Xenoblade Chronicles 3

[Alan Stock]

I forgot that you can spend gold on materials from Nopon vendors at the colonies if there's anything you are needing, and they are quite pricey although with 100k in the bank already I'm not too worried. I have about 70 ether already too.  

 

Don't miss upgrading a colony on the main questline to level 1 (at around party level 30) so you get a party buff that lets you run faster in the overworld.

 

I'm about 60 hours in now and still at the start of chapter 4!

[Stanley]

I went down a couple of times on the boss for the hero quest line of 

Spoiler

Zeon

Changed up my tactics a couple of times and then beat him, really good stuff with all around bonkers presentation. 
 

Does anyone know what ‘auto build’ does on the character select screen? I don’t want to try in case it changes all my classes etc. 

 

It could really do with load outs - I change my party up quite a lot and it can take a while. 

[Stanley]

How do you level up the interlink? 

[revlob]

26 minutes ago, Stanley said:

How do you level up the interlink? 

 

Perform fusion attacks.

[Stanley]

Thanks, mine are all level 0 - I guess it takes a while to level up. 

[revlob]

2 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Thanks, mine are all level 0 - I guess it takes a while to level up. 

 

It's something that starts at 0, levels up during battle, and resets after the interlink is cancelled. It does take a few attacks to get it to increase.

[Stanley]

Ah right I get you - cheers! 

[scottcr]

Just got the interlink for everyone now - is there any reason to not use it as often as possible?  I found myself spinning around the characters and interlinking.  I suspect that's not 'optimum' though.

[revlob]

38 minutes ago, scottcr said:

Just got the interlink for everyone now - is there any reason to not use it as often as possible?  I found myself spinning around the characters and interlinking.  I suspect that's not 'optimum' though.

 

Depends how hard an enemy you're fighting. Interlinking at level 0 makes it nearly impossible to charge the Talent Arts of your Orouboros form, and they are very powerful.

[scottcr]

Ah - so level that up with fusion attacks then let rip with an interlink.  Cool.

 

I tried one of the VR tutorials... really nice idea.  I just tried the cancel arts one and, try as I might, even though I was cancelling all over the place - it never registered... 

[Alan Stock]

I also had trouble with that one. What is easy to miss in their explanation is that to cancel Arts you have to cancel an Art into a Fusion Art or vice versa (or Fusion Art to Fusion Art).

 

I've only managed to use an interlink Talent Art a few times. Getting to Level 3 takes ages and often I'll have to switch off the character and then the AI will use the interlink prematurely (usually to save itself from death). Or I'll have to emergency use the interlink before Level 3 for the same reason. If the AI does use the interlink Talent Art I've not seen it in the chaos. Another barrier is the heat bar. It's really hard to reach the Talent Art in time and very easy to miss the cancels in the madness of battle. Now I've upgraded the heat bar its a bit easier but there are so many other factors at play.

 

Is the interlink Talent Art really worth the trouble? If you think it is, I will turn on manual interlinking to stop the AI from getting me to Level 3.

 

---

 

One gripe I have with this game is that they've still not sorted out the sound balance in cutscenes. The music is way louder than the voices just like in previous games, at least in action cutscenes. And even when you turn down the music, it can be incredibly hard to make out what's being said from any character with a voice filter, of which there are many. It's like watching a Christopher Nolan film, and bear in mind usually there are a ton of explosions and shit going on as well as the music score whilst things are being said. I'm having to debate turning on subtitles because its hurting my experience of epic moments whilst I struggle to hear the characters. The voice filter effects are quite cool but are too distorted in my opinion. I hate having to turn on subtitles though, I find subtitles really detract especially in action scenes, and they'll have to be on for all the many non-action cutscenes too, because you never know what's going to happen.

 

Are people here playing with subtitles? Is anyone else having problems at times hearing what people are saying when the voice filters are in play? 

[Stanley]

There are settings in the audio for tv speakers, console speakers, home cinema etc. but I’m not sure how much of a difference it really makes. I’ve kept the subtitles on, but I can hear the voices ok most of the time. 
 

I imagine it’s only possible to use interlink talent arts effectively once you’ve reduced the cool-down considerably, I’m always having to jump out or accidentally overheat. 
 

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the battle system tbh, I’m still mainly using break/topple/daze but I have dabbled with launch and smash a few times which is cool. I’ve noticed some of the interlink ones have launch all/smash all - that sounds exciting. 

[Wiper]

17 minutes ago, Alan Stock said:

Is the interlink Talent Art really worth the trouble? If you think it is, I will turn on manual interlinking to stop the AI from getting me to Level 3.

 

The talent art (for certain forms, at least) is very useful for high defence bosses because it ignores all defences.

 

Once you get access to Ourobouros in chain attacks then getting to level 3 is also useful for chain attacks if you have party members down (as it guarantees two very heavy rounds of damage), but if given the choice I'd generally favour a "normal" chain attack climaxing with a single Ourobouros as I find three rounds of normal plus one Ourobouros gives higher damage overall; though you are throwing the dice that you'll a) roll the guest hero attack to get you up to four rounds, and b) manage to get the second part of a pairing in to trigger the Ourobouros option.

[Stanley]

There are Ourobouros chain attacks 

[Wiper]

That's why you get a counter appear for them at the end of each chain attack! Which admittedly always says 0 until you unlock the buggers.

[Alan Stock]

In terms of Interlink Break All, Smash All etc, I don't think they are particularly useful at least in this mid stage of the game. I very rarely get the effect to trigger even against single targets when interlinked. And for the 'All' part of the effect to trigger you have to be at interlink level 3, which is hard to get to anyway. So the best use cases would be to use the 'All' Arts against group bosses, but by the time you get up to level 3 you've probably taken one or two down already. You could use manual interlinking to have everyone get into level 3 interlinks and then trigger off the damage combos, but it seems like a serious effort for not that much reward. I guess doing massive damage to a group at once might be worth it for very tough groups, but if they're that hard then surviving to get interlinks to level 3 will be hard enough.

 

Last night I was stuck on a story boss and had to go do loads of side content to get my team up to scratch for it (I've done nearly all available side quests at this time now). Even after beefing up I was taking so much damage that members of my team were constantly dying and at low health. I ended up with taking a healer Hero, 2 healers and equipping a fourth character with an accessory that allows them to perform revives regardless of class. I managed to scrape through with a terrible performance which relied on Chain Attacks to keep me alive. So I had 4 people running around reviving and when everyone was up and on like 2HP, I'd hit Chain Attack and use that as a get me out of jail free card, to heal everyone back up and buff them whilst getting in damage. Honestly it felt lame, Chain Attack is a bit overpowered in that way. However the alternative was to spend bonus XP or knock down the difficulty. I didn't even get any interlinks to level 1 because noone would survive long enough to do fusion attacks, and I had to keep control of a tank to try to keep aggro. Still, its quite cool that with the right combination of classes and builds I was able to make a 'hanging on the edge' team, even if it did feel cheap.

[Alan Stock]

18 minutes ago, Wiper said:

Once you get access to Ourobouros in chain attacks then getting to level 3 is also useful for chain attacks if you have party members down (as it guarantees two very heavy rounds of damage), but if given the choice I'd generally favour a "normal" chain attack climaxing with a single Ourobouros as I find three rounds of normal plus one Ourobouros gives higher damage overall; though you are throwing the dice that you'll a) roll the guest hero attack to get you up to four rounds, and b) manage to get the second part of a pairing in to trigger the Ourobouros option.

 

Yeah I agree with this, I've tried level 3 Ouroboros chain attacks a few times and the damage output and utility seems ultimately less than having a good full party (or near full party) chain attack, if you are using the right abilities. 

 

One thing I'm a bit unclear of is what triggers an Ouroboros chain attack to appear at the end of a normal chain. Is it just that you need someone to be already interlinked when you start the chain attack? And are there any other conditions to make it appear?

[Squigs]

To trigger the ouroboros from within a normal chain attack, you need the two normal characters to have issued an order in the chain. So when it pops up the 3 different orders to choose from, you would choose Noah first and then Mio second or third time around, then the Ouroboros option will show.

 

It does come down to luck a bit in hoping that both characters will show up as options.

[Alan Stock]

Thanks, makes sense now.

 

Here's a tip I found by accident yesterday. If you hit the - button during combat, it will switch to auto-combat (doesn't work on bosses/unique enemies). You can toggle it on and off. Should be good for fighting overworld mobs where you are confident in the win. 

[Melon_Bread]

Was wondering last night why sometimes the + button does not open the map, but other times it does, I think it's maybe to do with the quests you have selected but I was finding it annoying. Also sometimes I want it to open on the spot I am on the map but instead it opens up on the quest location, it's my only gripe with the game really.

[shynra]

By default L2+X opens the map (local area only).

 

One thing I didn't figure out until 10s of hours in, in battle press R3 to do a dodge. As your auto attacks come out after X a mount of time you can move between attacks and they next will come out if you are still at the right time. So you can auto attack - > dodge into better position - > it's perfect time for another auto attack so it come out right away. 

[Alan Stock]

34 minutes ago, Melon_Bread said:

Was wondering last night why sometimes the + button does not open the map, but other times it does, I think it's maybe to do with the quests you have selected but I was finding it annoying. Also sometimes I want it to open on the spot I am on the map but instead it opens up on the quest location, it's my only gripe with the game really.

 

The + button is fixed to the active quest destination, and you can toggle between active side quest or main story quest by opening the quest box at the bottom right of the screen and using the d-pad to toggle between them. It's really handy for finding fast travel points close to the quest location and very useful. I'm a bit puzzled that for you it sometimes doesn't appear, even in story quests there's usually a destination it points to. Maybe there are some exceptions?

 

Like shynra says, L2+X opens the map on your position. If you want to go to a different zone outside of those 2 maps, you need to go to Map in the main menu and select a sub-region.

 

Also I've that found the R3 button outside of combat- which shows a real-time popup map of your local area whilst you can still run around - to be quite handy for removing fog of war and narrowing in on map icons.  

 

I keep forgetting to use R3 in combat to dodge around, should be handy for positionals on big bosses.

[Squigs]

29 minutes ago, Melon_Bread said:

Was wondering last night why sometimes the + button does not open the map, but other times it does, I think it's maybe to do with the quests you have selected but I was finding it annoying. Also sometimes I want it to open on the spot I am on the map but instead it opens up on the quest location, it's my only gripe with the game really.

The + button prompt for opening the map only appears if you have the quest/objective open in the bottom right, so you need to press Y first. I think the difference between it and the L2 + X combo is that the + button method centres the map on the objective, rather than the player (that's a guess from memory though).

 

One thing I noticed is that you only need to craft each gem once. A single gem can be applied to multiple characters.

[Alan Stock]

Just now, Squigs said:

The + button prompt for opening the map only appears if you have the quest/objective open in the bottom right, so you need to press Y first.

 

Yes I think that's it, you need to have the box open for the map to work.

[Melon_Bread]

I am 99% sure it wasn’t doing that all the time, it was making a horrible beep noise when i pressed the +

[Stanley]

9 hours ago, Melon_Bread said:

I am 99% sure it wasn’t doing that all the time, it was making a horrible beep noise when i pressed the +

I’ve felt some inconsistency with the + map button as well. I rarely have the ‘Y’ menu left open but I can’t rule that out as being the reason; it does feel like + should bring up the map whenever seeing as it’s not used for anything else. 
 

What scores are you guys getting on chain attacks? I got 224k last night which I thought was pretty cool! I’ve only just started using ourobouros on those so it hasn’t totally clicked with me yet (that’s my disclaimer for when I see people getting 1M+ or something )

[MikeBeaver]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

I’ve felt some inconsistency with the + map button as well. I rarely have the ‘Y’ menu left open but I can’t rule that out as being the reason; it does feel like + should bring up the map whenever seeing as it’s not used for anything else. 
 

What scores are you guys getting on chain attacks? I got 224k last night which I thought was pretty cool! I’ve only just started using ourobouros on those so it hasn’t totally clicked with me yet (that’s my disclaimer for when I see people getting 1M+ or something )

It won't let you open it as it's fast travel, and it forbids that during certain missions, as otherwise you'd miss some other part on route I've figured.

Chain attack... 800k+, I was hitting snap shot each time they got higher 😛  

[Stanley]

Haha! Omg 

 

One thing I might be missing or is lacking is being able to properly track items required for collecting during fetch quests. I’m doing one at the moment and when you talk to the quest giver they list all the items and tell you which regions they’re in - but when you’re actually out there searching you have no idea of your progress or even where to look exactly. It makes these quests feel entirely random to me. Anyone else found a better way of doing them? 

[MikeBeaver]

Chapter 5... longest cutscene ever !!! Best see what 6 holds....

[Squigs]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

Haha! Omg 

 

One thing I might be missing or is lacking is being able to properly track items required for collecting during fetch quests. I’m doing one at the moment and when you talk to the quest giver they list all the items and tell you which regions they’re in - but when you’re actually out there searching you have no idea of your progress or even where to look exactly. It makes these quests feel entirely random to me. Anyone else found a better way of doing them? 

 

Not really, the only way I can think of would be to use the Switch's screenshot function to at least have a note of the items required, but if it's the bit I'm thinking of you'd still need 6 or 7 screenshots to get the full list. It's a bit annoying it doesn't use the same system as the collectopedia cards.

 

I'm only at start of chapter 4, but I get the impression that the real use of gold will be for either constant fabricator use to try and farm rarer items, or having to pay the extortionate Nopon prices for stuff to complete these sort of quests!