Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Life on Mira.

[Enner]

The Frame Level 20 Urban you get for free is the one they give out to BLADE grunts. If you ever wondered how the NPC have stories around their Skell getting slagged, now you know why.

I went straight for the Lvl. 30 Amdusias and then it's Lvl. 50 version. I have never seen my Skell Fuel drop even a quarter down. I regenerate enough fuel from appendage breaks, Soul Challenges, and Binding (make sure to bring in Skell Gear that stagger!) that I have never seen an empty fuel gauge.

That might change once I get that flight pack, which is very soon as I just complete Chapter 9. Oh, and dinged the level cap of 60 at ~165 hours.

orz

[pokepal148]

I like how that giant claw thing you see floating above Slyviaum is a level 90 tyrant that will happily shoot you out of the sky if you get anywhere near him and likely blow up your skell in the process. (Let me put it this way, when I had a level 50 Amdusias he wrecked it in a few shots.)

I kinda want to see if he can one shot a light level fifty skell, that would be hilarious.

[Evan_B]

Who is the least likable NPC in town?

Gwin is! Gwin is!

Who has the worst, most MC-relate-able affinitey string in town?

Gwin does! Gwin does!

Seriously, screw this NPC and his garbage attempts to steal the heart of my one, true love Irina. He is SO BORING and the fact that his affinity missions are required is stupid.

[pokepal148]

Actually i'm pretty sure Emo Boy Lao has that job well under wraps

Although I will admit it's rather fitting that he gets turned into an expository telethia for the final boss

Then I realized the mech I was given was a disposable power-up and turned the game off. Like, the fuel gauge is restrictive enough of an element to tie to the mech in a game with no running stamina . . .

Yeah, this is what's a real skell looks like:

[Evan_B]

Aaaaaaaaand I guess that's what spoiler tags are for.

I now have the final boss spoiled for me.

[MagicCow64]

Well I booted it up again today and figured out that you have to "reboot" your skell via that barracks terminal, and was pleasantly surprised that I had automatic insurance on it so avoided having to buy a new one or repair it. Then I apparently ran through the insurance by the end of the session and had to drop a big chunk to repair it and instead turned the game off. Why is there insurance if it runs out?! They should let you have the base skell without these fines and red tape. I had really liked that this game didn't employ the durability **** that many games do today, but then it rears up in concentrated form with the skell. If your mech gets wasted, you should just die and get the regular death penalty.

[Evan_B]

Step 1: Open menu
Step 2: Go to Intel
Step 3: Sell 30 of every material you have 80 or more of.

There you go. You'll never have to worry about Skell insurance again.

Since it's a big effin' piece of machinery and pretty much breaks most encounters you'll be having with normal-sized enemies for the rest of the game, it makes sense to have a penalty for misusing it, or getting too cocky. The developers wanted to give you the feeling of using something big, nasty and powerful. Skell insurance is pretty reliable (I think it actually regenerates, as I've gone for days with a large number of wrecks but no repair cost), and you can even purchase workarounds that allow you to repair for free. It's a risk-reward system, which was a nice change of pace, considering the game starts to lose a sense of danger around level 40 or so.

[pokepal148]

Just for the record, if you are at all surprised to learn that Emo Boy Lao is a traitor I have no respect for you.

I actually prefer the g2 buster to the more popular g-buster because it gives me a nice AOE option when i'm not using the Phoenix.

[Evan_B]

I knew that, but I didn't know about his final-bossy-ness.

[Enner]

Skell insurance is pretty reliable (I think it actually regenerates, as I've gone for days with a large number of wrecks but no repair cost), and you can even purchase workarounds that allow you to repair for free. It's a risk-reward system, which was a nice change of pace, considering the game starts to lose a sense of danger around level 40 or so.

Skell Insurance never regenerates. But it is never used when you perform a Perfect Eject when your Skell is wrecked (that's the Soul Challenge when your Skell's HP is depleted). NPC party members always perform Perfect Ejects, but will incur salvage costs if the Skell they use has 0 insurance.

Keep these mechanisms in mind, mind your surroundings, and run from Tyrants or baddies you can't hang with and your Skell will be fine. If not, you can always sell the damn thing and buy a fresh one.

[MagicCow64]

[Whoops, posted in the wrong thread before.]

I mean, I get the risk reward thing it's going for in the abstract, but I'm for one very acclimated to mild death penalties, which I think was the right call given the exploration focus and density of monsters, and for two have been increasingly anticipating getting the skell as I keep hitting geographic road blocks. Now that I've got the mech, it's re-invigorated the exploration aspect as I'm rocket jumping around to new landmarks and probe sights, but I'm also that much more "prone" to accidentally aggro some monster at twice my level that can kill the mech before I can get away. At which point it's warp back to the barracks, click a menu and (now) spend 10% of my money, and warp back to what I was doing. I find this cycle aggravating compared to the first 30 hours of the game, especially as the heavy majority of the skell kills have been from jumping over a boulder onto a monster rather than making bad calls about what missions I'm taking on or fights I'm picking with ambient creatures.

If anything I'm getting tired of the battle system, and would be perfectly happy to plow around in the mech and stomp the lower level monsters in my way that would have previously taken 30-45 seconds to kill in a rote fashion, without worrying about repair costs or insurance (or fuel for that matter, even if it's practically negligible). Also, if you lose your mech in a fight, that fight's done anyway, I don't think I've seen anything close to an encounter yet where you could still pull it off on foot. Maybe that will change when I can get mechs for the team, but that's also more mechs to fuss over. It's like nice china that you never want to use!

Speaking of the skells, does anyone know what's going on when it does a weird over-the-shoulder zoom in during an art? Am I supposed to be taking advantage of this? I don't seem to have any control for a few seconds when that happens.

[Enner]

Randomly during an Skell Art, you will enter Cockpit Time. Cockpit Time is an indicator that all the cool downs for your Skell arts have been refilled. It only appears you can't do anything because your Skell is doing the animation of the Art you just initiated. However, you can't move in Cockpit Time, which makes sense as it would be hard to do so.

Just hover over an Art you used before and lay on more hurt.


You never forget your first flight. It seems like such a minor thing, but believe me when I say the feeling is incredible. Sadly, I blew up the Skell soon after because it's a level 15 frame!

[Evan_B]

Yeah, it was pretty rewarding. Did not realize that perfect ejects save insurance. Makes absolutely no sense, but now I see why I never have a problem with it.

Unlocking more Orphe side quests, and got to the point where I discovered the precise nature of the Ovah. Puts things in a weird perspective, for sure. Hoping to learn more about L and Celica's races, though I'm not sure that will happen. Unless their second and third affinity missions are huge info dumps.

[Triforce Hermit]

Yeah, it was pretty rewarding. Did not realize that perfect ejects save insurance. Makes absolutely no sense, but now I see why I never have a problem with it.

Oh.....

[pokepal148]

L is actually in my party right now. Let's just say that now that i'm able to change my character's appearance and voice him and your character using the classic (aka Fiora) voice gives you a really nice dynamic of two not so Uber serious characters with fun accents just hamming it up there that makes the battle banter much more lively.

Also, he actually does have a special end of battle quote that he only uses if you're using a female avatar with the Fiora voice that surprised me (he actually explicitly comments on your character's accent.

[Evan_B]

He does the same thing with Shulk's voice.

I find Fioras battle quotes insufferable. Tried using a female design for about ten minutes before changing her voice.

[pokepal148]

"Have a Biscuit"

[Mop it up]

This is one of those games where you might want to read the manual. I was confused about how Skells work too, such as the cockpit view thing and how insurance works, but I found it all there in the manual. How convenient!

I haven't had much trouble with Skells yet. The bike form is pretty fast, so I've been able to get away from high level enemies that spot me. The world sure feels a lot smaller once you get a Skell. It also seems like they give you ample time and warning to hit the B button prompt when it's destroyed, so I haven't used any insurance yet either, unless higher-level Skells give you less time to hit it perfectly.

[pokepal148]

The level 60 skells you craft have like 10 insurance point-things which is nice.

[MagicCow64]

I appreciate the feed-back, folks! Don't mean to seem too down on the game, and I guess I should have consulted the manual (kind of crazy this is necessary to understand some pretty important stuff, though).

I also figured out a strategy for avoiding Skell destruction that should have been obvious from the get-go: bail out at soon as you get aggro-ed and die "naked".

[pokepal148]

Once you get into the customization of skells things get really fun. I actually have a skell in my party that uses the Excavator frame with armor I took off of a level 50 Mastama and two drones and just nukes the heck out of everything.

I also have one that I just jacked up the evasion on so it can dodge almost everything. I'm thinking i'll do a melee version of that build with heathorns to try and get it to bind stuff.

[Evan_B]

"Have a Biscuit"

"Is that a British accent we hear? Pip pip, old boy!" Or something to that effect.

[Enner]

Oh boy, the 195 hr mark ticked by.

Contrasted to my initial disappointments on the narrative(s), I'm finding myself awed by how the game opens up and dramatically improves. So much that I'm somewhat angry at how dry and lacking the front half of the game's narrative beats are.

Once you populate NLA, once you have enough NPCs to bounce off each other, once you have quest lines literally fall out of the sky on to you, it is then that NLA and the story of Xenoblade Chronicles X feels properly alive. The characters are still thin on dimensions even when you try to look hard for any sort of subtlety (In Xenoblade X's defense, I don't think most of the characters in Xenoblade Chronicles are dramatically better characterized.), but I'm at the point where they have each weaved a little something to NLA's story that I now see the grand canvas of Xenoblade X's narrative.

It's frustrating that it took me this long to come to arrive at this point with the game, but I'm so happy I'm here now and still have a ways to go.

[Evan_B]

That happened around 110 hours, for me.

[Mop it up]

I also figured out a strategy for avoiding Skell destruction that should have been obvious from the get-go: bail out at soon as you get aggro-ed and die "naked".

Oh yeah, I was going to mention that but then forgot. It's kind of funny to think of machinery being more valuable than life, but that's the way it is in this twisted world!