Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Catch-all

It's a great dopamine hit, that's for sure.

But, you know, it's definitely mixed emotions when you finally pull the last few after many hours grinding and opening hundreds of rare and legendary cores.

EDIT:

As I've mentioned before, though, I do think they did a decent job of balancing between story and random acquisition for blades, and balanced things properly so that most players should be mostly fine as far as party composition goes. But, ugh, even still the slot machine effect really made me feel rotten at times, particularly hunting down the last few.

Guess I'll try

Spoiler:

Pandoria

instead of Wulfric. Apparently I also had a Overclocking bangle in my backpack. And various other interesting stuff. I spend way too little time looking at the stuff I pick up

Yeah, I'm feeling happy I'm not a completionist. I have so many blades as it is, I don't feel compelled to "catch 'em all". But then again, I haven't finished the game so there is still time for an addiction to form!

Shadout wrote:

Guess I'll try

Spoiler:

Pandoria

instead of Wulfric. Apparently I also had a Overclocking bangle in my backpack. And various other interesting stuff. I spend way too little time looking at the stuff I pick up :D

Yeah, and if you are using

Spoiler:

Roc

and thus managing the smashing yourself, you've got a bit more flexibility about getting breaks going on other characters. It still might be a bit frustrating if you go up against enemies with strong resistance, but you'll probably be at least as efficient (or more) as my approach that revolves around intentionally not using that blade.

Free wrote:

Yeah, I'm feeling happy I'm not a completionist. I have so many blades as it is, I don't feel compelled to "catch 'em all". But then again, I haven't finished the game so there is still time for an addiction to form!

Nah, if you're not driven, I wouldn't bother. I sure wouldn't have if I didn't have an irrational nostalgic attachment to seeing KOS-MOS again.

zeroKFE wrote:
garion333 wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:

2. Use the right pouch items.

Boost your art and special regen through pouch items. Everything else offered is nice, but of secondary importance. The quality of your offense, defense, and healing is all directly proportional to the frequency with which you are using your arts and specials, and no other bonus is even remotely as valuable in any way, shape, or form.

Hmm, on one hand I'm glad to hear this and a bit bummed. I've been pounding cinnapons (I think!) on Rex in order to speed up the art meter, but not the other characters where I put other stuff for the heck of it.

So, I'm glad to know I was on the right track with the art meter increase, but bummed that the rest of the food stuff is somewhat inconsequential.

Guess I can ignore min/max and simply do what I want, but now I've got that little bit in the back of my head saying "increase the art meter, it'll help speed the game a long a little" and "speeding the game along" is paramount to me since I can game, oh, maybe three hours a week right now.

Well, there is good news for you there.

Once you unlock (and can afford to use) more two and three diamond pouch items, you'll have plenty of interesting choices to make again. Many of them have two or three effects, so you can pick and choose additional effects, or just how heavily you want to prioritize art/special recharge boosts vs other effects, since many options come with different proportions on items from different shops.

Also, there are pouch expansions to find out in the world, so eventually all your characters will be able to have two items running at a time, further increasing your options for making interesting choices about what buffs you have active.

(You unlock items mostly through merc missions, by the way.)

Thanks for the info.

Since I am fairly broke still I've not bought many pick items anyway. Early on I've been trying to use the ones that are preferred, to unlock more blade skills. Seemed like I saw this in a tip article or something.

All these tips really makes me wish here was a printed strategy guide for the game. Something with lots of pretty pictures too.

garion333 wrote:
Shadout wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

What do you need them to switch Blades for? They'll automatically switch Blades if one of their Blades is available for the next part of a combo.

For one, I sometimes want one of their blades to start the combo.
And also for their affinity charts. On Nia I made some blade her primary, because I wanted it to use some of its skills needed in the affinity chart. She.Just.Keeps.Switching.Away.From.It!

Well, you can always change her gambits around.

Oops, wrong game!

Seriously, would love gambits in more games.

Yeah gambits are the best. Almost good enough to play through the game one more time. Almost. The battle system in Xenoblade is good, maybe the second best since gambits in fact.

Ugh. I just lost 8 hours or so to a Switch crash. Because the game apparently never ever auto saves.
Has to be one of the most stupid things I have seen in modern gaming.

Oh yeah I had a Switch crash last night too. First one I've ever seen.

I think I had saved the night before, right before putting the system down. Woke it up, switched into game, and bam, crash screen popped up with instructions on restarting the Switch. Luckily not a hard lock and one button restarted it. But that was weird.

Shadout wrote:

Ugh. I just lost 8 hours or so to a Switch crash. Because the game apparently never ever auto saves.

I thought it auto-saved whenever you resonated with a core crystal. You mean I could have been save-skimming the Gatcha system?!

Okay, sure, it saves when you play their gatcha game.

Actually that might the only reason I did only lose 8 hours... was trying to get some random mineralogy blades at that point.

Shadout wrote:

Okay, sure, it saves when you play their gatcha game.

Actually that might the only reason I did only lose 8 hours... was trying to get some random mineralogy blades at that point.

Oof. That's rough!

I thought it also auto-saved when you discovered a new location?

But I started saving a lot anyway, just in case.

Stele wrote:

I thought it also auto-saved when you discovered a new location?

But I started saving a lot anyway, just in case.

Maybe, but if you're near the end and not discovering as many new locations...?

Yeah, it probably also autosaves in some other places. Still, I had been maxing dev lvl in 4 cities, progresses a few quests (though dont think I completed any), done a ton of merc missions, and none of that triggered a save.

Yeah I had my only Switch crash during Xenoblade 2. Lost a couple hours of progress on side quests.

Shadout wrote:

Ugh. I just lost 8 hours or so to a Switch crash. Because the game apparently never ever auto saves.
Has to be one of the most stupid things I have seen in modern gaming.

The only time I lost was about 3 hours to a "Wife decided to play Zelda" situation while I had XBC2 in sleep mode.

-BEP

Stele wrote:

I thought it also auto-saved when you discovered a new location?

But I started saving a lot anyway, just in case.

I'm pretty sure it only autosaves when opening crystals, all other saves are manual. I lost an hour or so pretty early on (also because of a crash) while doing story missions and running by lots of new locations and travel points.

It also saves when salvaging, i believe.

Next patch will be coming out tomorrow in Japan (so presumably late tomorrow for us) taking the game to 1.2.0. No details yet.

The quest pack will be out tomorrow along with some more "helpful items":

New Quests Pack

“The Artisan’s Agony” (available from Chapter 2)
“The Missing Nopon” (available from Chapter 3)
“The Abandoned Factory Exploration Tour” (available from Chapter 5)
“The Late Night Restaurant” (available from Chapter 7)
“The Patrol Soldier” (available from Chapter 10)

Helpful Items Pack 3

Driver Essentials Set 2 (10 x Rare Core Crystals, 1 x Epic Core Crystal, and 1 x Overdrive)
Tiger’s Favorite Things (3 x Juicy Samod)
Poppi α’s Favorite Things (3 x Fizz Juice)
Captivating Driver Equipment (1 x Auto-Balancer accessory)

Thanks for the info. I for sure am not lacking in quests. The only thing that might get me to bite on the DLC is the story content later this year, though I'll be waiting to see thoughts on that before I pull the trigger.

Yeah. The game is not exactly low on side quests. New story content, more endgame challenges etc could be interesting though.

I bought the DLC simply because of who the developer was, something I no longer do for Intelligent Systems' games (ie. Fire Emblem). I'm all in to support MonolithSoft as they're making games no one else is.

Really, all I care about is the upcoming rare Blade and the eventual story content. The rest is filler, though maybe these quests will be sillier or something special. Who knows?

Epic core crystal?

That means I'm going to get a really bad common with my luck - which seems to cancel out the luck my character has.

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

Epic core crystal?

That means I'm going to get a really bad common with my luck - which seems to cancel out the luck my character has.

Translation error. That's a legendary core crystal. (Also, Tiger is Tora.)

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

Epic core crystal?

That means I'm going to get a really bad common with my luck - which seems to cancel out the luck my character has.

Same here. I've only gotten commons with my Legendaries.

I got a couple rares. Still in Ch 3, only level 18 or so. I guess I should open them even though I can only use 2 blades right now right?

As I understand it there's some missions thing later I can send basic blades out on by themselves, so I might as well open a few more and hope for a unique one.

I’m level 21 and no rare blades at all yet. I think I’m early in chapter 3.

Stele wrote:

I got a couple rares. Still in Ch 3, only level 18 or so. I guess I should open them even though I can only use 2 blades right now right?

As I understand it there's some missions thing later I can send basic blades out on by themselves, so I might as well open a few more and hope for a unique one.

Even for those missions, your spare rare blades will be a lot more useful. But common blades are very useful as filler in the missions, and also for those interaction things in the open world. Like when the game want you to have 10 ice mastery or whatever => stacking common blades en masse.

Stele wrote:

I got a couple rares. Still in Ch 3, only level 18 or so. I guess I should open them even though I can only use 2 blades right now right?

As I understand it there's some missions thing later I can send basic blades out on by themselves, so I might as well open a few more and hope for a unique one.

Yes. But do keep in mind that you don't have a full complement of drivers yet, and the ability to transfer blades requires a pretty rare key item (there are fewer than 10 Overdrive Protocols, and I'm including the one we're supposed to get with this latest update).