Xenogame/xgg/ Xenoblade Chronicles 2 spoiler-free FAQ

/xgg/ Xenoblade Chronicles 2 spoiler-free FAQ
Last update: 22nd Dec. 2017

Q: Do I need to play previous games to understand XBC2?
A: No, Xenoblade 2 is standalone. It isn't a direct sequel of any of the other games, but rather a spiritual successor to XB1. That said, beyond the similarities in its structure and narrative approach, you will understand why it is called "Xenoblade 2" once you are done with it assuming you played XBC1 beforehand. You are free to play the previous titles in case you want to catch any references or easter eggs in XBC2.

Q: Will I like it compared to XBC1 and XBCX?
A: Xenoblade 2 is closer to XBC1 compared to XBCX, as it is more story oriented. On the other hand, the exploration part is bigger than XB1 but smaller than XBCX. Consider Xenoblade 2 as the compromise between both games, while leaning towards XBC1 for its structure and story focus. As such, if you liked XBC1 for its story in comparison to XBCX, it is very likely XBC2 will satisfy you. However, if you prefered XBCX due to the exploration, XBC2 might be lacking in that department.

Q: Is there an option for JP voices? Text?
A: Yes, there is a free Japanese voice pack DLC and the game lipsynch is actually based on the Japanese voices.
As for the text, since the western version is handled differently due to the voice DLC, it is similar to Fire Emblem Warriors: There isn't any common version of the game, hence why there is "Xenoblade Chronicles 2" for the west, while Japan has its own version, "Xenoblade 2". As such, the western version of the game isn't designed to work like Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild when it comes to JP text: switching your account or language settings into Japanese won't change the game language at all. If you want JP text, you will have to buy on the JP Eshop, but you won't have English text nor English voices.

Q: What are the Sound options?
A: You can tweak Cutscenes voices, BGM, SFX, Game voices, Battle narration (Announcer) separately. So if you can't stand "AMAZING/MARVELOUS/etc" yells in combat, you can disable them specifically without affecting the rest. You can also disable Game voices which will render fights completely void of characters banter and mute the comments the characters make while traveling on the main map or after a fight. Meanwhile, Heart-to-Heart portions and Story Cutscenes are part of the Cutscenes voice option. Note that there isn't any individual character voice option.

Q: Is there an auto save function?
A: No, except when you use a core crystal to stop the player from save scumming. It's suggested that you save often, especially that there is no limitation as to where you can save. This is quite important because as of now, the game isn't completely optimized, leading to unpredictable crashes, be it before a cutscene, reaching some new landmarks etc. Don't be that guy who wasted 5 hours of their life because they forgot to save every so often.

Q: Can I change any characters' outfits?
A: There isn't any skin customization at all. Unlike XB1 and XBX, the equipments are mostly your blades and accessories that don't affect your characters' looks.

Q: Am I stuck playing as Rex?
A: You still can control other characters like any Xenoblade game, although you cannot swap character in the middle of a fight. Note: that Rex is still mandatory for story reasons in specific parts of the game but otherwise, you compose your party however you like by accessing the party composition screen with the X button. If you want to have less than 3 characters for whatever reason, press X on the characters you want to exclude on the party composition screen.
In combat, you can issue a focus order to the IA, but you cannot make any other specific order. However, the IA will act accordingly to the style of the driver, depending of the type of blades they have, so equip them with more tank or healer blades if you want a dedicated tank or healer. They also tend switching blades to match the current element requirement for the Blade combo (let's say Nia has Zakuro/Kora (electric) equipped, if your current blade combo requires water, she will automatically switches to Byakko/Dromarch so you can continue the blade combo with a water special).
Also know that characters who are not in the active party still gain experience, weapon points and skill points.

Q: How is the battle system? It looks slow.
A: It is actually the most fast paced system in the series. The game forces you to position yourself correctly to take advantage of your arts effects, and relying mainly on auto-attacks isn't efficient. Combos, positioning and timing are important.
In practice, Driver Combos allow you to activate more specials (A button), which are needed for a Blade Combo. Doing a proper Blade Combo leads to a Blade Combo Finisher (Result of chaining 3 specials in a specific order. For example: Fire => Water => Fire generates Steam Explosion), dealing above average damage, but also creating an elemental orb. And these orbs are important so you can dish out massive damage during Chain attacks, although they make the enemy resistant to that element as long you don't break the orb.

Here's a quick rundown on the terminology:
* Arts: Moves you can use that have a "cooldown". Arts depend of the weapon type and characters, but they don't change between blades of the same type with the same character. For instance, Rex will always have Strong Smash, Axe Twist, Power Swipe and Bold Tackle with any Greataxe, regardless of its rarity. Meanwhile, Nia's arts for Greataxe are Brutal Blade, Rhino Assault, Bear Smash and Shadow Slice.

* Driver combo: Combo based on the following chain of reactions: Break, Topple, Launch, Smash

* Reaction: the name of the debuff associated with driver combo, so Break, Topple, Launch, Smash. Break doesn't anything by itself, but the target can be afflicted by topple as result. When an enemy is affected by topple, they cannot move nor attack and takes more damage. Launch does the same thing than topple, except the enemy is now floating in the air. Smash basically deals a ton of damage if the target is launched, finishing the driver combo. It also makes the enemy drop gold, items but also potions on impact.

* Debuff: any negative effect that is NOT a reaction: shackle driver, shackle blade, stench, blowback, doom etc

* Blade combo: Combo based on elemental effect inflicted by the special (button A). For example, using a lvl1 fire special, then lvl2 water special is considered as a blade combo. You can start a combo with any special, but the second step of a combo requires at least a lvl2 special, and the last step of a combo requires a lvl3 or 4 special. Note that a combo can only be extended with an element that is documented by the combo chart visible on the top right of the screen when you start the combo. For example, if you start a blade combo with a fire special, you must use either a lvl2+ fire or water special to extend it. Any special of another element will just deal their damage without affecting or resetting the current combo on the target.

* Blade combo finisher: specifically referring to the third special that conclude a blade combo, generating the seal effect, the elemental orb and the extra damage/heal effect. For instance, Fire => Water => Fire will lead to Steam explosion. The combo finisher is thus the lvl3-4 fire special used to finish that combo into steam explosion.

* Elemental Orb: orb affecting an enemy after a blade combo finisher. The orb will always be of the same element of the finisher, which will reduce the damage taken of the same element as long the orb is left there. While it sounds like a huge disadvantage, you can use the orb to your advantage during chain attacks. You can only apply 1 orb per element, thus a maximum of 8 elemental orbs on a given enemy.

* Fusion combo: any driver art part of a driver combo performed during a blade combo. Simply put, when you use an art that inflicts Break, Topple etc, it will have a longer effect, deal more damage and/or generate more party gauge if it is done when the mob is afflicted by a blade combo (which is shown with a huge splash screen showing the reaction + blade combo status).

* Blade arts: the buffs blades cast on their driver. For example, Eagle Eye (accuracy up).

* Chain attack: special attack that make your party completely invincible and allow your party members to bash the target one after another. Requires full party gauge.

* Elemental burst: Occurs when an orb is destroyed during a chain attack. You cannot select which orb your character will attack unless you have a special battle skill or if you use an attack of the opposite element of an orb (so if you use a fire attack, your character will definitely hit the water orb on the enemy even if there are 7 other orbs on the enemy). Each orb has 3 HP. Any attack on the orb will deal 1 damage, but if the attack is of the opposite element, it will deal 2 damage instead. If your party destroyed an orb within 1 round of attack, your chain attack will be extended for another round. Each elemental burst will also fill the burst gauge at the top left during a chain attack. If that gauge is full, your team will perform an all out attack which will deal tons of damage. The modifier for that final attacks depends of the number of orbs on the target (can reach a 7000% modifier with all 8 orbs), so don't worry if your chain attack will fill the gauge before breaking all the orbs: the chain attack finisher will automatically destroy the rest of the orbs and uses them to calculate the final damage modifier.

Finally, remember the game is designed so your party is composed of 3 characters. As such, it is quite natural you struggle a little bit in some parts of the story if your team isn't complete.


Q: What do the character stats mean?
A:
* Strength: affects physical damage
* Ether: affects ether damage and healing
* Dexterity: affects chance to hit
* Agility: affects evasion
* Luck: affects resistance to debuffs and reactions, and chances of obtaining loot/rare blades

Q: What are common and rare blades?
A: Weapons in the form of characters you obtain from core crystals which might be similar to lootboxes at first glance, except you cannot buy with real money. You also cannot get duplicates of rare blades. There are different kind of cores (common, rare, legendary) but none have 100% chance of yielding a rare blade except the special story cores such as the Beast core crystal. Note that blades are bonded to the character who opened the core crystal. You can release a rare blade (including those that are tied to a special core instead of a random core) and get them again with a common/rare/legendary core, so if you don't want to use an overdrive protocol, you can try you luck again. Don't neglect common blades though: while you might not use them compared to rare blades, some might have handy battle skills such as Orb Master, Treasure sensor and Field Skills.

Q: Can I abuse save function to roll a good blade?
A: No can do. There is an auto save function that activates every time you open a core crystal and you cannot turn it off. You do get a lot of core crystals during a regular playthrough, so you shouldn't worry aboutnever getting good blades in the long run. Also note that you only have 1 save just like XBCX, but it is tied to the user profile. If you want another save, just launch the game with another user, but you just can't duplicate a save at all.

Q: How do I get rare blades?
A: Rare blades are well... rarer than your common blades that have unique appearances unlike the generic, silver and robotic look of common blades. Using a better core (Rare or Legendary) will increase your odds of getting rare blades, but still without any guarantee result (the only guarantee results are the special cores that have a specific rare blade such as the Beastly core or the inherited core). Luck stats affects your chances of getting rare blades, so don't forget equipping + luck and +% luck on your characters when you use core crystals.
Characters' "Ideas" affect both the rarity and the element of the blade you might get. For example, if Rex has a high bravery idea, his chances for drawing a Fire or Water rare blades increases. Also, boosters serve as bonus ideas for this, so don't hesitate to use them.

In the early game, you can farm specific salvage spots that have high chances of spawning krabbles, which often drop common and rare core crystals. Make sure you use lower rarity cylinders and fail the QTE to increase the odds of getting krabbles instead of salvaging loot.

Later in the game, it becomes possible to farm legendary core by abusing the smash mechanic on Unique Monsters, while equipping your party with gold chip (+50% item drops for each). A suggested farming target is "Vampire Bride Marion", a lvl65 Unique Monster that is located in the Dragon's Stomach in Uraya (its room can only be unlocked as part of the Titan's Teacher quest.)

Q: Can I transfer blades? Can I unequip/transfer special blades like Homura/Pyra or Byakko/Dromarch?
A: Regarding non story blades, it requires an overdrive protocol, but be warned that these items are extremely rare and one-use only.
The methods to get the overdrive protocols are as follow:
- You get 3 overdrive protocols in specific chests in the game and can be found quite early too.
- You get 1 overdrive protocol when you completely finish a DRIVER affinity chart (Rex etc)
- You can get 1 overdrive protocol by releasing a 4 crown rarity common blade with a MAXED affinity chart (this isn't guaranteed, but you can save before releasing them).
- You get 3 overdrive protocols when you buy the Expansion pass.

As such, be careful when you decide to transfer a rare blade. Alternatively, you can also release a rare blade if it is bonded on the wrong driver and hope the proper driver will get it later. This is also doable for rare blades that are obtained with special cores such as Jikarao/Wulfric. Also note that rare blade retain their affinity chart progression when they are released or transferred, but there is no guarantee you will get them back without spending an awful lot of legendary/rare cores.

As for the special blades, no you generally cannot unequip them nor transfer them as they are bonded to their respective driver for story reasons.

Q: Since there aren't a lot of protocols, how should I distribute the rare blades? What about blade composition aside of elements?
A: The usual suggestion is that: don't use any special or random core crystal on Rex. For story reasons, he will have enough options at his disposal, so using core crystals on him is a waste in general. That said, feel free to use the Beastly Crystal Core (Jikarao/Wulfric) as he is pretty good with that blade and helps his elemental coverage with the other story blades. For the rest, try to give HLR blades to Nia, Agility TNK blades to the other tank character, and everything else to the last party member.
Generally, TNK characters should only have TNK blades for the damage reduction and aggro bonus of the master defender class (so try giving the best TNK mod parts to Hana/Poppi if you want to keep Tora as a tank). Note that there are HP Tank and Agility Tanks. Tora is the former while the other tank character is the latter. It isn't a good idea to mix HP and agility on the same character, so keep that in mind when you set Tora or the other tank character with TNK blades.
HLR and ATK characters may have 1 blade of the other category, but absolutely no TNK blade as it is detrimental because of the aggro bonus.
You aren't forced to keep the characters in their original role, so you can use Rex as a TNK or HLR if you so desire, but remember that each character has some specialized affinity passive skills so they might not be the best in another role compared to another character.

Q: I just got a core and I can't use it, what gives? Also what are the special core blades and their types?
The Beastly Core Crystal will be useable after a certain quest later in the game. as for every other crystal you get, you just need to play the game and they'll become activate naturally. Please note that you can't just idle and wait for the core to become active, the game has anti idle mechanics to keep you from doing that and you need to be actively playing the game.

As for what each specific special core gives you:
* Beastly Core Crystal: Jikarao/Wulfric (Earth Strength modifier ATK, Megalance)
* Lucky Core Crystal: Kasane/Kasandra (Dark HP modifier TNK, Shield Hammer)
* Praxis' Core Crystal: Mikumari/Praxis (Water Dexterity modifier ATK, Megalance)
* Theory's Core Crystal: Seori/Theory (Ice Agility modifier TNK, Chroma Katana)
* Inherited Core Crystal: Rinne/Sheba (Water Ether modifier ATK, Ether Cannon)
* Vess' Core Crystal: Musubi/Vess (Electric HP modifier HLR, Bitball)
* Sealed Core Crystal: Tein/Herald (Electric Strength modifier ATK, Ether Cannon)

As a reminder, if you released them, you can get them back with common/rare/legendary cores\
For more information regarding rare blades, such as their stats or how to obtain them, please refer to the google doc.


Q: How do you raise trust efficiently in this game?
A: Using the blade in combat will raise their trust if you increases their affinity in combat to max (the ether line between the blade and driver starts with a blue shade and turns into golden when it is maxed). Alternatively, you increase their trust if you use pouch items or have them engaged when you clear a quest (characters not in the active party are still counted.).
For faster trust grinding, just spam cheap pouch items. While using the favorite items of the blades on a given driver sounds like a good idea, it will always trigger a voice line that might get old at some point. But the real problem is that you cannot skip it. As such, it is recommended to spam pouch items that isn't part of the favorite list of the driver or the blades in order to accelerate the process.


Q: The Hana/Poppi concept sounds nice but what do I have to do to make her good?
A: One thing: Tiger Tiger. Basically, you have to play that mini game to get parts and ether. You can also  create parts with the ether you have obtained from Tiger Tiger, although advanced parts also require manuals. Remember that you can also scrap parts that aren't needed into ether. For this, just press Y in the parts menu, and it will show the parts you can scrap.
If you don't fancy the minigame, fear not, Hana/Poppi is pretty serviceable as a HP/block tank with her base parts, although playing Tiger Tiger a bit will help quite a lot. Note that if you want the best stats or change her role, you will have to grind that minigame.

Q: How many forms does Hana/Poppi have?
A: 3. Her first and second form are obtained through the story. The third one is optional and locked behind a questline that is available only starting from chapter 8. For more details, please refer to the google doc.

Q: I seem to always have money issues. How do I fix that?
A: One word: salvaging. Use silver cylinders first and salvage the same spot over and over (the salvage spot next to Torigoth fountain is good enough), then trade the salvaging loot at the trade NPC nearby for more cylinders and boosters. Once you have enough money, do the same, but with gold cylinders, which will increase your profits quite nicely. This will increase the development level of the continent too. Note that you cannot trade salvage items if your boosters count is full so use or sell them in such case.

Q: What are shop deeds?
A: An early quest in Torigoth serves as a tutorial for that, but as a quick summary: shop deeds are key items that bestow a permanent bonus to your party which can range from increased movement speed to gold/exp bonus obtained after a fight. In order to buy them, you have to buy at least 1 of every items sold in a shop. However, most of the time, shops won't have all the goods from the get go and you have to unlock them with the development levels of the continent, but also get "contracts" from mercenary missions. So even with a maxed development level, you might not unlock the deed purchase if you didn't get the goods contract related to that shop. Also, not every shop sell a deed item. Please check the google doc for more information.

Q: How long is the game?
A: Going in straight line without bothering too much with exploration and subquests can easily take between 60 and 80 hours. The full content of the game easily reaches 200+ hours.

Q: What about post-game?
A: There isn't any NG+ content yet (feature planned for early 2018). Currently, the game will save your progress after the credits and you will be back in front of the door leading to the final boss. New high levels mobs roam around in certain areas such as the old factory. There is no limitation for whatever you can do, so you can finish every subquests, blade affinities etc.

Q: Is the music as good as the first game?
A: Ace+ is back, if that's not enough listen to these tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFwObPlg7Y1rLqeFE4sr7C-MQsfIdVTlF

Q: Can I replay heart to heart scenes?
A: Unfortunately, it isn't possible as of now. The event theater has all the cutscenes you have unlocked as well as the rare blade quests, their introduction and the generic blade introduction. If you are only going to do one playthrough, it's best to save before you play the heart to heart and then reload so you can select the other choice. Keep in mind it's worth to watch both versions because they can have very different outcomes, however they do not affect anything in game.

Q: Is anything censored?
A: No. The game had an international release and every version looks exactly the same.

Q: What is the DLC?
A: Similar to Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade 2 has a season pass that will span over a year. You cannot buy any item separately right now. Use your own discretion if it is worth your money or not, but it is obvious these aren't really cut content from the base game.


Q: Any trailers?
A:
Regular trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygax_f4e5a8
Direct with world & gameplay explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hb0KmH2WBQ
Story trailer (Some early game spoilers, watch at your own risk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOQ9q4HDb0U

Q: Are there gameplay videos?
A: Most are spoiler free, but some reveal more than usual, so caution is advised.
Gamespot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s49dktg5_8
GameXplain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W7ROTyWFQs
IGN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW_REqB8vbc
Polygon (no commentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwuUlw876T4


Q: What's in the special edition?
JP version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OZS6iQEpUs
US version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DESdmng_N1s
EU Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4w8lH9_6ws

The Australian version is similar to the EU one: box is the same except the blade highlight on the box is lime green, not teal and the OST selection cover and disc designs are the same as the US version. As a bonus, there is also a poster.
Meanwhile, JP version is closer to the US one with some exceptions: softcover book like the EU ver and steelbook is used for the OST selection, not for the game card. Also, not only it has a regular case for the game, but an additional cover featuring Rex with Hikari/Mythra instead.