Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Soulhacker Guide

Warning - This Guide Contains Spoilers For Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Of all 19 unlockable hero classes in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the Soulhacker is easily one of the most interesting and flexible to have in your party setup.

You'll unlock the ability to use Soulhacker by recruiting Defiant Triton into your party. Let's take a look at how to do this as well as the ins and outs of the class itself.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Soulhacking Guide

How To Unlock Defiant Triton

As we've already detailed in our guide to unlocking and upgrading all 19 of Xenoblade Chronicles 3's heroes, Defiant Triton can be added to your roster by heading to the Cadensia Region during Chapter 5. Once here you'll need to first visit Ishan Isle and then locate the golden "?" quest marker that kicks off the Colony 15 liberation quest. In order to do this, head from Ishan Isle to Hargan Point Camp, this will trigger a series of events that leads you to Colony 15 and the quest "Doing It My Way". Complete the challenges in this quest and Triton and his Soulhacker ability are yours to play around with.

How To Use Soul Hack

Once you've unlocked the ability to Soul Hack you'll need to add arts and skills to your character's repertoire and you'll do this by defeating the game's Unique Monsters. You can check out our guide to All Unique Monster Locations to help you in this endeavour.

Each Unique Monster that you defeat whilst running with a Soulhacker in your squad will grant you a new art/skill that can then be used by any character using the Soulhacker class going forward. There are around 140 Unique Monsters in the game and in order to help you track which arts and skills you've unlocked you can head to the Heroes section of the main menu then hit "Y" to bring up the Soul Hack List. Here you'll find details for everything you've unlocked split into sections for Arts and Skills.

Another cool feature of your Soul Hack List is that it shows you which monsters you've defeated, which ones you've discovered but not yet fought and which ones you'll need to rematch in order to gain their arts and skills. Yes, unfortunately, you'll need to rematch all monsters you've already fought before attaining the Soul Hack ability in order to nab their moves - something which is made much easier by fast-travelling to their grave sites.

Remember too that if you see a Unique Monster on your travels but aren't quite ready to fight them, you can highlight them and the region they inhabit will be registered to your Soul Hack List to make it slightly easier to locate them when you return for a scrap. Yes, we'd prefer if this function gave you the exact pinpoint location of the beast on your in-game map, but it's better than nothing and can make trekking down the last monsters a little easier when you're going for 100%.

Further to all of this, if you take a closer look at the entries for Arts and Skills in your Soul Hacker list, you'll see that each one has an upgrade requirement to complete. You may need to learn a specified number of arts, defeat a certain number of monsters or deal a set amount of damage, etc. There's plenty to dig into here and it'll take you a good long while to max out every art and skill on offer.

Soul Hack Master Skill

Once you've ranked the Soulhacker class up to 10 you'll unlock the extremely handy ability to steal Unique Monster arts and skills without using a Soulhacker. In order to do this fairly quickly we suggest choosing Mio or Lanz to rank up Soulhacker as their high class rating will speed things along. Alternatively you could also spend a bunch of Nopon coins to rank up immediately, the coins are rare so it's up to you how much of a rush you're in.

From here it's now just a question of examining all of the various arts and skills you've unlocked and choosing the best ones for the character you're playing with. There are some super powerful buffs and monster-specific debuffs to mix and match and, of course, you can choose to Auto-Build to fill all of this stuff in automatically, but the real fun in the Soulhacker class is experimenting, grabbing new skills from monsters and trying them out until you find a build that suits your playstyle. Have fun!

This article is part of our Xenoblade Chronicles 3 walkthrough and guide series. We'll help you survive your journeys across Aionios with information you'll need to make the most of the game, such as How to Unlock Traversal Skills (Wall Climbing, Rope Sliding, Scree Walking, Hazard Neutralization), How to Unlock and Upgrade All Heroes and Classes, 16 Tips & Tricks We Wish We Knew Before We Started, How to Get Affinity and XP Rewards from Collectopaedia Cards, How to Gain 100% Completion, and How to Unlock the Nopon Coin Xchange.

We'll also let you know where to find Every Rest Spot Location, All Secret Area Locations, Every Ferronis Hulk Location, and All Unique Monster Locations (including Aetia Region Full, Aetia Region Upper & Elgares Depths, Fornis Region, Pentelas Region, Keves Castle Region, Cadensia Region, and Origin Interior), plus All Meal Recipes, Effects & Where to Find Them.

We can also help out with specific sidequests, such as How to Complete the 'Uniting the Seven Nopon' Quest, and How to Complete the Nopon Register Quest, tell you how to make the most of Chain Attacks and the Soul Hack ability, and offer advice on if you should play the previous Xenoblade Chronicles games before starting XC3, How Long to Beat the Game, and How to Take a Screenshot Without the HUD

And finally, you can check out our review and Where to Buy Xenoblade Chronicles on Nintendo Switch, if for some reason you haven't yet picked up the game!