Bought a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles? Firstly, well done. Secondly, it’s rather good, isn’t it? Thirdly, you’ve probably noticed that it’s a massive, sprawling, deep game with lots of things to think about.
Being a grizzled old veteran who has played the game to death already, I thought I’d share a few tips to help you along the way. I’ll try and remain spoiler-free in the process, and I won’t be giving plot walkthroughs or anything like that — just general tips. Bulleted tips, even. Here we go.
(Note: If you’re not playing Xenoblade Chronicles, this will all mean nothing to you. I’ll be back in the normal world tomorrow.)
- Pick a good, complementary party, but don’t be afraid to experiment. You can make most combos work — and in fact to max out Party Affinity you’ll probably have to — but a safe option is to have a tank (Reyn or Riki), damage dealer (Shulk, Dunban or Melia) and healer (Sharla or, to a lesser extent, Melia). Note that you don’t need to have Shulk in the party, but it’s easier to deal with visions if he is.
- Don’t forget to level up your Arts. You gain AP with every successful combat and these can be used to power up each character’s Arts — the special abilities that they are able to use in combat. Don’t forget to drop into the menu regularly to spend these AP — which each character has their own individual bank of — on improving their abilities, because the game sure won’t remind you. On that subject…
- Pick Arts that complement each other. Depending on your party lineup, ensure that you have Arts picked that work well together. Don’t worry about changing around Shulk’s Arts, since he has a fixed arsenal. But depending on who else is there and what they’re capable of, pick ones that work well together. A good combo is to ensure that between all three members, you have the ability to Break, Topple and Daze an opponent. By doing this to an enemy that isn’t immune, you buy yourself a good few seconds of uninterrupted beatdown time, which is very helpful on baddies with high HP. Note that most — but not all — bosses and Unique Monsters tend to be immune to Break and Topple.
- In Chain Attacks, colour is everything. The other thing you should consider when preparing your party’s Arts is to make sure that you have appropriate colours covered to unleash a decent Chain. The colours typically correspond to what the Art does — red ones tend to deal direct damage, pink ones tend to inflict Break, green ones tend to Topple and blue ones tend to be restorative or supportive — so a good thing to do is to ensure your whole party has at least one red Art equipped in order to do a damaging Chain Attack. When you start the Chain, choose a red Art to kick off, then when it switches to the next character, choose one of their red Arts and so on. Bear in mind that according to both random chance and Party Affinity, you may have the opportunity to continue the chain after everyone has had one go, so it’s worth having more than one of the same colour if you can spare the slots.
- Skills aren’t as complicated as they look. The tutorial for the Skill system makes it sound bewildering, but think of Skills as passive bonuses and you’ll be fine. Picking a character trait to focus on provides a bonus to a particular stat, then all SP earned (also after combat) will be applied to that particular skill branch. When sufficient SP have been earned, that bonus or passive ability starts to take effect automatically. Note that each character starts with three Skill paths, but has the opportunity to unlock up to two more through quests.
- Skill Links let characters use each others’ Skills. This is the complicated bit. You’ve probably seen that killing bosses nets you Affinity Coins. These are used to let characters “borrow” each others’ Skills, thereby enabling them to get passive abilities they wouldn’t normally have access to. For example, if Reyn has learned the skill to equip heavy armour, another character who is normally limited to light armour can Skill Link with Reyn in order to also be able to equip heavy armour. The number of skills characters can borrow from each other is determined by the number of Affinity Coins you have and the Affinity between the characters attempting the Link. Speaking of which…
- Build up Party Affinity as much as you can. Your characters fight better alongside each other if they actually like each other. They also say different things in battle or when they jump in to conversations. There are lots of ways to improve this. Firstly, put the characters you’re trying to develop the relationship between in your active party. Make the character you want to see the most gains the leader, since when party members jump into conversations, it improves Affinity with this person. Hit as many Burst Affinity button prompts in battle as you can. Encourage characters who are suffering from low Tension in battle (they’ll have a purple cloud behind their face in the interface — run up to them and press “b” to whisper some sweet nothings at them). Don’t forget to go and do Heart to Hearts when you have sufficient Affinity between two characters — these provide massive Affinity boosts even if you balls them up. And don’t forget that you can gift Collectibles to characters via the Inventory menu — the game forgets to mention how to do this. Select an item, choose a character to gift it to and you’ll see the affinity gain (or loss) it generates. For hints on what might be good items to give different characters, check the Achievements menu or think about the characters’ personalities.
- When hunting, use the reload trick. Saving your game then immediately loading it causes the monsters in a zone to refresh, so if you’ve run out of mobs you need to bash over the head for a quest, save and reload to respawn them. If you’re hunting a Unique Monster and there’s no sign of it in the place where it’s supposed to be, do the same thing for a chance of respawning it.
- If looking for specific weather, use the clock. Advance time from day to night (or vice versa) until you get the weather conditions you’re after. Note that “thunderstorm” is a different weather condition to “raining”.
- Talk to everyone with a name. Speaking to a named NPC adds them to your Affinity Chart and sometimes improves your Area Affinity. When your Area Affinity levels up (it doesn’t tell you when this happens, so check the Affinity Chart regularly), new quests become available, and named NPCs also get new items to trade with you. It’s possible for every single person on the entire Affinity Chart to be joined to at least one other person by the end of the game, so consider that a challenge if you’re a completionist.
- Collect collect collect! Collect every sparkly blue blob you see. Not only will it help you fill the Collectopaedia, there’s usually a questgiver somewhere nearby who will pay you good money for them. Or you can always gift them to characters.
- Trading is usually a quicker way to fill the Collectopaedia. If you’re struggling to find a specific collectible item in the field — and some are considerably rarer than others — then try trading with named NPCs instead of talking to them. When trading, offer them goodies that are considerably higher in value than the thing you’re looking to grab — double is usually a safe bet — and they’ll often throw in an extra free gift, too. Note that NPCs’ inventories expand as Area Affinity improves. Their tradable items always come from the zone in which they are found.
- Don’t forget about Gems! Equipping gems in slotted items can make the difference between triumphant victory and crushing defeat. Note that bonuses to stats have a cap — if the bonus turns green in the menu, equipping further gems won’t have any effect. Pick gems that help strengthen a character’s particular specialisms rather than compensate for weaknesses — e.g. apply Muscle Up gems to Reyn to increase his physical defense to make him a better tank, add Strength Up gems to Shulk to make him deal more damage. Remember that Unique items (the ones with “U” on their icon instead of “S”) have preset gems that cannot be removed.
- Explore everywhere. Discovering new Locations, Landmarks and Secret Areas is a good non-combat way to gain experience points, plus it has the positive side-effect of filling in your map and providing you with places to fast-travel to. You might also be surprised where questgivers are hiding.
- Do every quest you can. It may be time-consuming, but questing builds up Area Affinity and provides you with some good rewards that often negate the need to go equipment shopping. The stock “Monster”, “Collection”, “Search”, “Material” and “Challenge” quests you get in every zone also provide a good way to get to know an area. Be sure to talk to the questgiver for these questlines several times as you can normally pick them all up at once — and you don’t have to return to them to complete them. Never sell quest items — they’ll be marked in the menu — or items you’ve seen in visions. You can get them back, but it’ll be a waste of time, particularly if they end up being rare items. For quests with multiple outcomes, there are no “bad” consequences, just differing rewards.
- Backtrack! When the story advances, that’s usually a good cue to wander around the areas you’ve already visited and see if any new quests have popped up — some appear based on story progress rather than Area Affinity. Fortunately, the skip travel feature makes this a painless process. If you’re not sure who to talk to, try looking for people on the Affinity Chart who don’t have any links yet. There are some quests you can miss — these are marked with a stopwatch in the quest log. There’s generally a pretty obvious mini “point of no return” before these expire, however, so be sure you’ve cleaned up your quest log before you answer “yes” to any important-sounding questions.
- Don’t rush. Xenoblade Chronicles is a big-ass game and there’s a lot to see and do. Playing as a moderate completionist, it took me 101 hours to beat on my first playthrough, and I could have easily spent a lot longer. While it may be tempting to rush forward into the next plot beat, bear in mind that the quests, exploration and incidental combat is all there to provide a painless means to ensure you’re strong enough to tackle the challenges the story quests provide you with. You’ll be around the level 80 mark by the time you’re on the home straight if you’re doing it right — you’ll hit a wall and be forced to grind (or backtrack and do all the stuff you missed!) for a little while if you haven’t. That said…
- Don’t feel you have to get everything. Beat the game and you can do a New Game+ with all your levels, equipment and Party Affinity intact, but quests, Area Affinity and everything else reset to normal. Now you can rampage through the world with impunity and concentrate on picking up as many quests and entries on the Affinity Chart as you can rather than running away from red monsters.
Above all, enjoy. This is one of the best RPGs of all time, and it’s wonderful to see so many people on my Twitter feed are playing and loving this at the moment. Stick it out to the end — it’s a long road, but it’s very much worth it.
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