Poll of the Day > Playin' Xenoblade (topic got purged)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Couldn't put this game down for the first few days, it's so big and vast and makes you wanna explore it. Almost got burned out from all the quests, there's just so many. I talk to one person, then another, then another, and soon I've got like 10 quests that I gotta attend to.

A shame that quick step gems cap, only affecting your speed up to 25% . The character already moves pretty fast, not too slow, but the world is just so vast that sometimes I wish I could move even faster. Maybe on a bike or something.

I'm in satorl marsh now.

How do you beat those floating clouds that respond to ether, those nebula thing? Only Sharla's ether arts seem to affect them, and I definitely don't want to use Sharla.

It's nice that the character model changes depending on what equipment you have them wear but I wish it didn't. Some of the equipment looks so goddamn stupid. And I love Dunban's default clothes that he comes with, he's like a mixture of Basch and Balthier from FF 12.
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yeah those clouds always gave me problems. if you dont beat them in time they blow up. I don't remember very earily of the game on how to beat them. i want to say physical damage doesn't do that much damage and you have to use magic users.

I found out agility is the best skill to max out. it makes you attack faster and dodge too.

Now you understand why it took 111 hours. i just kept going back to the city and run around them because day and night cycle have different people around giving out more quest.

the game is massive and very impressive that it's on the wii. i wish xenoblade 2 was this big. instead they are smaller chunks of land.

on the armor. Wait until you unlock all the armor chest pieces for the women. it's basically all good armor just gaurds half their breasts and let the other half hang out.

I like that the armor changes the look of your character.
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Reconstructing colony 6 now. I definitely want to get rid of the 10 pages of crystals and cylinders I have but don't know what to sell and what to keep in case I want to get into gem crafting.
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I still can't believe how utterly incompetent I am at these games...

IN what way?
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Like I said in the other topic, accept all quests but don't bother trying to go out of your way to do them and don't worry about "100%'ing" the game. There's hundreds of the damn quests, I wish they had held back a bit. But they're optional, so if you don't allow yourself to become fixated on completing them, it's hardly a blemish on the experience.
"Timed" quests (have a clock symbol) are the only ones you may want to make sure you complete, and even those you usually have a decent while to do so.

Xenoblade X was a downgrade in most ways, but they did add a "cosmetic equipment" section which was nice. No matter what gear you wore, you'd look like whatever you chose for that section.
Ernie's exaggerating how revealing the clothing can get, unless you hide your eyes in shock at the sight of bikinis or something.
And Agility is the most important non-casting stat and heavy armor detracts from it, so scantily clad is sort of optimal. ;)
For everyone (except maybe Reyn...his agility is too low to make up for the heavy armor he can wear). "Naked Dunban" is a common build, even.
(Name's already been mentioned in the topic, but I'll hide it just to be safe)

Oh yeah I remember reading something about agility's importance.

Wait I need to confirm something about gem crafting. Does gem crafting happen automatically or when I press "a" does it make Shulk move those knobs around (I've been using Shulk-Reyn to experiment with gem crafting)

I have so many questions when I play the game but then forget about them by the time I want to post an update on my status. I think I'm just gonna play through the game and deal with whatever happens, come what may.

My only issue is that my crystals tab, despite being 10 pages, is already filled up, and I really don't know what to do, especially considering I'm a hoarder. Do I sell them off, do I use them for some half baked gem crafting to make room for more crystals, should I save some for when I want to make game breaking gem crafts, that kinda thing.
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I'm pretty sure gem crafting is automatic, and the only interaction/input from the player is to speed through the event, but the result doesn't change.

As for crystals, other than a few effects that sound really useful to you for mid-game (agility, quick step, ether increases, whatever seems helpful to you)...which you should make some gems out of...sell it. Any crystals level 1-3 are going to end up being junk anyway. You can never "upgrade" a level 3 crystal to level 4 or so on (only overheat to get a level 4 gem) and you can only combine crystals of the same level. So later on, you'll only want the highest level crystals filling up your inventory.
You don't have to clear out everything...a few empty pages is plenty. And there are some effects that are so rare they might be worth hanging onto, even if they're lower level, like EXP Up (though I never had a problem w/ being under-leveled myself)

You should be aware of the "Max Weapon Damage" glitch that's in the game.

I forgot the specifics on how the game treats the coding, but basically, for any weapon in the game, it's max damage range is only ever going to be +99 from it's lowest stat.

So let's say for example, you have two rifles.

One has a damage range of 300-500
The other has a damage range of 320-420

The first one actually has, for actual damage calculation when you fight, a range of 300-399.
While the second one has 320-419.

So yeah, when comparing weapons, just looks at the lowest number for the range. Also, this means Attack Plus gems are basically useless (unless you pair it with Weapon Stability Gems which raise the minimum).
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streamofthesky posted...

I'm pretty sure gem crafting is automatic, and the only interaction/input from the player is to speed through the event, but the result doesn't change.

As for crystals, other than a few effects that sound really useful to you for mid-game (agility, quick step, ether increases, whatever seems helpful to you)...which you should make some gems out of...sell it. Any crystals level 1-3 are going to end up being junk anyway. You can never "upgrade" a level 3 crystal to level 4 or so on (only overheat to get a level 4 gem) and you can only combine crystals of the same level. So later on, you'll only want the highest level crystals filling up your inventory.
You don't have to clear out everything...a few empty pages is plenty. And there are some effects that are so rare they might be worth hanging onto, even if they're lower level, like EXP Up (though I never had a problem w/ being under-leveled myself)

Cool thanks! Exp up isn't as important to me, but maybe AP up? Or Sp up? Unless they're also things I don't need to worry about if I'll get more than enough ap and sp points later on in the game.

And it still bothers me that quick step only counts up to 25%. I already have 20% and basically feel no different than without it. Wish it went up to double the speed with which you usually run. That would be great especially when I'm swimming in this large area in makna forest. I have to explore every nook and cranny because that's just how I game, but it also gets super tedious to watch the swimming animation in that long river.
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Yeah, those could be useful.

Quick step capping is unfortunate, but characters run pretty fast at least, and you have fast travel. On that note...
There's another area soon after Makna Forest that also has a huge body of water, even bigger than Makna's. It has "land areas" and then the water itself, you'll see what I mean when you get there. I'd strongly suggest going through the land areas first, since some of those places have landmarks you can use for fast travel, and from the land you can access various sections of the water, which is all just one big body, again.
When I got there, I decided to explore the water area first for some reason and spent like half an hour just swimming for little gain. Should've not done that...

culture_den posted...

How do you beat those floating clouds that respond to ether, those nebula thing? Only Sharla's ether arts seem to affect them, and I definitely don't want to use Sharla.

They're highly resistant to physical damage, so ether arts are the only way to kill them in a timely fashion. You'll be getting a party member in Makna Forest that deals primarily ether damage, so until then just put up with them being slow fights that blow you up at the end.

ernieforss posted...

I found out agility is the best skill to max out. it makes you attack faster and dodge too.

Maxing out agility is very important, but it doesn't affect attack speed at all. It affects accuracy and dodge (the hit formula subtracts the target's agility from the attacker's agility before adding a few other numbers, so each point of agility is an additive 1% chance to hit or dodge). Attack speed is increased with Haste gems.

culture_den posted...

definitely want to get rid of the 10 pages of crystals and cylinders I have but don't know what to sell and what to keep in case I want to get into gem crafting.

You can pretty safely sell everything that isn't the highest tier of a given gem type (i.e. sell Strength III crystals if you have any Strength IV crystals). While leveling, you're also pretty safe selling everything that doesn't make you immediately say "I want to use that." It's tempting to keep a million different gems around just in case you run into something where you'd be better off with a different setup, but in practice, the mid-game really isn't hard enough to warrant min-maxing (and when it is, coming back with a few extra levels makes much more of a difference than any amount of min-maxing would), and absolutely every crystal/cylinder that isn't Rank V will be obsolete by the time you hit endgame content and start min-maxing for real, so don't worry too much about it. Just make some decent Aggro Up gems for your tank and Agility Up gems for every physical attacker, and fill the rest of your sockets with whatever damage boosts you have readily to hand and/or defensive boosts that you find yourself wanting.
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adjl posted...

They're highly resistant to physical damage, so ether arts are the only way to kill them in a timely fashion. You'll be getting a party member in Makna Forest that deals primarily ether damage, so until then just put up with them being slow fights that blow you up at the end.

Well, technically... (spoilers about party members only for Makna Forest, safe to read once you're done there, and honestly it's pretty minor spoilers before then, too)
You get two ether users in Makna Forest. One primarily uses ether, and the other gets a 50/50 split of physical and ether arts available that you can set up to your liking (ie, more of a warrior or more of a mage, or just w/ both).

Which xenoblade

streamofthesky posted...

adjl posted...

They're highly resistant to physical damage, so ether arts are the only way to kill them in a timely fashion. You'll be getting a party member in Makna Forest that deals primarily ether damage, so until then just put up with them being slow fights that blow you up at the end.

Well, technically... (spoilers about party members only for Makna Forest, safe to read once you're done there, and honestly it's pretty minor spoilers before then, too)
You get two ether users in Makna Forest. One primarily uses ether, and the other gets a 50/50 split of physical and ether arts available that you can set up to your liking (ie, more of a warrior or more of a mage, or just w/ both).

I suppose that is technically true.

OmegaTomHank posted...

Which xenoblade

Presumably the first one, given the other context clues in the first post.
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Ive never played any of them

OmegaTomHank posted...

Ive never played any of them

Then you are excused for not picking up on those clues. Carry on, my friend.
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My personal favorite character to use is Dunban. It feels great dodging practically everything, and he's also a ham.
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Naked Dunban is far better than he has any right to be, at least for the midgame.
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Oh I think I understand gem crafting now. You find the crystals that have the ability you want from the higher rank ones, like 4 or 5, say agility up. I synthesize 2 cylinders that have 99 agility, and then combine both to make a gem that is a rank higher than the category I chose from, so I have Agility V or even VI.

And crystals can have different abilities so there's no point in saving particular crystals, only the ones that happen to have the abilities you want. And no 2 crystals are the same, like I have to pretty armu crystals but they both have different abilities.

Is that basically the gist of it?
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Pretty much. Getting cylinders to exactly 99 w/o hitting 100 is almost never going to happen, but it's the ideal to aim for. It's why having a pair w/ poor chemistry but a bonus on # of cylinders produced is so useful for the "starting round". You don't *want* to do too well until you have some crystals or gems with a high %, then you combine them "for real" with the Shulk/Reyn pairing (probably have great affinity by now, and get that bonus chance of overheating or whatever it's called), because then you end up going slightly over 100% and getting crummy gems.
You don't need to wait till you can make high quality gems either, if you don't have enough high % crystals/cylinders, can always combine some you have to get a high % cylinder to hold onto and condense your inventory a bit.
Also, since crystals do tend to have multiple abilities, there may well be situations where you'll make some gems as a side effect of cylinder production but just sell them b/c it's abilities you don't care about. Say you had two crystals with a low % of agility but a high % of something you don't care about like...lower falling damage. By all means, combine them to get a good Agility cylinder along w/ a crappy lower falling damage gem (that you then sell).

The crystals you get from enemies or from deposits will have different abilities, but there's a set list of ones that each particular enemy or elemental deposit can provide, and you'll eventually get some w/ the same set of abilities by random chance.

There's a lot of complexity and info to the gem crafting system, which is why I didn't want to get into it much in my first reply :)

Heh to be honest I kind of feel that falling damage gem is really useful because death from heights is actually my main way of being killed. I can't help testing the limits of how high I can jump when I don't want to climb vines or whatever and always end up dying. So if falling gem reduces the damage from falling it's useful for overworld traversing.

But yeah I'm just experimenting for now since I most have Rank 1, 2, or 3 crystals for the most part so won't put too much stock in it until I get higher ranked ones.

Got to Nopon Village, those things are hilarious in a silly sort of way.
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Heropon is bestpon.
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