Board 8 > I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles (ON THE WII)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm only ~8 hours in, but this is just a really rich experience thus far. Had I owned a Wii back in college, this would have probably been my most-played game, since it's pretty much exactly what I've been wanting out of a JRPG since FFX.

Anyway, a few questions since I am going into this totally blind:

1. Is grinding worth it? I'm starting to get the sense that combat is much more skill-based than other old school RPGs, so should I really be working to level up significantly in between areas?
2. What's an easy way to "break" the game? Is there anything that comes close to FF8's laughably fucked draw approach?
3. Any "missable" items/quests I should look out for?
4. Which optional quest missions enhance the experience the most?

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I never grinded or did side quests, but I ended up slightly too low level to beat the final boss as a result, and my fights against late bosses took an eternity to get through. Doing some grinding and side quests might be wise.

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2) there's a way to get massive amounts of exp that will make like 70% of the game trivial

its easier in the switch version I think? but still possible in the original googling tephra cave glitch is all you need

there's also another spot on the bionis leg where you can also farm exp and some equipment once you get the 5th or 6th party member (cant remember the order those two join in)

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1) If you're underleveled for fights you'll literally do 0 damage to them and miss all of your attacks. Then if you level up a few times and go back suddenly it's a normal fight (or a stomp). You can use skills to raise your agility to actually hit enemies or something but when I played it definitely felt like character level was 90% of the difficulty in combat. You can't win a tough fight through sheer skill

4) There are a few quests that unlock more skill options for your characters but they're almost completely indistinguishable from regular fetch quests so you basically need to talk to every character 50 times or look up a guide to see which quests actually matter. The skill quests will be a person that's like "I need to talk to someone strong about my issue" and then you have to switch to Reyn to talk to them or whatever.

Different quest givers show up at different times of the day AND certain quest givers will only give you a quest after you talk to some random NPC who doesn't have a quest to offer. So every time you visit a town you need to basically sweep the town for each time of day and talk to every single person to get quests.

Actually to add to that, you need to sweep the town TWICE for each time of day because you could talk to someone in the middle of the night that prompts a quest for you to accept by someone else in the middle of the day. At least quests show up on the map so the second sweep is a little quicker.

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skullbone posted...

4) There are a few quests that unlock more skill options for your characters but they're almost completely indistinguishable from regular fetch quests so you basically need to talk to every character 50 times or look up a guide to see which quests actually matter. The skill quests will be a person that's like "I need to talk to someone strong about my issue" and then you have to switch to Reyn to talk to them or whatever.

Different quest givers show up at different times of the day AND certain quest givers will only give you a quest after you talk to some random NPC who doesn't have a quest to offer. So every time you visit a town you need to basically sweep the town for each time of day and talk to every single person to get quests.

Actually to add to that, you need to sweep the town TWICE for each time of day because you could talk to someone in the middle of the night that prompts a quest for you to accept by someone else in the middle of the day. At least quests show up on the map so the second sweep is a little quicker.

Jesus. No wonder why the average completion time is like 90 hours. Tbh I haven't even played as anyone but Shulk yet (except for the first Monado scene).

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1. There are plenty of side quests and other ways to get experience, so grinding shouldn't be necessary.

3/4. The aforementioned skill branch quests, but also there's a side quest that actually gets voice acted cutscenes late in the game. Check the Colony 6 gate after a certain very major thing happens, you should start it then.

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I would never grind in a traditional RPG sense. Doing quests takes the place of grinding. If you do all of them as you go along, you'll be overleveled. If you do none, you'll be underleveled. So try to do a moderate amount of quests as you play through.

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