Hm. Is there any reason, then, for me to use the Mastermind class, rather than using Rayguns and Knives as any other class?
The Mastermind class has the highest Potential, which is a stat that modifies the damage value of all TP arts, regardless of what color they are.
But staying in a class after maxing it out means you will never complete your skill collection, so it's not recommended.
Wait, Potential only affects TP arts? Not regular arts?
As far as I know, potential:
- Modifies attack power of TP arts.
- Increases health recovery from soul voice heals.
- Increases chance that you'll go into cockpit mode with skells.
I think that's all it does? I don't think it affects abilities like Brainjack and Energy Source because they do no damage.
On the PC, try to save them until you have a good idea what build you want to finalize on. It's not a hugely big deal though. If you get stuck on a boss fight, feel free to blow them all. You'll make them back eventually, it'll just take a while.
When you pick up late-game NPCs like Celica you will probably have more BP than you can initially spend on them. And unlike XP*, everyone gets BP regardless of their presence in your party so if you pick up, say, Boze and leave him alone after his initial mission he'll be in a similar situation if you ever decide to bring him back on the team.
You get Dunban back after like 4 hours of Xenoblade, and he's got comparable levels to Shulk, Reyn, and Shadla.
That's not the problem. The NPCs here are the approximate recommended level for their introduction missions when you get them too. But Dunban was always in your party after that point (the prelude doesn't really count), and received XP bleed even if he wasn't one of your active three. If you use Irina for the first mission and then ignore her until Chapter 10, she'll still be at whatever level you left her at, probably something under 20, while the rest of your group is 40+. Apparently whatever she does while she's not with you just doesn't earn her experience, which means that what she actually must be doing for that time is nothing. Just standing there at the BLADE concourse (or one of her five H2H locations). Waiting. For you. When she's the leader of her own team.
No, I mean that there's a point early on in XC where you have Dunban, during the attack on Colony 9. After he drops the Monado, he even has a few of his personal Arts, and you can set up his skill tree and everything.
Then he leaves, you do two dungeons without him, and he returns outside Colony 6, with appropriate level gain to keep up with you, and more Arts unlocked.
No reason, then, why they couldn't have kept track of XP for absent party members in XCX; they did it once before.
A note, just in case anyone is worried: the BP you accrue are distributed to every possible member of your party, unlike normal experience points. So if you just ran Elma, Lin, and The Same Random Dipshit Every Time, you could swap your entire party out and be able to rank their Arts and Skills up immediately.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
A note, just in case anyone is worried: the BP you accrue are distributed to every possible member of your party, unlike normal experience points. So if you just ran Elma, Lin, and The Same Random Dipshit Every Time, you could swap your entire party out and be able to rank their Arts and Skills up immediately.
For the four or five arts and zero skills they will have when you recruit them, yes.
No, I mean that there's a point early on in XC where you have Dunban, during the attack on Colony 9. After he drops the Monado, he even has a few of his personal Arts, and you can set up his skill tree and everything.
Then he leaves, you do two dungeons without him, and he returns outside Colony 6, with appropriate level gain to keep up with you, and more Arts unlocked.
No reason, then, why they couldn't have kept track of XP for absent party members in XCX; they did it once before.
Oh, right. It's been a while since I played XC so I thought it was just the prelude where you controlled him before he actually joins up.
Should I be hoarding BP as a precious resource, or is it okay to level arts/skills and experiment
The BP cost for leveling arts is on a rough scale of like 4/12/50/100 or something, and maybe half that for skills. Every art you ever intend to use for even a short time can be leveled to 3 pretty much immediately. You should maybe be more selective about hitting level 4 and definitely be more selective about hitting level 5, so you have a nice buffer of points available once you start checking out other class lines later in the game. But you're unlikely to run into desperate shortages leveling a lot of stuff to 3-4 and keeping a couple hundred points in the tank. I was definitely more conservative than I needed to be, leaving strong arts at 3 for way too long.
For NPCs, go ahead and spend everything. They can't class-change, so they'll end up with way more BP than they know what to do with.
Should I be hoarding BP as a precious resource, or is it okay to level arts/skills and experiment
Be somewhat careful especially if you aren't planning on doing post game.
I had a semi-decent idea of what I wanted to do and only spent points on the abilities I was planning on using.
When I got to end game I wanted to change a few things but I couldn't because I no longer had enough BP to level those new abilities into usefulness.
Some good advice is to level up arts/skills to level 2-3 while you're "testing" them out. Levels 2 and 3 are way cheaper than levels 4 and 5, so you get a lot more bang for your buck. Only level up to 5 when you're sure it's a keeper.
There are some exceptions, of course. Ghost Sniper is kind of worthless until you hit level 5, but once you get there it becomes one of the best TP-generating moves in the game IMO.
3DS code: 3007-8077-4055
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Do the locations of NPCs (both the ones you can talk to and the ones you eavesdrop on) change only based on the general time of day, or are there more definite hourly schedules for them? If the former, is there any distinction between "early morning" and "morning", and "night" and "late night"? Either way I'm sure my desire to repeatedly check everything for changes after every important mission is going to really slow my progress in this game.
Do the locations of NPCs (both the ones you can talk to and the ones you eavesdrop on) change only based on the general time of day, or are there more definite hourly schedules for them? If the former, is there any distinction between "early morning" and "morning", and "night" and "late night"? Either way I'm sure my desire to repeatedly check everything for changes after every important mission is going to really slow my progress in this game.
They only change from day to night. Day consists of early morning, morning, afternoon, and evening. Night consists of night and late night.
Posts
As far as I know, potential:
- Modifies attack power of TP arts.
- Increases health recovery from soul voice heals.
- Increases chance that you'll go into cockpit mode with skells.
I think that's all it does? I don't think it affects abilities like Brainjack and Energy Source because they do no damage.
That's correct. Potential is like this game's version of a "Magic" stat, so it only affects arts that use TP (this game's versions of MP).
I do indeed. Been using both to take the edge off, but I'll see how it goes.
I find that ally-targeting Arts just throw me off. I'm used to "press A, kick ass" and the extra inputs get in the way.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
This isn't a problem for me, since I played a support-heavy Sharla build through pretty much the entirety of XC1.
Repair maxes out as 9% of target's HP.
I'm not sure how Smooth Recovery works. There's some sort of multiplier going on in there. I think it's tied to your character's level, maybe?
It may be. I'm just going off the monster spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g0YR4M8RAHiRhCbAvV4tjXXHLEhRMrARzZMYAUGmyZ4/pub#
I think this is based on values in the Japanese version of the game, though. I've noticed that a few stats seem to be slightly different in-game.
5. Skills, too.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
Whether it's safe for Rook probably depends on how many you can get ever.
On the PC, try to save them until you have a good idea what build you want to finalize on. It's not a hugely big deal though. If you get stuck on a boss fight, feel free to blow them all. You'll make them back eventually, it'll just take a while.
*Which WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE, Monolith...
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
And it's not like they haven't done it before.
You get Dunban back after like 4 hours of Xenoblade, and he's got comparable levels to Shulk, Reyn, and Shadla.
That's not the problem. The NPCs here are the approximate recommended level for their introduction missions when you get them too. But Dunban was always in your party after that point (the prelude doesn't really count), and received XP bleed even if he wasn't one of your active three. If you use Irina for the first mission and then ignore her until Chapter 10, she'll still be at whatever level you left her at, probably something under 20, while the rest of your group is 40+. Apparently whatever she does while she's not with you just doesn't earn her experience, which means that what she actually must be doing for that time is nothing. Just standing there at the BLADE concourse (or one of her five H2H locations). Waiting. For you. When she's the leader of her own team.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
Then he leaves, you do two dungeons without him, and he returns outside Colony 6, with appropriate level gain to keep up with you, and more Arts unlocked.
No reason, then, why they couldn't have kept track of XP for absent party members in XCX; they did it once before.
For the four or five arts and zero skills they will have when you recruit them, yes.
Oh, right. It's been a while since I played XC so I thought it was just the prelude where you controlled him before he actually joins up.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
Smooth Recovery is just a multiplier of your Potential stat, hence it scales waaaay better
Be somewhat careful especially if you aren't planning on doing post game.
I had a semi-decent idea of what I wanted to do and only spent points on the abilities I was planning on using.
When I got to end game I wanted to change a few things but I couldn't because I no longer had enough BP to level those new abilities into usefulness.
For NPCs, go ahead and spend everything. They can't class-change, so they'll end up with way more BP than they know what to do with.
Some good advice is to level up arts/skills to level 2-3 while you're "testing" them out. Levels 2 and 3 are way cheaper than levels 4 and 5, so you get a lot more bang for your buck. Only level up to 5 when you're sure it's a keeper.
There are some exceptions, of course. Ghost Sniper is kind of worthless until you hit level 5, but once you get there it becomes one of the best TP-generating moves in the game IMO.
I would like to know this since they all say "level 1" but I don't see a way to level them.
Just go the skills menu, highlight a skill (doesn't matter if it's equipped or not) and press X.
They game actually tells you this, at the bottom right corner of the screen.
Shadowrunner'd
Yep. It's even cheaper than arts and arguably more powerful. Why do you think we swear by Fast Forward Supreme Sword? Not worth it for level 1.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Near the bottom of the settings page from memory
They only change from day to night. Day consists of early morning, morning, afternoon, and evening. Night consists of night and late night.