Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition

@urrutiap

You'll get Melia back soon.
There's a mission in Colony 9 where you need two female party members that have a high friendship level, so now I put Melia (instead of Reyn) and Sharla with Shulk until that's done.

also ive been exploring almost every nook and cranny for each area.

Even the High Elentia country with the huge ocean water where earlier ive been swimming the whole time to open up the map

As for the characters who should i be using the most when meeting Melia's people?

I'm super boring on this. I've always just stuck with Shulk, Reyn and Sharla. They're just the best balanced trio in my opinion.

Yeah, I just stuck with those 3 for the majoritynof the game. I did mess around and experiment with other combinations now and again, but Shulk, Reyn and Sharla was always my primary go to choice in the end

Melia, as she's the strongest ether user. Once you get around the rules of ether in battle, she's the second strongest character in the game. Though when she's new you have to level her up quite a bit.

I don't know why anyone would use Dunban outside of NG+, he's almost a Shulk - just without a Monado. Probably good if you wanna have a physical attack only party.

I remember my first playthrough swimming through Eryth Sea and it was very time consuming and quite pointless, apart from three instances (a secret caves and 2 lonely islands). The map will unlock completely if you find all checkpoints, no need to walking-simulator every inch, but most of you certainly know that already. ´

I also usually just stuck with Shulk/Reyn/Sharla, but I did experiment with other characters. My favorite "second group" consisted of Fiora/Dunban/Sharla. I found Fiora made a decent pseudo-tank since her damage output was quite high.

I admittedly played with Melia the least. I've read that investing in her makes her a monster, but I'm not a fan of babysitting squishy mage types in games until they become more powerful.

well Sharla is squishy too when she first joined since shes a weird gunner healer but shes pretty good.

as for swimming around the whole time at Melia's home country, i was swimming close to the map border for the heck of it then i found two secret cave areas which was cool. Then i went back to the main story by getting locked up lol

@urrutiap

There's a cave in the north-west corner of the sea. That's a good one because it has a new fast-travel point. Good scenic view as well!

@Dezzy I remember the search for that one waypoint eating about an hour of swimming and jumping around just to have a nice clear map already, jeez.. but the night even was so pretty on the other hand. Now i really want a new Xenoblade

Just arrived in Makna Forest, which is another jaw droppingly impressive locale.

I've been using Reyn as a tank who draws enemy attention, however I have a feeling that I'll be getting a new female party member soon, and since an active sidequest requires me to build affinity between two females I'll probably need to drop him for awhile. Any party build tips without him?

Im at the end of the game where all the twists etc are revealed.

So, Zanza is/was pretty much naked the whole time for a buff "god"?

Does he even have genitalia? or did Nintendo pretty much censor edit his body the whole time?

So I just caught up to getting Melia and the heropon (which is where my original Wii save is, which I finally abandoned after years of poking at it to play on Switch).

And uh... I got to say, I've been having much more fun playing ever since I picked the game back up last month. I feel like there must have been a major patch or two since I last played. Notably, there's no more red exclamation marks everywhere, with exploration restored back to how it was in the original game. But also the fights seem to be going more smoothly, though I can't put my finger on what's changed.

I need to play some in docked mode while exploring the Makna Forest, that place is still so beautiful.

@urrutiap

Spoilers dude!

@link3710

Yeah Makna was one of the areas that I felt they really improved. The different plants meant you got the light bouncing off them, and the volumetric light shafts cast through the big trees. Just a great update to the area. Bionis Leg was still the best improvement though imo.

I finished this game couple days ago.

All 7 characters @ Lv 99, leveled them down several times
145 hours of playtime
All missions done
50/50 records
141/150 achievements
All superbosses beaten
Max harmony
NewGame+ unlocked (much better than before: you just keep all items)

Still need to do:
Find all the arts books (I hope to have more luck with monster drops in a second playthrough)
Get the other 9 achievements (will get them passively in a second playthrough)
Get enough harmony medals from unique enemies for all characters (one playthrough isn't enough)
Find all gear (some are still locked, probably a few you can only get by trading with NPCs)
S-Ranking all Nopon challenges (totally forgot these new extras)

After a break with La-Mulana 2 (a God-tier metroidvania which incidentally also takes place inside the womb of a giant entity) I will finally play the Future Connected episode I bought the game for. ^^

@SKTTR congrats! Hope you will love the future connected content. If nothing else, the new tracks are fire!

Just arrived at Sword Valley. Surprised at how relatively few quests there were for Valak Mountain (Bionis Leg, Makna Forest, & Eryth Sea seemed to have a lot more, and this was a similarly sized area). I didn't even run into any "Challenge" quests that ask you to take care of unique monsters, and most other areas seem to have had those.

@Solaine Thank you. New music? That's something to look forward to.
Will dive right back into this when I defeat La-Mulana 2... or when it defeats me.

@RR529: A tip. Take your time and collect all the items you can and complete as much as possible in Alcamoth, Sword Valley, Galahad Fortress, and the whole of Mechonis. Don't rush these sections.

@RR529

There are fewer quests on Valak mountain because there are fewer characters who could give you quests!
There are definitely more that unlock later in the story too.

@Dezzy, well yeah, but I was expecting there to be Valak Mountain related quests that would pop up in Colony 9, Frontier Village, & Alcamoth once you had access to it (there were a few, but I was expecting more as I thought there were quite a few Alcamoth quests that took you back to Makna Forest, & Frontier Village quests that took you to Eryth Sea when it opened up).

I've been going back & religiously combing through the cities everytime I enter a new area to see if any new quests pop up (I don't necessarily want to 100% it, but I want to make sure I stay well levelled), even though doing so can be quite a bit of a drag (especially now that I have 3 cities to go back to). Maybe it's not something I should worry myself all that much about?

@RR529

Valak mountain is by far my least favourite area in the game, so I was quite happy with the fact there's not much to do there. You can pretty much just speed through it, at least on your first visit in the main story.
You've still got like 2 more town areas yet to come as well. Not to mention the fact you can't have built Colony 6 up that much so far?