It is now Reyn Time-o-clock! Xenoblade Chronicles thread.

[AnonymousPondScum]

Obligatory explanation:

Xenoblade Chronicles is a Wii RPG, and it's not only one of the best games for the Wii but one of the better RPGs of all time. If you get a hold of a copy (pricey, since it had a limited print run), consider yourself fortunate. It has a lot of the staff from Xenogears and Xenosaga behind it and has ridiculously pretty scenery.

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'hokay, so I'm in the Eryth Sea (SO PRETTY) and am two flipped switches away from Prison Island.

I hate having to fight a bunch of NOT quite weak enough monsters on the way there, though. Let me advance the plot, you little shits!

Am finding that Shulk/Dunban/Reyn is a poor party combo for me on account of Dunban and Reyn being able to dodge or just tank massive amounts of damage and Shulk...Less so.

Maybe I should just go Riki/Dunban/Reyn.

Hell, maybe I should just go Riki. PERIOD. :getdown: 9 times out of 10 he's been effectively indestructible.

[Garlyle]

Dunban/Reyn/Shulk, I feel, honestly runs into more problems where Dunban and Reyn are tossing aggro back and forth between them and yet while Reyn will usually be the one holding it you don't have the kind of healing backup he actually needs (There's a reason Sharla is usually used in tandem with Reyn).  With that said, no, Shulk isn't necessarily the squishiest - Reyn and Dunban should be able to keep aggro off of him (especially with their abilities to divert aggro and Shulk's Shadow Eye).  And in a pinch, if Shulk does draw the aggro, remember that Monado Speed exists; it's actually stupid effective at protecting against the majority of the game's assaults.

I'm nearing done the game; I arrived at Central Factory which is about the 75-80% mark or so, to my understanding.  Seven is still useless sadly; she still has yet to get many of her most useful arts and even then all of her intermediate skill manuals expect you to max out the

Spoiler:

Colony 6 commerce level

.  And her abilities just aren't impressive without at least intermediate level ):

My party, last I played, was Shulk/Riki/Sharla.  Shulk's packing massive plus STR/plus AGI so he's sort of like a less reliable Dunban (maintained via Monado Speed as necessary).  Whenever I need to go for my major attacks I just Shadow Eye into them and Riki holds aggro for a little bit.  Honestly I could fit just about anyone as my third in this setup though because Light Heal & Feel Better are more than enough to keep my head above the water; Sharla's just a personal choice because I really like her character.  Reyn would sort of screw things up because of his tendency to draw aggro; Dunban's so good I almost feel like it's cheating; Melia might be a good option even if her AI is hahahahahahaha melia's AI; I'd use Seven but the aforementioned problem.

[Edible]

NAKED DUNBAN IS IT RITE

[AnonymousPondScum]

Dunban/Reyn/Shulk, I feel, honestly runs into more problems where Dunban and Reyn are tossing aggro back and forth between them and yet while Reyn will usually be the one holding it you don't have the kind of healing backup he actually needs (There's a reason Sharla is usually used in tandem with Reyn).  With that said, no, Shulk isn't necessarily the squishiest - Reyn and Dunban should be able to keep aggro off of him (especially with their abilities to divert aggro and Shulk's Shadow Eye).  And in a pinch, if Shulk does draw the aggro, remember that Monado Speed exists; it's actually stupid effective at protecting against the majority of the game's assaults.

I'm nearing done the game; I arrived at Central Factory which is about the 75-80% mark or so, to my understanding.  Seven is still useless sadly; she still has yet to get many of her most useful arts and even then all of her intermediate skill manuals expect you to max out the

Spoiler:

Colony 6 commerce level

.  And her abilities just aren't impressive without at least intermediate level ):

My party, last I played, was Shulk/Riki/Sharla.  Shulk's packing massive plus STR/plus AGI so he's sort of like a less reliable Dunban (maintained via Monado Speed as necessary).  Whenever I need to go for my major attacks I just Shadow Eye into them and Riki holds aggro for a little bit.  Honestly I could fit just about anyone as my third in this setup though because Light Heal & Feel Better are more than enough to keep my head above the water; Sharla's just a personal choice because I really like her character.  Reyn would sort of screw things up because of his tendency to draw aggro; Dunban's so good I almost feel like it's cheating; Melia might be a good option even if her AI is hahahahahahaha melia's AI; I'd use Seven but the aforementioned problem.

I find Shulk tends to draw aggro way more than I'd like on my watch. Maybe I should lower his ATK/STR...Or use Sharla + Reyn more often.

I'll see how Sharla + Reyn + Riki works. Riki NEVER seems to draw aggro so my plan is for Reyn to be distracting, Sharla to heal Reyn, and while the nasties are busy with them, move Riki around into prime ass-biting position. :V

NAKED DUNBAN IS IT RITE

If commando!Dunban is wrong, I don't want to be right. :]

Also, where the Hell do I find Steel Silk? I need 2 units of it for Colony 6 rebuilding.

[Think Komachi with a Rifle]

This would be a 10/10 game if they improved party AI, so some characters weren't useless unless used manually, and the side quest chains led to more substantial rewards.

Having to break out crazy parties for some bosses was great fun if I remember right.

[theshirn]

welp, I died, and then leveled immediately upon respawn

yep

[AnonymousPondScum]

welp, I died, and then leveled immediately upon respawn

yep

This is Xenoblade. I'm pretty sure if the game gave you the option of taking a crap it'd give you XP for that, too. :getdown:

Also, I tested Sharla/Reyn/Riki with Riki as the manual-controlled one. It's an effective combo but it takes forever to kill anything if you kit Reyn out purely for aggro and it's bad at handling large groups of enemies.

Still need to know where to find Steel Silk.

Also: RIP Colonel Square-tache, a real Homsmerican hero. ;_;7

[Garlyle]

For that combo, try taking direct control of Reyn.  Berserker aura, use moves that up your talent gauge (Beat Upper or whatever, Lariat, etc), then use the Power Charge instead of Mad Taunt and Sword Drive bitches for hilarious amounts of spike damage.  Reyn can still build huge amounts of aggro just from his damage output if you build him for it, and Sharla + Riki is pretty much the ultimate combo for keeping him alive because they have the best heals in the game.

As for rebuilding materials: this guide.  Ctrl+F and then WLK10 to skip straight to it; you'll get a list of what each level needs and where you'll get it.

[AnonymousPondScum]

For that combo, try taking direct control of Reyn.  Berserker aura, use moves that up your talent gauge (Beat Upper or whatever, Lariat, etc), then use the Power Charge instead of Mad Taunt and Sword Drive bitches for hilarious amounts of spike damage.  Reyn can still build huge amounts of aggro just from his damage output if you build him for it, and Sharla + Riki is pretty much the ultimate combo for keeping him alive because they have the best heals in the game.

Gotcha. (I actually went with Riki because of how bloody unkillable he is. Him being a good healer is icing on the cake.)

I've heard some people say Sharla isn't useful because there's no need for outside-of-battle manual healing in this game, but I have to contest that. That much said, should I kit her out for healing/combat, healing/buffs, or healing/healing?

As for rebuilding materials: this guide.  Ctrl+F and then WLK10 to skip straight to it; you'll get a list of what each level needs and where you'll get it.

Ah!...Err, I looked and it said Steel Silk could be found in Tephra Cave. I've killed everything I could find in there thrice over and they never dropped Steel Silk, nor was it in any of the glowy item spheres. Is there a portion of the cave I haven't found with a new strain of Arachno in it?

[Garlyle]

If it says it's in a location without mentioning a monster, then it's a random glowy blue item drop there.  Unfortunately, it seems like certain item points have different rates for certain items and some of them are just plain infuriatingly rare, so... all I can offer is 'good luck'.  I'd check if it's genuinely in the encylopedia or not but I'm at work whoops.

As for Sharla - make sure she's got Metal Blast whatever you do, so that she can join in Combo Attacks without breaking multiplier.  Other than that, it's really up to you.  Since you have Riki to backup-healer in a pinch, you can afford a slot or two less to healing in order to carry status heals or Shield Bullet (which is amazing for dealing with visions btw) or crowd control or whatever you want.

[AnonymousPondScum]

If it says it's in a location without mentioning a monster, then it's a random glowy blue item drop there.  Unfortunately, it seems like certain item points have different rates for certain items and some of them are just plain infuriatingly rare, so... all I can offer is 'good luck'.  I'd check if it's genuinely in the encylopedia or not but I'm at work whoops.

DAMMIT.

Oh well. A grinding I go then.

As for Sharla - make sure she's got Metal Blast whatever you do, so that she can join in Combo Attacks without breaking multiplier.  Other than that, it's really up to you.  Since you have Riki to backup-healer in a pinch, you can afford a slot or two less to healing in order to carry status heals or Shield Bullet (which is amazing for dealing with visions btw) or crowd control or whatever you want.

Kickass. Will do.

[Reddyne]

Don't have much time this morning so I'm just posting some tunes.

[AnonymousPondScum]

Man, I love You Will Know Our Names.

Now before I go to sleep...



MY DAILY CALENDAR IS SO MUCH SIMPLER NOW.

[OkashiiKisei]

I started on Xenoblade a long time ago, but I stopped playing it for a while. I'm at the end of Satorl Marsh, with the team of Shulk - Reyn - Sharla. I really want to continue with the story, but there's so many sidequests that my progress gets slowed down significantly. They're sidequests, so I can just skip them, but I'm afraid I'll miss out on good gear and lots of EXP if I do so. It's no fun when side quests are only temporarily available, because then you have to do ALL OF THEM before you can progress (fuckin' Bionis' Leg). There's another timed side quests for the colony reconstruction thing where you have to kill a dozen level 40 rodents. I myself am around level 40 now, so I got my ass kicked through sheer numbers. Where can I grind up to kill these things without causing the sidequest to go away? Even the mini-bosses don't seem to give me enough EXP for the effort it takes to kill them. Should I just forget it and progress with the game? And how much is it worth doing sidequests to begin with?

Now before I go to sleep...



MY DAILY CALENDAR IS SO MUCH SIMPLER NOW.

"OI, SHULK, WHAT TIME IS IT?!"

"It's half past-"

"IT'S REYN TIME!"

(I fucking love saying OI SHULK in Reyn's voice)

[Think Komachi with a Rifle]

Should I just forget it and progress with the game? And how much is it worth doing sidequests to begin with?

The rewards are minor. The grind is excruciating, don't bother with them.
The rewards are the 4th and 5th skill tree for each character.

[Garlyle]

To be fair, the 4th/5th skill trees are pretty fantastic... but some are a lot harder to get than others.  Melia and Dunban's I know are actually very easy to get - they involve little quest chains in the Eryth Sea and Valak Mountains that are really easy to complete and that's it.  Melia's in particular has some amazing abilities for tanks and non-tanks (specifically Seven), and Dunban's is amazing for anyone who wants to play dodgetank, including himself.  However, all the others (I think) require you to develop a very high affinity with an area - which means grinding out a lot of quests.

All the 5th skill tree quests are postgame-tier difficulty that has you fighting level 90+ enemies to achieve it apparently so I haven't got any of those @_@

On an aside though, while I love this game to pieces, trying to get Advanced Art Manuals is irritating.  For those unaware, from Valak Mountain onwards (with a couple area exceptions), enemies can drop the advanced art manuals.  The catch is that the manuals only appear in Gold Chests, which is about a 3% chance initially (Riki has a skill that can increase it but no clue by how much).  And then Gold Chests still only have like a 5% chance for its last two item slots to have a Manual... which will be one of four at variable success rates.

There IS a way to make this significantly easier, mind you - Unique Monsters always drop Gold Chests.  And yes, starting at Valak, that includes potential manuals.  There's a list here.  You just save near the monster, load in, kill its face, and hope it drops a manual - and if not, reload and try again.  It's still a mild pain in the neck though... @_@

Edit: Nearing the finale of the game.  I've got like two areas to go:

Spoiler:

Bionis Interior and Prison Island

.  The game finally got around to answering its plot threads and holy shit did it ever answer them @_@.

[AnonymousPondScum]

FINALLY got past Prison Island and now realize why I hated grinding so much---the problem WASN'T grinding, it was Eryth Sea's level design making it hard to sneak around enemies because everything was cramped islands or corridors/bridges.  :derp: The enemies I could defeat *individually*, but they would often patrol in swarms and so the safest way forward was to slowly lure out one major enemy at a time until I was in the clear. Argh.

Now I'm in the mountains on the Bionis' right arm and being able to walk freely through multiple routes/cliffdive to my death is highly relieving.

Still haven't found the Steel Silk for Colony 6. :X

[AnonymousPondScum]

So.

Got past Sword Valley and had the BEST FIGHT EVER with the Reinforcement M104 before I left.

It was just me/Shulk, everyone else was KO'd. The M104---bigass spider Mechon the size of an office building and about as tough---was down to its last 10th of life or so.

The Monad-o-vision was counting down to the M104 stomping my ass into the dirt with one last blow. I selected every special sword strike I had as fast as I could in hopes of beating the M104 down before I died.

And you know what the craziest part was? IT WORKED.

I succeeded and finished the bonus mission.

And then a dinky Offensive Mechon Plus came and poked me to death while I was jumping around with joy. :V