Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Combat

• Combat mechanics are introduced very slowly, and you don’t get near your full potential until chapter 4. The core combat cycle goes
  • Use auto attack to build up driver arts ( X Y B buttons). Interrupting the animation to repeat the first attack will build arts faster early game.
  • Use driver arts to build up blade special (A button) Arts are also the source of the driver combos.
  • Use increasing rank specials, 1-3, in certain element orders to create a ‘seal’ debuff (top right chart in combat) and create an elemental orb around the enemy. The enemy then gains some resistance to that element while the orb is active.
  • When the party gauge is full, hit a chain attack, using the opposing element to burst the orbs for 2x damage. Burst 5 orbs at once for a special final attack.
  • Many monsters gain a buff at 50% health, enraged, and the game expects you to burst down their health bar very quickly at that point using chain attacks.

• Example of the above: Combat for a large enemy that summons add-ons would be hitting it with driver arts, try to keep topple-launch up to interrupt it, and hitting it with any elemental combo you like before landing one that ends with a Dark element that causes “Seal Reinforcements” to prevent it summoning more enemies. Then, when the enemy hits 50% health or gains the enraged buff, hit a chain attack, and use the opposing element against the orbs for maximum damage.

• The only active seal is the last one landed. The next seal overwrites the effect.

• Fusion combos are when break/topple/launch/smash are applied before a blade specials, i.e break then fire, not fire then break. This is the biggest multiplier to damage in the game.

• Overkill in chain attacks will give bonus experience based on the amount of excess damage.

• The element counters are fire/water, ice/wind, electric/earth, light/dark.

• A major combat feature is canceling, which requires activating an ability on hit of the current action. Cancel on the last hit of a combo is generally the most effective. There is a blue ring that shines on screen when successful.

• If you move your character slightly after the final hit of a standard auto-attack string, it will cancel the animation cool-down, and move directly into the next string of hits as soon as you stop moving. This is a way to do more damage over time.

• Driver combo abilities, the break-smash chain, are weapon specific and different for each party member. The abilities can be found under “effect” in the WP menu

• Positioning is a huge bonus to damage, even for blade specials.

• Maxing affinity in combat, the glowing line between driver and blade, improves combat ability. Many equipment items give large bonuses to damage at max affinity.

• Pouch items can grant a huge variety of combat bonuses, but the best ones are desserts which charge Arts faster

• Enemies can have elemental weaknesses indicated on their status bar with the icon in a down arrow, and can swap elements in combat.

• The AI will prioritize the blades in the top and middle spots, rarely using the third.

• Every character has a skill they can learn on their chart that lets them cancel a weapon art into another weapon art. This is the most important skill in the game and even if you buy this skill and forget about this menu and never use it again you'll still be fine.

Blades

• Obtaining blades works via a gacha mechanic. There is a pity system that will reward 5 rare blades per amount of crystals used and then it’s purely luck. The in game pull rate is improved based on a character’s luck stat and their idea stat.

• Because of the terrible gacha design, it gets harder to pull a rare the more you have, with the last 1-2 possibly taking hundreds of legendary cores for the lowest %chance ones if they weren’t pulled prior to that.

• Rex gains an ability in chapter 7 to equip any blade, it’s often suggested to not open core crystals on him, but disregard, or just open the ‘named’ crystals that are specific guaranteed blades.

• Common blades are completely random, but extremely useful especially for field and battle skills. A good element+weapon common can be better than a rare especially for driver/blade combos.

• There are no light element common blades.

• Skills/abilities that are great to keep include: Salvaging Mastery of 1-3 ranks, Elemental mastery of 2-3 ranks, Treasure Sensor, Orb Master, Luck % modifier. Field skills of 3 ranks are very handy in general early on.

• Don’t release common blades until you unlock the Mercenary Missions feature, it explains why you want 40-50 commons.

• Blade trust is gained from using them in battle, consuming pouch items, and having them in the party during side quests. The best way to raise trust, by far, is spamming pouch items.

• If an affinity orb has ??? it requires story/quest progression to reveal its info.

• Characters have a role, try to equip blades that match their role rather than jack of all trades. The AI is extremely bad about healing you so if the one healer you get doesn't have three healing blades you will die a lot unless you make Rex an off healer.

• Blade Chips are your primary source of damage increases. Use these liberally

General Information

• The game is very stingy with tutorial info, and expects you to remember everything. Some NPCs will give hints or reference advanced combat tactics, and the informant shops are sort of the in game tutorial record that requires you to purchase the advice.

• Salvaging is very profitable when using gold cylinders and the Salvaging Mastery field skill, yielding 3-4x the cost of the cylinders. The Mor Ardian port has one of the best locations for it.

• Town Affinity will increase from side quest completion, talking to yellow star NPCs, and buying/selling from vendors. As town affinity increases, the shop prices decrease, until at 5 stars the purchase price is the same as the sale price. This does not affect the price of the 500k core crystal in Gormett however.

• Despite introducing shop deeds very early, you will not be able to get most until the town affinity gets to 4-5 stars. They do however unlock incredible QoL increases like increased movement speed and item capacity.

• Tiger Tiger rewards are the same on easy. Item ranks are random for all stages, but the large treasures have higher chances for better items.

• Mercenary Missions are great for raising blade affinity at higher ranks, 50% of 3 affinity orbs per mission at rank 5, but terrible for raising trust.

Certain orbs, like do X amount in a single hit or kill a UM will not gain affinity from these missions.

• If you ever don't have a party of 3 characters keep doing the story until you have three characters again. Absolutely no sidequest is balanced around having less than a full party and you will get crushed. There is nothing missable to worry about.

• Pressing X will open the quick travel menu and highlight the nearest travel point automatically. This is much quicker than going through the main menu to find the correct area, and is great if you're grinding something, like collectibles or enemies.