Topic: Xenoblade Series chat

@Xyphon22 If you need level 5 earth mastery on a single Blade I would recommend grinding for Wulfric's affinity chart (you get his core crystal as part of the story, after fighting the big spider in Uraya), if you don't need 'em all on one Blade just temporarily equip a bunch of common earth element ones.
Poppi is weird but can be the best Blade in the game if you work on upgrading her, unfortunately that involves doing that arcade minigame near Tora's house.
It's probably a good idea to raise trust because that unlocks the ability to strengthen skills, for the best way, check the wiki.

@Xyphon22, only the skills of the blades you currently have equipped count, however they do stack (If you need level 4 of a skill, you could equip a Blade that has it at level 2, plus two other Blades that have it at level 1 & it'll work). If one of my Rare Blades was just short of the level needed, I'd replace my other Rare Blades with Commons that had the skill at level 1 in order to interact with the Field Skill, then just re-equip my other Rares.

I never bothered much with upgrading Poppi, but I believe playing an 8-bit arcade minigame back at Tora's place is instrumental to upgrading her.

@TeaCatherine @RR529 Thanks for the info. I remembered there being that minigame at Tora's house, but I didn't remember it being instrumental to upgrading Poppi, so I guess I'll go check that out. I did notice that the skills stack like that which is why I was wondering if it used the skills of all the Blades or only the equipped ones. And I do have Wulfric, fortunately, so I'll work on him. As far as equipping more earth ones (or anything for that matter), do you just have to get lucky with the core crystals, or is there a way to make them have certain skills?

And one more question I remembered. Is it possible to equip a Blade to a different Driver than the one you bond it to when you first get them? Because I've been avoiding getting new Blades from my core crystals so that I can put them on an eventual new team member (I assume I will eventually get a new one, all I have right now is Rex, Nia, and Tora since Vandham died .

@Xyphon22 There is a way to change which driver a blade is bonded to but they're rather hard to get, they're called overdrive protocols. You can influence which element you're most likely to get with core crystals by using the boosters you get from dismissing blades.

@TeaCatherine OK, thanks. I just recently got a popup message about getting an overdrive protocol, but I didn't realize it was some sort of usable item. I also didn't know you could dismiss blades, but I have boosters on my drivers that it asks if I want to use based on their attributes (I can't remember what they are, but they're not elemental. They're like Compassion and Strength and things like that). Will those do the same thing, or what do they do?

@Xyphon22 Yeah, they're the same as what I was talking about, if you go the blade menu and use a core it'll give you the option to use 1-5 boosters, if you use Justice boosters it increases your chances of getting a light/dark blade (you can't get light element common blades though), compassion, I think is earth/electric. It's easy to figure out if you just go to use them and look at the visual clues in the background.

While it's worth using all the core crystals you find, as you're guaranteed to get a few rare blades via the pity system if nothing else, I wouldn't expend much effort into grinding them until you've finished the story.

You're much better off waiting until the post-game where grinding becomes a lot easier, although you're still looking at putting two to three hours of repeatedly smashing the highest level monsters in the game to get the requisite amount of them, and the random nature of the gacha may mean you've still got to try hundreds of crystals to get that very last one.

Much the same goes with Poppi. She's OK as your tank for a while but she's soon going to get outstripped by Brighid and it's not until you can put in a lot of grinding in the post-game that she gets better again. Ultimately, she's the most powerful blade in the game by far but the investment required to make her that way would be a major distraction from finishing the story.

On the whole, the story blades are all you need to finish the game, common blades are fine (often better than rare blades) in supporting roles, and a few rare blades system should a bit of individuality to your game.

@Matt_Barber the gacha like blade wishing system is the worst thing in XC2. I spent dozens of additional hours grinding for materials and crystals and never got the last 2 of them. I got so frustrated with it, and it took so much time, that I woke up one day and went and sold it. It’s the reason I never got round to Torna. Though I have bought it again to play that DLC, no game should be that obtuse, it's frustrating when it should be fun.

Of course none of the blades are necessary, but many of us like to complete a game, do all the blade story quests etc.

Yeah, the Blade system doesn't make much sense. I finally decided to use some of my crystals with Morag once I noticed she actually has an affinity chart and everything so she's likely sticking around for awhile. I used a rare crystal on her and it still only gave me a common Blade. I'd only used one rare before and got a rare one, so I didn't know it would do that. That is highly annoying. I mainly just send them off on Merc quests to upgrade them, so I don't do a whole lot with them. Mostly I'm just upset that I spent a lot of time trying to upgrade Wulfric's Earth Mastery and Focus (again, mostly through Merc quests) so I could get that mushroom, finally got enough, went to get the mushroom, and it's not even there anymore (I found enough other materials to complete that quest without it). So sad.

If you think it's bad now, just imagine what it was like in the original version when you couldn't skip the gacha animation. You might have to go through three to four hundred legendary crystals to get a full set of rare blades, so you'd be seeing the same handful for the common blades over and over while you were waiting.

Plus you've got to go on some very grindy quests when you get them to max out the affinity trees and rank them up to S9. Even after around 240 hours, I've still not done that last bit for every blade.

yeahhh....the gacha system is the only reason why I never bothered to complete XC2 to 100% completion lol.

On the topic of Xenoblade 2, I actually just picked up a physical copy of it about a week ago. So far, I’ve really been enjoying it. I’m only on chapter 2 so far and am currently just doing some sidequests in Tormott. I just unlocked Poppi so I’m interested to see how she plays out.

My initial impression of the game as of now is that it feels a lot more focused and quicker than XC:DE. It might be too early to say that, but DE had a lot of really slow pacing through exploring areas and getting through story moments. 2’s world design is still very impressive from a spectacle perspective, but it also feels a lot tighter and quicker to progress through overall.

I definitely understand the criticism of this game’s tutorials. They are extremely confusing, really long, and don’t really provide much useful information. However, I knew that fact going into this game, so I made sure to watch a few tutorials beforehand and I’m definitely glad I did. Auto-attack canceling alone is an incredibly useful technique that really speeds up battles. It’s kinda goofy having to slightly tilt the control stick every time, but I don’t mind it too much.

So yeah, hopefully this game grabs me a bit more than DE did. That game had a lot of issues that prevented me from really liking it as much as I could have. But if this game just improves and expands upon its predecessor, I think it’ll be a hit for me.

I'm (I think) almost done with chapter 5, and I don't know how to cancel auto-attacks. I only know it's a thing because I've seen it mentioned in the affinity charts. Maybe I should look that up. The thing I had completely forgotten about since I stopped playing that has been extremely useful is levelling up by resting at inns. The first time I remembered about it each of my characters were able to go up like 8 levels.

@Xyphon22 Cancelling auto-attacks is pretty simple and it's really helpful! You just have to press an art at the exact same time that an auto-attack connects (You'll see a blue circle after using an art if you did it correctly). Doing this helps maximize damage and it recharges arts faster. Eventually, you'll be able to cancel arts into other arts which makes the combat really fast-paced.

@StarPoint So did you put your Xenoblade X playthrough on the back burner? 😅

@Vortexeo Haha for now, yeah. I actually got about halfway through it but it just didn’t quite gel with me. I don’t really enjoy MMORPGs, so for a game that shares a lot of elements with that genre didn’t work super well for me. I actually got about halfway through the game, but it didn’t quite stick with me as much as DE did.

It’s definitely a quality game, but it just didn’t quite work for me. I don’t regret playing it, though; I now understand why so many enjoy it and what it’s generally about. At some point I’ll probably come back to it, though

@StarPoint Yeah fair enough, Xenoblade X isn't as story-driven as the numbered games. Did you manage to unlock skells? You get one after chapter 6 iirc.

@Vortexeo No, I didn't quite get to that point. Are they pretty fun to use?

@StarPoint XC2 is interesting. DEEPLY flawed game, but also the one that really hooked me on the series after I bounced off of XC1 and XCX, and I appreciate the nuances of the story and characterizations more every time I revisit it. And the soundtrack is godly.

I know this is an unpopular opinion in Xenoblade communities, but I enjoyed the early game silliness. Especially considering how gut-wrenching the story gets later on.

@StarPoint They are! I'd say the Skells are one of the main things I miss from the numbered titles. They give you the ability to drive around really fast and eventually, you get the ability to fly with them! I think what's great is that they aren't just used for transportation and exploration; they also become a part of the combat. I hope one day we get a Xenoblade game with skells and a story like the main series.