Xenoblade - New Monolith RPG for Wii

Yeah this game is like stupid lengthy.

danopian wrote:
bobbywatson wrote:
danopian wrote:

Please tell me I'm close to the end.

Sorry :(

No. No no no no no

IIRC, I spent another 30-40 hours after that point.

You want to reach the ending? You'll have to press on and on and ON!

Spoiler:

There is no ending, only Reyn Time, baby!

sometimesdee wrote:
danopian wrote:
bobbywatson wrote:
danopian wrote:

Please tell me I'm close to the end.

Sorry :(

No. No no no no no

IIRC, I spent another 30-40 hours after that point.

I think I might cry, but...

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/dK6MwRv.jpg)

Danopian. Man! Good to see you! Thinking I may get back in because it doesn't look like I'm getting X this weekend. Let's do this! WE CAN REALLY DO THIS! I'm a bit past Agniratha.

I'm still at metal face...

I'm thinking about starting this on 3DS next year, but making it a year long task to get it finished. Was excited to start it as soon as possible until I saw the amount of people almost in tears because of how long left they have to play

My wife has made it pretty clear that X is a Christmas gift. So.... I'm playing this tonight. Danopian - now I know I'm just beyond Agniratha.

Almost at level 70.

You can add me on the WiiU: Cube13

If it makes you feel any better I'm confident I could have done the game in 60 hours and not missed much. The side quests draw you in but don't really add much.

Zoso1701 wrote:

My wife has made it pretty clear that X is a Christmas gift. So.... I'm playing this tonight. Danopian - now I know I'm just beyond Agniratha.

Almost at level 70.

I'm with you all the way, Zoso. We can definitely do this.

PoderOmega wrote:

If it makes you feel any better I'm confident I could have done the game in 60 hours and not missed much. The side quests draw you in but don't really add much.

Poder - grats on your tagged-ness - do you have any speed tips for this last section, or am I in for a lot of cutscenes and out of luck?

cube wrote:

You can add me on the WiiU: Cube13

Cube, I think you may have been looking to post this in the Chronicles X thread.

I don't think its the cutscenes that will kill you, its the side quests, collectipedia. colony rebuilding quests, and affinity building that got me. My speed suggestion world's be to skip all of that, but that may leave with you with a need to grind. In that case named monsters near landmarks are the way to go. Just fast travel around the map hoping they've spawned as they'll give you better experience (assuming they are still in your level ballpark).

Also, gem craft a topple plus (or topple up?) Whichever one extends the length of a topple, not the one that increases damage while an enemy is toppled. So Break->Topple->Daze can help you take out higher level or named monsters. The longer the topple the easier it is to get into daze.

Great tips, thanks! I hadn't ever looked closely at the topple length modifying gems, that's a great idea. I've definitely had to grind in a couple areas after speeding through certain parts of the game, but had relied on going back to complete the most recent side quests to catch up on XP; knowing that about the named enemies will certainly help.

That was my issue. I sped through the first half, then ended up needing to grind, HARD.

Oh my word, how many presumably-the-final-boss-but-not-actually can one game have?

It will never end. Xenoblade is an endless maze designed to drive me to drink and ruin. It's procedurally generating an anime saga story with no conclusion but a plot twist to introduce a new area every several hours. I'm sure of it.

Just you wait, danopian. The actual final boss will blow your mind!

sometimesdee wrote:

Just you wait, danopian. The actual final boss will blow your mind!

IMAGE(http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/059687/images/blackwhite/pokemans_025.gif)

Well it's definitely grind time as opposed to Reyn time now.

Level 72 and I'm at

Spoiler:

Lorithia

Zoso1701 wrote:

Well it's definitely grind time as opposed to Reyn time now.

Level 72 and I'm at

Spoiler:

Lorithia

I'm guessing I'm just an area behind you. I'm at level 69 and am

Spoiler:

just back inside the Bionis. But then I got distracted by looking for all the fugitive High Entia which spun off into looking for the treasures of the Giants and then somehow completing the Eryth Sea map and re-discovering a bunch of "ancient insignia" doors?...

I get very, very interested by mysterious locked doors that aren't pertinent to a game's plot. Thanks a lot, Fez, La-Mulana, Dark Souls, Zelda, Metroid, etc. I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep going and leave those alone. Did any of you folks take the time to do this particular side stuff?

Yes, I took the time. It's not worth the time in my opinion. Resist and be free to play other games. I'm trying to be a "disabler" here for you. Finish the game and use Youtube for what you missed.

PoderOmega wrote:

Yes, I took the time. It's not worth the time in my opinion. Resist and be free to play other games. I'm trying to be a "disabler" here for you. Finish the game and use Youtube for what you missed.

Thanks, Poder. I needed that.

Zoso1701 wrote:

Well it's definitely grind time as opposed to Reyn time now.

Level 72 and I'm at

Spoiler:

Lorithia

Geez, Zoso, you weren't kidding about grind time. I feel like they ramped up the enemy levels way too fast in this area given how little time it takes to explore. I was 69 or 70 when I made it to your spoiler and have been grinding for a few hours since then, just got to 72 and re-tried it and got it down to about 1/2 health after 20 minutes then died painfully. Even more grinding needed.

Spoiler:

Is there a good strategy for this boss besides focusing on doing damage while the elemental shield thingies are dead? Should I be trying to kill those things or ignore them like I've been doing? They seem to have a ton of health and just end up self-destructing and re-spawning, so I've been focusing on attacking Lorithia to keep the Monado arts recharging for buffing Reyn so he can sponge all the damage and getting the chain attack bar filled.

Danopian, I haven't tried the fight again since my first time...

Level 77 now. Hoping to grind to 80 tonight/tomorrow and have at it again. Hope beyond hope that this grind push is the last one I'll have to do.

There are certainly side quests I could do now, but the monsters for most of them are like 10-20 levels above me...

As a reminder, Chuggaconroy goes a 100% run with all grinding / non-unique battles cut out and some good commentary on his youtube channel. That's how I experienced the game on my 2nd monitor. It can probably be a great resource as he talks through a lot of things to consider, too.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

As a reminder, Chuggaconroy goes a 100% run with all grinding / non-unique battles cut out and some good commentary on his youtube channel. That's how I experienced the game on my 2nd monitor. It can probably be a great resource as he talks through a lot of things to consider, too.

Thanks, mrtomayto! From there I went and read a bunch of suggestions about strategies for this (here's an example) and went back and got it on 3rd try with Melia/Riki/Sharla at lvl 72. Using Melia as the main in order to do Ether damage to those elemental enemies was the key ingredient.

Zoso, you could definitely clear it out at your level - all that grinding won't go to waste, either, I'm still playing catch-up in the subsequent area.

edit: I was also greatly comforted to find that many people considered this to be the hardest fight in the game.

Yeah Melia is needed to easily kill any elemetals. I also found her AI not to be agressive enough so I usually would play as her for those fights.

I never got the gang of using Melia as main. Good job, Dan!

Melia was definitely the way to win that fight.

Only took 80 hours to figure out how to use Ether attacks to my advantage...

Same here, Zoso. I...don't think I've understood how Ether damage works up to this point.

On a related topic: screw this last boss.

edit: My tale of woe, spoilers for final boss:

Spoiler:

I somehow made it to the 2nd or 3rd form of Zanza at level 75-76 after beating Dickson on a grueling 5th try or so, found myself completely underleveled. I couldn't save the game through this whole final sequence so stayed up late making 10+ attempts, left the Wii on overnight, tried 20+ more times in the morning trying to find some kind of strategy or trick to the fight. Farthest I got was the second round of Zanza Guardians, maybe 1/3 health down on Zanza, with Fiora/Riki/Sharla. Gave up and looked it up, to find unanimous agreement that you have to be level 80-82 to have a chance and really need Shulk's Monado arts leveled up father than I had to cope with Zanza's attacks - with the exception of some crazy people who understand all the systems well enough to make up for the level with gems and whatnot.

So I loaded a game from before Dickson to go grind for awhile. -_- I really thought I was done, I don't know why the boss level ramped up like that at the end.