Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Use Salvage Points to Get Items and Money

Seeing as the main character of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Rex, is a salvager, it’d probably be a good idea to spend a bit of time doing just that. You’ll be introduced to salvaging early on in the game, and across the world of Alrest you’ll find different salvage points that you’ll be able to dive into. The thing about these points is that each salvage you do rewards you with a bit of money, as well as potential items and treasure.Then you can turn around and sell treasure for even more gold, which you’ll definitely be needing a lot of on your journey.

Make sure you always have some cylinders in your inventory so you’re able to stop at any salvage point you might find while you’re exploring. Once you start the salvage, you’ll need to hit three quick-time button prompts as Rex is jumping in. You want to time your button presses to the inside circle, and timing things just right will get an excellent rating and potentially boost the quality of your salvage. Don’t let salvaging slip by with everything else you have to do in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, as it’s a good way to rake in some extra cash.

Use Cancels in Battle

Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s combat system is incredibly complex, and new layers of it open up as you go along in the main story. One small detail, however, is easily missed but also very useful. That detail is cancels, a feature that hits right after you use an art and can reduce the time of your cooldowns. It’s easy to do and there’s no limit to canceling attacks, so feel free to go nuts with them.

To use a cancel attack you need to hit your art button right as one of your auto-attacks hit. This will use your art, and restore about a fourth of its cooldown afterwards. If you’ve successfully used a cancel attack you’ll see a blue ring pop up around Rex or whatever character you’re controlling. Additionally, using a cancel on your final auto-attack in a combo will restore your art cooldown to an even greater degree. Using cancels is a great way to give yourself an edge in battle, especially if you’re using them on recovery abilities.

Make Sure to Dabble in Sidequests and Rest at Inns

The main story of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is plenty long, and there’s a ton to do within it. However, there’s also a huge amount of sidequests to undertake in the game, and it’s really in your best interest to knock out at least a few of them now and again. There’s a few different bonuses that sidequests give you in Xenoblade 2, first of which is gold and experience. Experience earned through sidequests is stockpiled into bonus XP that you can then distribute when you stay at an inn to rest. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a pretty moderate difficulty curve, so you’ll definitely want to be using your bonus XP to boost up your party a little bit.

Sidequests can also grant you a variety of different items, with everything from accessories to cooking recipes. Finally the more sidequests you complete, the more the dev level of that specific region will go up. The higher the dev level of a region, the lower prices will go in shops, and you’ll also get access to brand new merchandise. There’s a ton of sidequests in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 so don’t feel like you need to complete each and every one, but try and pick out at least a few to do in each region.

Try Out Different Blades and Keep up Your Equipment

Blades are the central part of Xenoblade 2’s combat system, and each of your characters will have one to pair up with. Of course, Pyra is probably going to be the most useful for Rex, but you absolutely should try out different ones in combat. A while into the game you’ll unlock the Blade option in the menu, where you’ll have the chance to awaken new Blades from Core Crystals. You don’t need to worry too much about using these as you’ll get plenty of Core Crystals in the game, so just awaken them to see what new comrades you might get. As Blades can have wildly different arts and elements, it’s important to continuously try them out to see what might fit your combat style best.

At the same time, you’re also going to want to constantly manage your characters. You can enhance the arts of your main characters, use SP to unlock abilities, equip accessories, and empower characters with pouch items. On top of that you can outfit your Blades with Core Chips, empower them with Aux Cores, and check on their affinity growth. This is a lot to take in for sure, but after working through everything you’ll get the hang of things. Just make sure you’re constantly looking to purchase new items, chips, etc. and trying them out on all of your characters to, again, find whatever fits your style best.

Pay Attention to Tutorials

This one may seem a bit obvious, but it’s incredibly important to really pay attention to tutorials in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. When I say there’s a lot of tutorials, I mean it. Even 30 hours into the game you’ll be getting new tutorials revealing pieces of the game’s systems, progression systems, and in combat. After a while it can be tempting to just skip these, but you really want to pay attention to the tutorials, as sadly much of it is information you won’t be able to look up later in a compendium or anything.

Yes, doing tutorials is an obvious thing, but few games is it as important with as Xenoblade Chronicles 2. They’ll help teach you the ins and outs of the game, much more than anything else.