water (easiest one) OR Water -> Water -> Water
Fire: Fire -> Fire -> Fire
Earth: Earth -> Fire -> Earth
Wind: Earth -> Fire -> Wind

Also you should have a Beastly Core Crystal. Open that on Rex for an ATK Earth Blade (Wulfric), he's extremely good.

@Tsurii Ahh, spikes. I didn't know that was a thing and didn't know that's what was happening. I like your solution, but I would think there's not enough damage dealt without the orbs to not have to do the chain multiple times....in the meantime the spikes, maybe, the rockets fired, and the AoE attack (that ground spread lightening attack in a radius from it) easily killed me off.

@EvilLucario I do already have Wulfric (I love Xenoblade, but it does have some serious gaps...that's another thing where they gave you this crystal, never told you what to do with it, and when I First looked, you couldn't use it, then it apparently became usable without telling me, and I had no idea how to get into the abandoned factory earlier until finding out that using that crystal was basically essential. Xenoblade often reminds me of NES games where you needed to subscribe to Nintendo Power and ask at the playground hoping sombody's uncle worked for Nintendo for necessary, undocumented information to make it through a game )

@NEStalgia I hate to say it, but Chapter 7's first story boss is easily the hardest. I only remember the orb phase being hard, so I assumed that was what threw you off. I honestly don't remember much about that phase, so good luck I suppose.

@Tsurii LOL....easily missed popups and half baked tutorials (and entirely unexplained systems) seem to be a Monolith staple. Much as I love the series I'm starting to view it as a "great but deeply flawed" series all around. If the characters, story, and environments weren't so special, I think the design would net a game not as well regarded as it is. Too many rough edges they don't polish.

@NinjaAceTrainer Ugh, I'm not looking forward to Ch7 then. Though maybe it doesn't have the extreme dps that this machine has. The machine had both a ton of hitpoints and extreme dps at the end.

@Grumblevolcano Referring to Jin and Malos? I didn't have too many issues with them, and they're definitely not as gimmicky or cheap as the fight with the core.

@Ralizah Yes, that fight. I had few problems fighting the core. From what I recall, the top 5 hardest story boss battles for me were:
1. Jin and Malos (Chapter 7)
2. Lila (Chapter 4)
3. Jin (Chapter 6)
4. Infernal Guldo (Chapter 8)
5. Akhos and Malos (Chapter 3)

@Ralizah That's great to hear. Seems like split opinions. If #1 runs around and spins you in the air all the time like the first time it's an annoying battle, and difficult, but yeah, not as cheap. The worst thing is the core never even indicated what was cheap about it it just....."happens" once you get the health down. And yeah it goes into rage mode after 40% health or so.....but it seems like it kicks into "ultra" rage mode or something in the last 15. So if you don't one-shot it after that 40% line you're guaranteed dead. Cheap is really the only word to describe it. Gimmick would apply if it actually told you the gimmick (like the first encounter with it)

@Grumblevolcano #5 I think I retried a few times. It was hard. But I mostly just had to grind a bit and level up and got it in one try. #2 I got in maybe two tries. #4 took maybe 4 tries....and then the core took hours of failure to get nowhere

@Grumblevolcano #5 oh yeah I really struggled with them everything after that everything was basically smooth sailing until close to the end of the game.

What really? The only fights I found extremely difficult, and by that I mean took me multiple hours to beat are:
Chapter 7 - Endbringer Malos
Chapter 9/10 (?) - Jin
The other fights weren't easy, but certainly not as difficult as those. To be fair, I was 10 levels higher than the final boss, because I decided to complete blade quests that I had left.

After all that I played a few hours yesterday (after cheesing the core) and had not one battle at all....all cut scenes and dialog quests. It was actually pleasant after that frustration.

Then I got to Giga Rose. With a 2 member party (thanks, story!) the same level. Ugh. That's not going well. Time to grind!

@NEStalgia You should never be fighting things with 2 party members except for one part you've already passed.