Xenoblade Chronicles X

Tips for both the Wii U and Switch (definitive) versions

Once you master the last class in a line you have access to that classes weapons for all other classes so there's no reason not to switch classes and try to master them all.

Arts you unlock are tied to specific weapons but Skills are usable for all classes.

Affinity missions will also unlock Arts for you to use so it's worth doing them when they appear (Not to mention they're usually pretty fun compared to Normal or Basic missions)

When you look at the map you will see that some segments are highlighted and some are not in NLA. Each of those slightly-brighter segments has going to be something done there, whether a quest, Affinity Mission, or Heart-to-Heart.

On the map view for non-NLA places they have different Icons. The icons that look like documents(Normal Mission) and two hands shaking (Affinity Mission) does not mean that there's a mission to pick up from there. Instead it just means you'll be going there for a mission that you pickup elsewhere.

Also every once in a while do upkeep on your Frontier-Nav probes. You'll need them for certain quests (Like have Frontier-Nav produce 150,000 credits) as well as Miranium and income. These quests aren't story-related at all, but it's worth persuing them anyway just as a reminder to sort your probes around to better spots and upgrade them once in a while.

The top line of classes is your basic tanky classline and a good starting point. It makes you very hard to kill with Defensive Stance (or a glass cannon with Offensive Stance) and does a pretty decent amount of damage. Winged Viper's much more situational in its damage, and can get tricky if you don't have someone else who can hold aggro in your party.

You get your first Skell with your Skell License after Chapter 6. You'll notice that it's a Level 20 Frame while the store-sold ones are Level 30. Ditch it the moment you clear that level threshold.

Skells come with a limited number of Skell Insurance tickets for when it's destroyed. First three times it happens, it's covered. After that, you pay out of pocket. However, if you can hit Perfect on the QTE when your Skell's destroyed, you won't have to pay. This only works so long as you still have at least one Skell Insurance ticket left, however, as the game code simply doesn't deduct an insurance ticket rather than anything smarter.

Your party members will always hit a Perfect on the Skell Eject QTE, so as long as their Skells have at least one insurance ticket you'll never have to cover their losses.

Don't pay to refuel your Skells if you're about to quit the game - it keeps passively refueling while you aren't playing, so if you quit for the night and come back in the morning you will have a full set of tanks across all your party's Skells.

Don’t do the "The Repair Job" affinity mission for Lin early unless you have
five white cometites
laying around, you only get them from FrontierNav mining probes and early on there are only a handful of easily accessible sites that even have a chance to drop them. If you DO end up taking the quest early,
you can also avoid having to wait for the white cometites just by saying the initial fix is good enough and you’re hungry for dinner. You’ll miss out on a minor Affinity ping and like 100XP, neither of which would take more than 30 seconds to get regardless.

The recommended level for a quest is always accurate to the combat you're required to do for it. If you need enemy drops the tracking will sometimes lead you to high level enemies that are closer to you rather than level appropriate enemies that are farther away, but if you check the map or explore you can always find someone closer to your level who drops what you need

While basic missions from the console are mostly of the "collect 20 bear ass" style that you can ignore or work on in the background, keep an eye out for any missions that tell you to meet with someone in town, or have the name "Off the Record". The former point to bigger sidequests and sometimes need to be accepted before you can start them, and the latter are how you get the ability to unlock the various types of locked containers.

There is a pretty robust fast travel system that doesn't get really get highlighted. Probes, landmarks, and a lot of the city all have fast travel points attached, so save yourself some running around.

The new instant cooldown button will let you burn through trash mobs very quickly, abuse it - the bar resets to full every encounter.

Affinity gains are really high in this version, you won’t need to really worry about it much at all. If you need to bump up a character’s affinity level go clown some tyrants with them for five minutes.

There are parts of the combat that don’t unlock until Chapter 5 - if you’ve got Arts that reference mechanics you don’t have access to yet, just ignore them for now.

You now only get BP for characters you have unlocked, so if you don’t do recruit missions as the story progresses you will end up with a bunch of underpowered chumps. There’s enough characters in this that it’s a total non-issue for game difficulty even without accounting for the online Scout system, but it’s something to keep in mind.

If you have a disc copy you can go to the eShop and download DLC that installs game content to the hard drive.

For Basic missions never pick up a gathering missions because you can obtain the items before even taking up the mission. Every once in a while just check the gathering missions listed and accept anything that you already have the materials for.

For any Normal mission that requires you to collect something just look up the area to get it because you're never given a hint on where to find certain collectables.

Make sure you bring Gwin on missions and get his affinity up to at least one heart, because it's a requirement for one of the endgame story missions.

When the time comes to pick a BLADE Division, just pick Pathfinder. The gains outstrip any other division's by a wide margin, simply because the actions used to score points for them are much more common. It'll mean you can get a Skell Salvage Ticket each day, which lets you recover a destroyed Skell without coughing up 70% of the Skell's cost to restore it.