Xenoblade Chronicles: Difference between revisions

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* You have to put things into the collection by hand, it doesn't happen automatically
== Affinity ==


* Whenever you see someone with a blue dot, speak to them. What they say will change as you do more sidequests, relationships in the affinity graph change and as your affinity with the area they're in goes up.
* Affinity Is a core game mechanic, if you ignore it you will miss a large amount of content


* If you want to farm regular enemies for a rare drop or are trying to get a unique monster to spawn, go to the area where they are and save. Keep reloading your game until they drop what you are looking for or in the case of unique monsters they decide to spawn.
* Party Affinity: Party members have 5 ranks, from yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, 0 to 5000 affinity points. Despite what the game says, giving gifts can increase at most 22 affinity points. The bulk of affinity gains will come from combat action button presses, chain attacks, and when talking to sidequest NPCs the party leader will often gain affinity with the active party members through interjections. You will see a pop-up of two character icons and some hearts when there is affinity gain.


* A dropped chest will only decide what it's going to give you when you open it. If a monster drops the type of chest you want (Wood, Silver, or Gold), you can save the game and open it. If you don't get what you want, reload the game and the chest will still be there. You can repeat this as many times as you want until you get what you want.
* NPC Affinity: Every major location has named NPCs (green dots on the map) you can talk to and make them active on the affinity grid. This is required to get all the side-quests as sometimes if they aren’t active their related side-quests won’t be available. NPCs have schedules can may be in their location for 12+ hours or in rare cases only 4 hours.


* One thing that a lot of people seem to miss is that you can fast travel to any area in the game you have previously been to by going into the menu and finding the map you want from the far left option.
* As location affinity increase, more options unlock, from improved trading options to more side-quests. When you gain a star it’s worth checking the whole area map during several different times to see if any new exclamation marks have appeared.


* Chain attacks work by making each subsequent attack of the same colour stronger. Chaining a whole bunch of red attacks together does a hell of a lot more damage than switching between different colours. The exception to this is each characters white attack (like Shulks Monado abilities), which act like wild cards and can continue the chain just like any other colour, so for example Red - Red - Red would be just as strong as Blue - White - Red.
* Heart to Heart moments are only available at green or the highest two ranks(purple&pink).


* Successful chain attacks reward the party with bonus EXP.
== Combat ==


* Auras do not stack. Each one you cast removes the previous one.
* Combat is MMO style where simply auto attacking isn’t effective. The emphasis is on using buffs/debuffs and getting into correct position to deal maximum damage.


* If an enemy is tearing your shit up consistently, go level up for a little while. It may not seem like there should be a huge difference between level 12 and level 13, but there is.
* The main party dynamic is DPS/tank/healer and there are several party configurations that will work.


* Fix Colony 6. Do it. You are rewarded handsomely throughout the process, and it's definitely worth it.
* The AI for party control ranges from good to terrible. The worst AI is for the female party members and Shulk.


* Unless you're a completionist, don't bother trying to finish every single sidequest that shows up in the log.
* The basic combat strategy is break-topple-daze and using abilities that gain increased damage against those conditions. Certain AI party members are much better at this then others.


* Accept every side-quest you come across. The game will "turn in" sidequests as soon as you complete them in the cases of "Kill this number of enemies" or "Collect this number of items", so you don't always need to run back to the quest giver to get the rewards.
* Chain Attacks start off as merely okay and become exponentially better once you have more arts and higher party affinity. Chain attacks are linked by color, with the talent art a wildcard that will link with anything, so a talent art as the second attack will always give you a 3x chain


* Quests in the log that have little clocks next to them will expire if you proceed past the point of no return in the game. You will know when this happens, I promise. The game makes you save before continuing, and a character tells you "OK this is it, are you ready to go because there's no going back to those other places we've been if you say yes," then lets you choose to go or stay.
* Defeating enemies with Chain Attacks rewards you bonus exp, and 2x skill exp.


* The game lets you keep whatever is equipped on each character for New Game+, as well as various other items of your choosing (a certain number of weapons, armor, collectibles, etc.) Keep track of how much of each thing you have, and plan accordingly - some of the higher-level Colony 6 repairs require either waiting around for collectibles to respawn or being close to the end of the game, or both. Get them before you finish the game and hang on to them if you plan on playing through NG+.
* Auras do not stack. When setting up arts for the other party members the AI really only benefits from using 2 auras.


* If you want a new outfit for a certain character (your seventh teammate) so they doesn't look fucking ridiculous, fixing Colony 6's Commerce is the way to get it. A pink Nopon merchant will arrive when you max it out, and she'll sell what you need. You'll know what I'm talking about about 2/3rds the way through the game, trust me.
* The game expects you to be within ~5 levels of the enemies or your exp gain drops off a cliff, so use expert mode to stay within a certain range as needed.


* Debuff your enemies! Daze them, Topple them, Poison them, Freezinate them, etc. Some really hard fights are no big deal when you figure out that you can knock the bad guy down and go to town on him.  
* Despite everything mentioned there are ways to build a level 20 party so that you can kill the level 120 superboss, so if you are having combat difficulties there’s probably some options or abilities that will make things far easier.


* Topple is great until you start running into certain foes who do Spike damage while toppled. This won't happen until the late game, but it's something to watch out for nonetheless.
== Sidequests ==


* Monsters and NPCs (Notably quest NPCs) are affected by the time of day, and in the case of monsters by the weather. If a target is shown as "Inactive" in the quest pop-up, it's usually the time of day. You can change the time in the menu, and this has a chance of changing the weather.
* Almost all side-quests are some form of “collect X items” or “kill X enemy” and many of them will autocomplete in the field once done and give you the reward
 
* Colony 6 Reconstruction has massive benefits that outweigh the costs.
 
* For some rare collectibles, you can find them for trade from named NPCs, especially ‘overtrade’ where you give them something worth far more then what they ask for and they give you a bonus item
 
* For collectibles, complete Colony 6 reconstruction and fill the collectopedia first. When you require specific collectibles for sidequests they will be explicitly marked on the map for ease of access.
 
* Quest Logs with a time symbol mean they will fail at a point of no return, this isn’t a major issue until much later in the game.
 
== General ==
 
* The only way to improve overworld travel speed is with Quick Step gems. You get one for completing the Colony 9 collectopedia very early on.
 
* Buying equipment once makes it available as a cosmetic for your game account. Clearing out shop’s inventory then reloading to a prior save will still result in unlocking the cosmetics without having spent any money
 
* Enemies and some rare collectibles only spawn under certain conditions. You can change the time until those conditions occur and the quest should then be visible in the map
 
* Your Nopon companion has skills to increase the drop rates of silver and gold chests. When unlocked and active on all 3 party members you get a 30% bonus to drop which will massively decrease the time spent trying to farm for items.
 
* The party members start with 3 skill trees, and you can unlock the 4th ones around chapter 10/11. It requires a series of side quests that only become available when the previous one is completed.
 
* Gems are useful but not overly important until getting to the 5/6th rank. Important ones to keep are exp/AP boosts and whatever gem types your play style is focusing on


[[Category:Games]]
[[Category:Games]]

Latest revision as of 14:13, 13 October 2022

Affinity

  • Affinity Is a core game mechanic, if you ignore it you will miss a large amount of content
  • Party Affinity: Party members have 5 ranks, from yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, 0 to 5000 affinity points. Despite what the game says, giving gifts can increase at most 22 affinity points. The bulk of affinity gains will come from combat action button presses, chain attacks, and when talking to sidequest NPCs the party leader will often gain affinity with the active party members through interjections. You will see a pop-up of two character icons and some hearts when there is affinity gain.
  • NPC Affinity: Every major location has named NPCs (green dots on the map) you can talk to and make them active on the affinity grid. This is required to get all the side-quests as sometimes if they aren’t active their related side-quests won’t be available. NPCs have schedules can may be in their location for 12+ hours or in rare cases only 4 hours.
  • As location affinity increase, more options unlock, from improved trading options to more side-quests. When you gain a star it’s worth checking the whole area map during several different times to see if any new exclamation marks have appeared.
  • Heart to Heart moments are only available at green or the highest two ranks(purple&pink).

Combat

  • Combat is MMO style where simply auto attacking isn’t effective. The emphasis is on using buffs/debuffs and getting into correct position to deal maximum damage.
  • The main party dynamic is DPS/tank/healer and there are several party configurations that will work.
  • The AI for party control ranges from good to terrible. The worst AI is for the female party members and Shulk.
  • The basic combat strategy is break-topple-daze and using abilities that gain increased damage against those conditions. Certain AI party members are much better at this then others.
  • Chain Attacks start off as merely okay and become exponentially better once you have more arts and higher party affinity. Chain attacks are linked by color, with the talent art a wildcard that will link with anything, so a talent art as the second attack will always give you a 3x chain
  • Defeating enemies with Chain Attacks rewards you bonus exp, and 2x skill exp.
  • Auras do not stack. When setting up arts for the other party members the AI really only benefits from using 2 auras.
  • The game expects you to be within ~5 levels of the enemies or your exp gain drops off a cliff, so use expert mode to stay within a certain range as needed.
  • Despite everything mentioned there are ways to build a level 20 party so that you can kill the level 120 superboss, so if you are having combat difficulties there’s probably some options or abilities that will make things far easier.

Sidequests

  • Almost all side-quests are some form of “collect X items” or “kill X enemy” and many of them will autocomplete in the field once done and give you the reward
  • Colony 6 Reconstruction has massive benefits that outweigh the costs.
  • For some rare collectibles, you can find them for trade from named NPCs, especially ‘overtrade’ where you give them something worth far more then what they ask for and they give you a bonus item
  • For collectibles, complete Colony 6 reconstruction and fill the collectopedia first. When you require specific collectibles for sidequests they will be explicitly marked on the map for ease of access.
  • Quest Logs with a time symbol mean they will fail at a point of no return, this isn’t a major issue until much later in the game.

General

  • The only way to improve overworld travel speed is with Quick Step gems. You get one for completing the Colony 9 collectopedia very early on.
  • Buying equipment once makes it available as a cosmetic for your game account. Clearing out shop’s inventory then reloading to a prior save will still result in unlocking the cosmetics without having spent any money
  • Enemies and some rare collectibles only spawn under certain conditions. You can change the time until those conditions occur and the quest should then be visible in the map
  • Your Nopon companion has skills to increase the drop rates of silver and gold chests. When unlocked and active on all 3 party members you get a 30% bonus to drop which will massively decrease the time spent trying to farm for items.
  • The party members start with 3 skill trees, and you can unlock the 4th ones around chapter 10/11. It requires a series of side quests that only become available when the previous one is completed.
  • Gems are useful but not overly important until getting to the 5/6th rank. Important ones to keep are exp/AP boosts and whatever gem types your play style is focusing on