Xenoblade Chronicles 2

[Armagon]

21 minutes ago, FrostyFireMage said:

How much does the fanbase dislike how 2 plays up the whole comedic anime route and RNG reliance? I'm guessing quite a lot

I mean, some people are annoyed at the gacha system for Blades but the fanbase (at least from what i've seen) has been very positive on Xenoblade 2. I've seen plenty of people call this game their GOTY for 2017 (and i'm one of those people). This poll was posted on the Xenoblade subreddit a few weeks ago.  

56 minutes ago, DodgeDusk said:

but the other Titans just felt like linear corridors.

The biggest example for this is Lefhtiria (evidenced by the fact that there are zero Secret Viewpoints there and it's the only plac besides Indol that shares that trait), and that sucks because Lefhtiria is my favorite area in the game. But yeah, i agree that areas felt smaller compared to Xenoblade 1. 

38 minutes ago, Omegaprism said:

I'll join in the love train and say that I got this game for Xmas, and when I haven't been able to play it (at work mostly) I've been thinking about playing it, which is a feeling I have missed. I feel kinda bad, though, because I didn't have time to finish Xenoblade 1 before I got 2, and to be honest after beating XCX the gameplay felt rough and stiff in 1 by comparison. And now that I've jumped feet first into 2, I don't know if I'll be able to go back. I still want to beat Xenoblade 1, but man, I've got some obstacles of my own making in my path.

My recommendation is to finish 1 before starting/going back to 2. Because 2 has significantly better gameplay than 1 so it's best to get the more simplistic combat of 1 out of the way first.

How far are you in 1 btw?

[Omegaprism]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

My recommendation is to finish 1 before starting/going back to 2. Because 2 has significantly better gameplay than 1 so it's best to get the more simplistic combat of 1 out of the way first.

How far are you in 1 btw?

Ugh, yeah, I know I should do that, but I brought my switch with me to Hawaii, and I was up late one night, and then the ball just started rolling and now 2 is getting really fun and... I'm just making excuses at this point.

In 1 I am making my way up through the mechonis after having met the machina and talked about confronting Egil (I think that was his name). I wanna say it feels like I'm about two thirds through the story.

I recall having some difficulty deciding on arts for the 7th party member. It's like they have a sampler plate from the rest of the group, but not quite enough to pick a role in combat and focus on it.

[Armagon]

24 minutes ago, Omegaprism said:

In 1 I am making my way up through the mechonis after having met the machina and talked about confronting Egil (I think that was his name). I wanna say it feels like I'm about two thirds through the story.

Assuming you haven't reached Ch.5 in 2 yet, i suggest to keep playing 1 first. You're already past the halfway mark and XC1 progresses pretty quickly once you reach Mechonis (aside from two tedious boss fights but shhhh).

26 minutes ago, Omegaprism said:

I recall having some difficulty deciding on arts for the 7th party member. It's like they have a sampler plate from the rest of the group, but not quite enough to pick a role in combat and focus on it.

I would focus on attack Arts as well as that regeneration one.

[blah the Prussian]

I LOVE the reveal of who the Architect is. My fears that this story would just be a rehash of Xenoblade 1 have been resolved. They even got Adam Howden.

[Armagon]

 

As a reminder, New Game+ will let us send Special Blades such as Pyra on Merc Missions. It'll also give us access to "those" Blades (the likely assumption is that we'll be able to use Torna's Blade+Dughall's Blade). A certain Blade will also gain access to it's Lv.4 Special.

Spoiler

Certain Blade likely being Pneuma since she currently doesn't have a Lv.4 Special.

 

[FrostyFireMage]

If I could get Blades other than the generic ones that'd be great. I only have Azami so far 

[DisobeyedCargo]

Okay I feel this is a good place to get help.

I am in the middle of chapter seven, I have completed the Mysterious not quest, but Riddles on The Wall Is not appearing... WHY?!

i am on Verizon 1.2.0 of the game if that is important. 

[LuxSpes]

37 minutes ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

Okay I feel this is a good place to get help.

I am in the middle of chapter seven, I have completed the Mysterious not quest, but Riddles on The Wall Is not appearing... WHY?!

i am on Verizon 1.2.0 of the game if that is important. 

I think you might need to start the "Uncover the Truth" sidequest for Riddle on the Wall to appear. It's given by a nopon somewhere on the Flight Deck Level of Argentum IIRC.

[DisobeyedCargo]

1 hour ago, LuxSpes said:

I think you might need to start the "Uncover the Truth" sidequest for Riddle on the Wall to appear. It's given by a nopon somewhere on the Flight Deck Level of Argentum IIRC.

No I found out what I did wrong. And I feel like an idiot... I didn't check the wall painting.

 

[FrostyFireMage]

Should I give Rex all attacker blades and Nia all healer blades or should I have a mix?

[Shiki]

3 hours ago, FrostyFireMage said:

Should I give Rex all attacker blades and Nia all healer blades or should I have a mix?

It's actually better to give Rex as few Blades as possible.

Nia enjoys Bitball-type Blades to buff her overall healing and having more consistent access to healing Arts. Knuckles aren't really great on her.
Most offensive Blades scale with physical attacks and Nia doesn't excel in that. However, giving her Ether cannons is perfectly fine because it scales with Ether. So if you want to turn Nia into a fighter, giving her all the Ether cannons. Dromarch + 2 Ether cannons is a very doable setup on her.

... but I assume you need to use Overdrive Protocols in which case I would recommend to wait with that.

[Etrurian emperor]

On 26-1-2018 at 3:22 PM, Armagon said:

 

As a reminder, New Game+ will let us send Special Blades such as Pyra on Merc Missions. It'll also give us access to "those" Blades (the likely assumption is that we'll be able to use Torna's Blade+Dughall's Blade). A certain Blade will also gain access to it's Lv.4 Special.

  Reveal hidden contents

Certain Blade likely being Pneuma since she currently doesn't have a Lv.4 Special.

 

Sending Dromarch on a merc mission is going to help out a ton. Beast blades are rare to get and I need two water ones to access a merc mission related to Floren.

And the update must bring back ''DON'T FORGET ME! ''

[Samias]

7 hours ago, Zeratul said:

It's actually better to give Rex as few Blades as possible.

Nia enjoys Bitball-type Blades to buff her overall healing and having more consistent access to healing Arts. Knuckles aren't really great on her.
Most offensive Blades scale with physical attacks and Nia doesn't excel in that. However, giving her Ether cannons is perfectly fine because it scales with Ether. So if you want to turn Nia into a fighter, giving her all the Ether cannons. Dromarch + 2 Ether cannons is a very doable setup on her.

... but I assume you need to use Overdrive Protocols in which case I would recommend to wait with that.

I actually like knuckles on Nia to give her a launch. While she's no offensive juggernaut and bitballs are generally better for healing, it's nice for Nia to contribute to driver combos beyond getting a break with Dromarch/generic twin ring/bitball blades. Her launch also triggers with very little wind-up. While waiting  for arts to recharge, knuckles have considerably faster attack speed over bitballs and recharge arts quickly. Ursula in particular has an extremely strong heal upon switch in, making her one of the best healing blades without even having to use her any arts or specials.

So I do completely disagree that Nia isn't good with knuckles. While ether cannons are her best attacking type weapon, she's adept with any healing type blade. It isn't a situation like Zeke actually being quite bad with megalances or Rex being relatively bad with greataxes despite their overall bias to attacking type blades.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Samias

[Shiki]

3 hours ago, Samias said:

Ursula in particular has an extremely strong heal upon switch in, making her one of the best healing blades without even having to use her any arts or specials.

That's not a good argument for Knuckle Blades, especially since Ursula is only at her best if she is player-controlled with a Overcloking Bangle. The AI doesn't switch enough between Blades to reach the immortality that she can provide.

3 hours ago, Samias said:

While she's no offensive juggernaut and bitballs are generally better for healing, it's nice for Nia to contribute to driver combos beyond getting a break with Dromarch/generic twin ring/bitball blades.

Not really.
Nia having a Break is already more than enough because you're supposed to do Driver combos with the character you control. Relying on the AI providing combo pieces is terrible unless they have 2 of the same weapon-type (e.g. Morag with 2 Chrome Katanas is good for Smash).
Considering both Rex and Zeke can have Topple, Launch and Smash on their kit, Driver Combos are more than covered and the Launch is pretty unnecessary.

Not to mention Knuckles have terrible Arts Sets and scale poorly in terms of damage for Nia. With the exception of Adenine and Ursula they are really not worth using if you have the choice because there are better Blades that provide better utility in either offense or healing. Even the former isn't actually good for healing, she is good for farming because of her passives.

[Armagon]

16 hours ago, FrostyFireMage said:

Should I give Rex all attacker blades and Nia all healer blades or should I have a mix?

Gonna be perfectly honest with you, unless you're going for the best optimization, it actually doesn't really matter who gets what Blades. There is no wrong anwser. I mean, sure, some characters aren't as great with certain weapons but it's not like they become unusable. Throughout the majority of the story, i kept Nia as a Jack-of-all-Trades (Dromarch, Wulfric, Finch) and she did pretty good. Zeke ended up with Ursula and i've run a Pandoria-Agate-Ursula setup on him from time to time and he still gets the job done.

The only time i regret giving a Blade to a certain character is Morag. I have Newt on her because i liked the matching military aesthetic but because both Newt and Brighid are fire tanks, Morag never switches to Newt unless it's to finish a Driver Combo. 

 

[Samias]

25 minutes ago, Zeratul said:

That's not a good argument for Knuckle Blades, especially since Ursula is only at her best if she is player-controlled with a Overcloking Bangle. The AI doesn't switch enough between Blades to reach the immortality that she can provide.

Not really.
Nia having a Break is already more than enough because you're supposed to do Driver combos with the character you control. Relying on the AI providing combo pieces is terrible unless they have 2 of the same weapon-type (e.g. Morag with 2 Chrome Katanas is good for Smash).
Considering both Rex and Zeke can have Topple, Launch and Smash on their kit, Driver Combos are more than covered and the Launch is pretty unnecessary.

Not to mention Knuckles have terrible Arts Sets and scale poorly in terms of damage for Nia. With the exception of Adenine and Ursula they are really not worth using if you have the choice because there are better Blades that provide better utility in either offense or healing. Even the former isn't actually good for healing, she is good for farming because of her passives.

I mean, you can take control of Nia and contribute greatly to Driver combos, as long as you set the AI to handle Topple and Smash (Nia with a greataxe isn't too good), and also be a much better healer than how the AI handles it. Bitballs have terrible arts too, relying on specials harder than any other weapon. Boreas is one of the weaker rare Blades in the game to compensate for an extremely easy affinity chart to max. Vess is also fairly unexciting. Dahlia actually specializes in chain attacks and does some neat things but she isn't particularly good at healing. That kind of just leaves Floren as a truly dedicated healer. Which is fine, since the earth knuckle claw Nim is probably the most meh knuckle claw. Kora's got strong self preservation built into her kit and a high-triggering interrupt attached to her specials. Adenine is extremely impressive at item farming even though she's a poor healer. Ursula is one of the best healers in the game when player controlled, and Nia and Zeke both have a quickly-executing driver combo associated with knuckle claws, which generally supports using Ursula on one of them.

That said I likely wouldn't use double knuckle claws. Dromarch is pretty much locked down as removing him is a hassle anyway and his level 2 special is incredible healing. Second slot I'd probably use Ursula if I need high amounts of healing, or Adenine if I wanted to farm for loot. The third slot would probably go to Floren/Dahlia if I wanted to stay on pure healing, or an ether cannon like Azami (or KOS MOS if I could be so lucky...) if I had the wiggle room to go with another damage focused Blade.

If I really wanted to see Nia be truly subpar, I would have left Perceval on her instead of overdriving it onto Morag. Her arts for both chroma katana and shield hammer are really lackluster compared to what Morag gets out of them.

[Shiki]

11 minutes ago, Samias said:

mean, you can take control of Nia and contribute greatly to Driver combos, as long as you set the AI to handle Topple and Smash (Nia with a greataxe isn't too good), and also be a much better healer than how the AI handles it.

The whole point of having Nia around is to have healing without having to actively control it. She is pretty much the main healer until much later in the game.
Otherwise Rex with <spoiler> and Ursula outclasses her vastly (which is pretty ironic tbh).

12 minutes ago, Samias said:

Bitballs have terrible arts too, relying on specials harder than any other weapon. Boreas is one of the weaker rare Blades in the game to compensate for an extremely easy affinity chart to max. Vess is also fairly unexciting. Dahlia actually specializes in chain attacks and does some neat things but she isn't particularly good at healing. That kind of just leaves Floren as a truly dedicated healer. Which is fine, since the earth knuckle claw Nim is probably the most meh knuckle claw. Kora's got strong self preservation built into her kit and a high-triggering interrupt attached to her specials. Adenine is extremely impressive at item farming even though she's a poor healer. Ursula is one of the best healers in the game when player controlled, and Nia and Zeke both have a quickly-executing driver combo associated with knuckle claws, which generally supports using Ursula on one of them.

... do you actually know what Boreas and Dahlia do in terms of healing?
This sounds misinformed because both are quite absurd when it comes to healing Blades. I mean Floren is good or even better but Nia with 2 of these 3 has the best AI healing bar none.
Only Vess is the only underwhelming Bitball Blade because she focuses on ... what does she again? Kora is better than her at the virtue of having more utlity and better Level 3 Special (though her potion focus is terrible for certain areas).
The whole point of Ursula stacking is to preserve her Arts as much as possible so you can switch more frequently which in turn keeps triggering her passives.

You're still splitting your Driver Arts between 2 characters and that's unreliable, considering the AI has the tendency to never switch out their current Blade because of ... reasons (like e.g. Blade combo element). As I said, it's better to have only 1 Driver Art on your AI partners while you can provide the other 3 by yourself.
Break is probably the best one on the AI because you can stay in control of the timer. Smash can be a good one as well since it is at the end of the Driver combo. Especially if you control Rex that's a good one to pass over because his option is pretty bad.

Obviously if you're controlling Tora you never have to worry abou the AI screwing up but that's beside the point.

[Quintessence]

Hi guys, I got Xenoblade 2 for birthday just a week ago and I'm just at Gormott getting the hang of alternate Blades and such. I just summoned a Blade for Rex and she seems awfully generic (a wind blade with some knuckles/rings) but I'm wondering if I should really invest on her, or them, or just focus on the original Blades (Pyra, Dromarch)? I'm the optimizing type that would regret releasing a Blade I invested quite a lot of resources, so I'd like advice regarding this issue.

[LuxSpes]

3 minutes ago, Quintessence said:

Hi guys, I got Xenoblade 2 for birthday just a week ago and I'm just at Gormott getting the hang of alternate Blades and such. I just summoned a Blade for Rex and she seems awfully generic (a wind blade with some knuckles/rings) but I'm wondering if I should really invest on her, or them, or just focus on the original Blades (Pyra, Dromarch)? I'm the optimizing type that would regret releasing a Blade I invested quite a lot of resources, so I'd like advice regarding this issue.

It's not worth it to invest in that Blade. On the status page of the Blade, you can see their rarity represented by the number of Crowns. Generic blades can have from 1 to 4 crowns, but there are some blades with unique design and 5 crown, that you get either through the main story (ex. Pyra), through sidequests or through pulling from cores. The only blades that are really worth investing into are those rare, unique 5 crown blades. Some generic 4 crown blades can potentially be better than rare blades, but you'd need crazy luck to do so and a lot of the rare blades are already strong enough. Though you shouldn't be afraid of using those weak low rarity blades while you don't have any rare blades, but you shouldn't invest your best Core chips in them.

[Armagon]

16 minutes ago, Quintessence said:

I just summoned a Blade for Rex and she seems awfully generic (a wind blade with some knuckles/rings) but I'm wondering if I should really invest on her, or them, or just focus on the original Blades (Pyra, Dromarch)? I'm the optimizing type that would regret releasing a Blade I invested quite a lot of resources, so I'd like advice regarding this issue.

Well first off, that generic wind blade you just got is guaranteed. Every playthrough, you will always get you that specific Blade. Second, you don't lose anything from investing on a Blade (except your time but that's if you want to look at it like that). If you release Blades, you get Boosters but i recommend not doing that until you max out your Blade limit (that only applies to Commons). Obviously don't release the Rare ones (you know if it's Rare if it has a unique design).

But investing on the Common Blades (like the one you just got) doesn't take that long. Common Affinity Charts are really easy and quick to fill out.

 

So yeah, tl;dr, it's fine to invest in that Blade for now. But even if you don't use Commons, you should keep them around for Field Skills.

Regarding what LuxSpes said, it's true that you don't want to use your best Core Chips on Common Blades. That being said, you're currently at a point where most of the Core Chips you'll be getting will be from shops so it doesn't really matter right now.

[Quintessence]

Thanks for the quick answers! I also wondered why she didn't appear in the Blade Album ~

[Armagon]

I can't be the only one who thought of this.

[Armagon]

We got some real good news here

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has sold over one million units, making it the best selling Xenoblade game and the second best selling Xeno game, being beaten in sales by Xenogears.

Maybe this is what happens when you actually market the game. And not make it a limited run. And not release it on a dying system.

[FrostyFireMage]

I don't really understand the lack of exploration complaint people have with XC2. The areas aren't as wide as the ones in XCX but they're more or less the same as the ones in the first Xenoblade.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

3 hours ago, Armagon said:

Maybe this is what happens when you actually market the game. 

Let's go to Elysium

Yes!

Hey I'm in Chapter 7 atm. How much further to beat the game?