Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@EvilLucario The part I'm in definitely forced me into 2 party members...maybe I can manually go back and add one in (I think I tried and couldn't still) It forced it for a cutscene area in Indol. Usually they pop up the thing when a change in allowed party count happens...maybe they reenabled the third slot but didn't pop it up, and for whatever reason I didn't check? I'll have to look into that. Fighting that thing with 2 is impossible. Fighting with 3 would be hard without leveling up more. Level matching a boss never works well in XC.

@NEStalgia You have to manually include your 3rd party member by pressing "X" (I think it's X) on the party select screen (the screen where you choose the order of your party).

@Grumblevolcano sigh another oversight. XC is turning into a love/hate franchise. I love it, but man the holes are becoming Bethesda level.

@NEStalgia Idk, I did two playthroughs of this game and I don't remember having any problem with this. You seem to be a magnet for problems here.

@Tsurii Oh I know you can change party members on that screen. But what I mean is in all other cases when they force a party member limit or remove it, they pop up the party selection screen to indicate the team restriction has changed and to let you select who to add/remove when they change it. In this one case (so far) they popped that up when they REMOVED someone from the party, but never popped it up again when they quietly allowed me to pick someone again. There was no indication that the restriction period had ended. (Assuming it actually has....it might still be restricting me?)

@EvilLucario It's possible it had something to do with the fact that I fast traveled to do some side quests I passed by earlier before talking to everyone I had to for the story quest during the party restriction period. I might have broken the prompt. (Still a game bug either way.)

Fyi, no i still can't add a third character... This is a big lv42 boss, I'm lv42, and I'm allowed only 2 characters....

This is giga Rosa in the battleship In indol

Edit:. "x to include"...... Despite never having to do that any other time that remove and replace slots.... And they hide it in the bottom where it's hard to even notice when handheld. Get your act together monolith. Don't be Bethesda.....

Ok now the tantalese knights are ko me in a minute. I out level them, by 2 to 4 levels. My blades are decently equipped, but they put out huge damage numbers. Ill probably cheese it in easy too, but what am i doing wrong? It seems the difficulty went on the rails at every boss suddenly, and since there's no combat variety really it must be my build or something? Nothing in the game really suggests what i might do different.

@NEStalgia Have you been filling up affinity charts (drivers and blades) as well as using accessories (drivers), core chips (blades) and aux cores (blades)?

Also do you switch blades to easily do different combos, relying on 1 blade becomes increasingly problematic as the game goes on?

@Grumblevolcano I'm not doing much with aux or chips..... Reading what's available none of it ever seems to meaningful so I'm saving resources in case good things happen later. Everything else I'm using though.

Funny thing. After i posted the above with an hour if trying that battle and dying constantly, quickly (no combos, no time for combos, i was dead before things charged) i went in and played again, ran around the room in a circle, then fought, half paying attention while talking to someone, basically mashing arts, not timing them, not switching, and this it mostly auto battled. And i won.....................

Edit: actually it's just aux i haven't seen meaningful uses for. I forgot chips are the weapon upgrades, yeah i use those lots.

@NEStalgia Aux Cores are basically the Blade equivalent to driver accessories but with 1 key difference:

• Aux cores have to be refined by going to Aux core shops, refining costs collectibles

You decide on what Aux Cores are best for your Blades by what role you use them for. For example, I use Blade Combos involving water a lot so I put a Blade Combo Boost core on a water Blade which increases the Blade Combo damage.

You don't even need C trust Blades for Challenge Mode if you know what you're doing and have the right accessories.

@Grumblevolcano i think that's just it. I don't really have set tactics enough to commit resources into the aux yet. I may equally been any or none of them so they seem to specialized to me for now. At least holding off i have all my resources to spend should i decide on needing something.

Btw another battle later, i tried a few times to mixed results before or magically was easy one time though. I feel like rng is a serious issue. I can approach the same battle several times the same exact way, and get different results ranging from instant death to easy win.

@Tsurii good to hear... That's basically how I've been playing (i think i ignored crystals entirely in xc1 as well). Though i never finished the last 2 bosses. I didn't feel like grinding to level match then at that point

Ok.... New problem, and I'm not having much luck online. Elpys great Hall.

Tora is in my party, but i really can't get combos with any meaningful reliability due to the ether restriction. The stingrays are killing me quickly when they rage. There's worse enemies than that around. I can't navigate the tunnels because the purple miasma blocks the way, and i have neither the ancient mastery nor other masteries required.... So I'm just trying to fall down level by level... Not going well. Am i missing something?

@Tsurii It is part of the expansion pass.

How I dealt with that part was mostly luck running past enemies as I dropped down. It's a bit easier if you have high enough field skills to light the torches.

@NEStalgia Try and avoid the enemies. You can equip then unequip common blades to do the field skills more easily. Take control of Tora to build up the combos on your own. Make sure he has the driver skill Nopon Chain Arts to do this more easily.

@Tsurii LOL, if it's part of the pass, it'll have to wait until Sept, since I'm going physical on it Bah!

@Grumblevolcano @NinjaAceTrainer Yeah, I managed after a few hours to make it through. I can't light the torches, nor open the miasmas (apparently missing levels of BOTH required skills to do that), so I ended up running from enemies, and finding places to fall to lower levels while taking just barely enough damage to stay alive, and then run hoping not to get hit! Navigating the caves was ok since the map showed me the way, even without light, but over the poison water wasn't fun with the narrow bridge. That unique driver kept losing sight of me in the water cave, thankfully! I was really REALLY lucky to survive the long 500ft drops on that last run. I did make it to the bottom (now I'm caught at the slightly more reasonable spider-thing battle in the caves after that one......also a painful battle I'm hoping to luck out on.

I read somewhere that "this is when the game starts having mandatory field skill checks" with various obstacles.....I fear I'll have to somehow grind a bunch of greenhorn blades for specific skills or something just to make it through the game which would be very annoying. I have a ton of blades, and have been sending them on merc quests but I still have mixed affinity field skills, and too many redundancies. Games shouldn't mandate rng diversity.....

I'll try to control Tora for battles though, especially this spider. And I'll check the Chan Arts skill. I've been saving a lot of points "just in case" but I'm not sure which that is on the chart or if I have enough points for it.....

@NEStalgia Most of the obstacles can be cleared by filling in story blades (including blades like Wulfric) affinity charts enough and having some spare other blades. The dark miasmas (you saw 2 of them) are the only ridiculous ones but as you saw there was another way with those.

@Grumblevolcano Hmm, but I've been doing the story blades (well Roc is an issue because he's tied to the whole merc quest loop which I am steadily working on, but I'm missing a few affinities for a few quests and I'm 900p away from Lv3 of the guild still, but so far I've kept mercs on quests continuously, so progress can't go faster than that, and Roc still only has the level 2 arch unlocked only. There's a lot of treasures and "jump" points I'm still missing enough field abilities for, but many I can do as well...and of course I temporarily am lacking one story blade.)

Yeah the dark miasmas are a mess. Though I get the feeling my "other way" was more of a cheat than a design of the game. I don't think I was supposed to "fall down gracefully and barely survive each drop before running like crazy in the dark" And if I was supposed to do that, the game design really needs some work....

@Tsurii sigh....... A design about falling and taking damage from the fall and running from anything that moves sounds like disastrous game design. It feels like you're exploiting oversights to bypass things you're supposed to do. It's pretty rough if it's intentional.

I fear Squeenix' influence still taints the crew at Monolith The gameplay they design is not nearly as meticulous as their world building.