Good guide. You make it seem like you need to sequentially craft the gems in order, but at least up to rank 6 you don't (Skipped from rank 2 to 6). I have no idea if this applies to latter gems, if it does it means one can just ignore crafting the rank 8 and 9 gem and just focus on the rank 10 to save a lot of time. If you try to craft a gem you already have it tells you already have it, but if you have a stronger gem and want to craft a lower levelled one for some reason it tells you that you already have a more powerful gem.
To be somewhat fair, a lot of the low-level materials used to level them up are probably of not much value much later on in the game anyway. I have no idea how ridiculous the grind gets though - I'm only level 30-ish in my playthrough.
@@arjunaadjinna to be fair, I'm not gonna be skipping them. They're permo locked if you skip one, and while that's functionally fine... it says Owned: 0 if you didn't craft it, and that's gonna trigger my OCD so...
ikr, gem crafting in xc1 put me off from ever playing the game myself, and had me settle for watching a playthrough, at least in xc2 the gem crafting equivalent was not nearly as needed to put much time into for casual play
As everyone has mentioned so far, the fact that you only have to craft it once is such a blessing. Grateful that this grinding mechanic isn’t sooooo much worse than it could’ve been
The gem crafting in XB1 was better for that game, since it had more limited customization options. Having so many different types of gems (even if you had to have multiple, but honestly wasn't that big of a deal in that game) it added much more depth to that game than it would have had if it used what XB3 has. However, I am glad they decided to simplify it for XB3, since the game already has a ridiculous number of other systems and customization, it didn't need more. It just adds a little bit of extra customization without bogging the game down too much. Especially with all the class switching, since you have to regularly reexamine what you have equipped.
I find the shorten auto attacks is actually very good when on keves classes. A lot of them have stupid long cooldowns, so you spend a large amount of your time just auto attacking. With that in mind, the faster auto attacks charge your master arts faster. So it results in a playstyle where you can spam low auto agnian arts while waiting for keves arts and by the time your keves are up, you can do a full round of fusion arts because you build your agnian arts quickly. All the while your auto attacks are actually useful when combined with certain skills and accessories resulting in everything being useful. You can legitimately use like 2-3 of the same agnian arts by the time a keves art comes up and still have another of that agnian art prepared for a fusion art. So while waiting for your keves, you used 3 agnian arts and then a fusion. Don't sleep on that gem, makes combat feel more fast paced.
Something worth noting about steady striker and lifesaving expertise, they are worded slightly differently. Lifesaving expertise increases the RATE of revival, which is different from reducing the TIME it takes (Vice versa for steady striker) For lifesaving expertise, 45% rate increase (level 10) translates to about a 31% decrease in time taken to revive. For steady striker, a 40% decrease in attack interval means a 67% increase in attacks per second. This also means that the latter has INCREASING RETURNS (opposite of diminishing returns) the higher level it is. Not that it changes too much, but it’s a different angle
The one thing I want to add to the farm section is that you can respawn the killed mobs by engaging another mob in the area and hold the - button to 'give up'. You will respawn at the last waypoint and the mobs will be respawned. No need for long load times while porting back and forth between regions to respawn them. Otherwise a great guide as always, thank you very much!
God this game feels like the perfect xenoblade game so far. You get a ton of variety from classes, and how you line up your arts for fusions. It feels like they took the blade system of 2 and went even deeper with it.
I don't get the feeling that they deepened the blade system, I feel like they streamlined it. There are so fewer menus to go through, everything you want is right there in the party screen.
I'm happy gems are back. And while the effects are less varied than in 1, I deeply appreciate the simpler method and being able to use them across everyone
Tbh 80% of the gems in XC1 were ways of blocking various debuffs, which all get made completely obsolete during endgame when you can get perfect Debuff Resist gems I'm glad the gems in XC3 don't have that issue where one completely invalidates the rest
@@technocitymkvI just think the flat increases some of xb3 gems are. A flat 35 to a stat doesn't feel like it makes a difference. It may, but seeing it on my screen feels like it could be swapped
You should put out a (very brief) guide telling people they don't need to master every class with every character. You don't ALWAYS need a character to be learning something new. .....why did I put my whole team into classes they have D affinity with? Why? It took so long to master them. They aren't even using any of those skills or artes in their current loadouts. Why?
Soothing Breath is actually pretty great. I believe it stacks if multiple characters have it and participate in a revival, as I've seen tanks being revived at full HP a few times. It's especially useful if you run a party with only one tank, since healing that tank up normally would take ages.
Dope guide ! I know I'm late but I have two things to add : 1 Manana's cooking is not the best item boost (35%) but li prison's cantine food (40%). Manana's cooking is always weaker than bought food, but it also has multiple bonuses where bought food only offers one. 2 If you are farming a specific monster type and need to reset the area, you have two ways of resetting : moving to another region and back, or dying. Dying is by far the fastest option when you consider this little trick : Start a fight with any ennemy (just unsheathe, you don't even need to start attacking), hold down the minus button, and give up the fight. That will effectively "kill" you and reset the whole area, respawning all ennemies and materials.
Future Redeemed does a much better job telling you where you can farm the items and which monsters to kill. Every future Xeno game from now on should have it.
@@togz813 I mean, we've got the colony affinity one, so having movement gems you put on only one character when you can switch so easily isn't too great. That being said, I'm kind of surprised that there's gems to lower auto attack intervals, which help Agnus arts, but none to lower Keves art cooldowns
@@nettlesomenpc889I feel they shoulda done some benefit to canceling. Keves doesn't get any real benefit from canceling, other than master arts and damage
I had a heart attack when I found out about gems. Doing the grind in XC1 was painful, aux cores weren't as bad but I'm glad they streamlined the whole process this time
After I finished Chapter 2, I thought myself: "I wonder if Enel makes Guides for this Game now, because I dont know which gem I should use for the characters" and now I see that you make them xD
I just completed the game... And oh my god i have never cried so hard. From happiness, to nostalgia, to realisation, to saddness. This game really does have it all...
I almost 100% XC3, but not gems and Heroes lvl. (I wish we could put a quest for the materials and we could know where to find them on the map, having to google for every single material is a pain, so I just skipped that).
My favorite thing (and im sure ive probably screwed myself in some way by spending some of them) is how you can bypass the item check with nopon coins. I don't mind grinding/searching for monster drops every now and then when there's a lull in the story, but I always hated grinding gem parts/aux core materials in the other 2 games when I just want to play the freaking game. Plus right now I have to be real careful looking up anything since there's already spoilers so I'm pretty much in the dark on certain item drops/locations and stuff. I still think that as of now i prefer xenoblade 2 across the board gameplay/character/storywise, but im also just starting chapter 4 so im hoping it all comes together. The only major thing i hate about this game is how restrictive it is with forcing you to go certain ways/do certain obvious tutorials instead of letting me explore and play, even going as far as disabling me from skip traveling for other stuff. The other 2 did it on occasion so it wasn't too awful, but it feels like I'm hitting invisible walls WAY too frequently in this game. I do think I like 3 over 1 though, combat feels a lot more advanced and fun. I'm just hoping I'll be able to cancel arts into arts soon since that was my favorite part of 2.
Streamlined and effective. Also X required ludicrous amounts of materials because Augments went to level 20 not just level 10. Scale the materials required here to just get to 10 and raise that to 20 and I wonder how high it'd be lol. Ah well. Still anxiously waiting to dedicate the next month's of my life to this game lol
Something else that might be useful for burst farming(once you beat the game) is leveling yourself down, as this’ll let the enemies last longer so you can get more combos on them
I really prefer how the original game handled Gems a lot more. It was one of the most interesting parts of customising my characters but I do appreciate how you only need to craft each gem once. That's a great feature for this version of the system.
Not watching any of these since I only was able to get the game today and don't wanna look at anything till I've seen a good amount for myself, but have been liking all of them because they're always super useful resources for the community!
I manged to find an item list on a site called unbuffed. No idea how complete or accurate it is, but it's had everything I've looked for so far in the first couple of regions.
"Gem Effects and the Strongest Gems" I feel like you only got halfway through that. You talked about each gem's effects, but my ADHD mind doesn't remember much on you saying which were actually the best gems.
@@Orcawsom yeah he does! He mentions that analyze weakness is one of the two strongest then at the end when he gets to empowered combo he mentions that it is one of the two best gems on the chart! aka two best gems are Analyze weakness and empowered combo
Sheesh what is with YT recently. It seems to be working fine for me and a lot of others but gotten a few comments like this. Not sure what the issue is.
For reference on critical damage, at least from my limited testing (only at chapter 4 so far, with most of the possible classes I believe unlocked), using flash fencer's side attack skill, you could pretty easily figure out the base critical damage bonus, since you can get a very consistent crit rate and such. I BELIEVE that the base multiplier is now 50%, but I could very well be wrong because fights can be a bit of a sensory overload.
@@strikerdx2 Guardian Commander too. I don't understand why that one attacks so slow in the first place. He takes a swipe and then just stands there staring off into space for like two seconds before swinging again
For Soothing Breath, it may have just been the classes I've used but so far I've noticed that it seems to be reviving with the percentage of max HP. The wording is a bit weird but I've slapped it on all my healers so far and they've consistently been reviving with around 30-40% HP so far (I have like level 4 gem for reference).
Thanks for the guide! An observation: I've used Soothing Breath early game and it seems to actually increase the revival HP by additive percentage points rather than a multiplicative percent. I have on a 22% effect and characters are reviving with about 40% of their health rather than the typical critical HP. Your point about reviving with no aggro though is well-taken. Could still be useful if a tank is carrying a Nopon Doll!
Might actually be more useful than I thought then. If you're really getting destroyed with healers constantly reviving this might actually be pretty good as a defensive option
@@EnelXC i feel that revive having no apparent resource cost does put it as a more reliable defensive tool rather than an outright failstate, especially on the tough-as-nails hard mode
A fun fact that I learned is that if you set up a character to have any two subsequent action during a Burst/ Smash combo, they will both activate. However your main art has to be first in that line. I.E. Noah uses a break art and you as Taion have a topple art you can fuse with a daze art, if the fusion is use the enemy will be in the daze state. This however only work if the topple is apart of the main class arts so Seraph’s Crimson Lance with Medic Gunner’s Myopic Screen.
Empowered Art canceling is only usable by the Player character right? I was under the assumption that AI teammates don't actually Art cancel, and therefore couldn't make use of that gem.
@@EnelXC yep, you had some of us double checking after we saw this. myself and some other testers have been trying to work out numbers for the game since it came out, and we've been comparing data with some discords. A common point brought up was that the AI controlled units never seemed to receive Art canceling bonuses, we thought it might have been a bug. But that led to me and my friends, who are basically amateur testers coming back and saying that the AI simply never canceled arts, or at least never activated the effect for it.
Quick question: How good is the AI at cancelling? I've only been putting the cancel gem on my preferred Player controlled character because I know I can cancel reliably. Your description sounds like it's worth putting it on AI as well?
That comment about KOS-MOS hit hard, but in a different way. I've played over 500 hours of Xenoblade 2 and the only blade I've never gotten is actually Cressidus.
Video with all material locations here for anyone that needs it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b2JIoHxd5ME.html&ab_channel=QuickGuides
One big problem that i have with this game that is in the others. I just wish they gave us a compendium of known monsters and the known drops we have gotten from them(and area items) We have Riku and Manana the perfect characters to keep this records on them. I know I could look in the internet but I wish the game had this.
My collector's edition copy still hasn't arrived and im just listening to all my friends having a blast playing this game like arrrrrghhhh But you can bet once it finally does get here I'll be checking out your guides! They're always top quality ^_^
Is Empowered Combo (damage boost when cancelling) worth running on the AI-controlled characters? It's amazing for player-controlled, but I'm not sure if the bots are cancelling enough (or at all) for it to be worth it.
there is no method, you just get them from UMs and certain treasure chests as of rn. I just haven't spent anymore because some accessory stuff costs 99 and idk what to do with them rn lol
This is literally the baseline for how all JRPGs should approach their "equipment" upgrade system. The limiting factor that makes you think about what to use where is not the availability of the gems themselves persay, but rather the slots your characters have to equip them. You can have all 20 Gems at level 10, but you still have to carefully consider which ones you but on which characters based on their stats, and class. Fantastic system.
There are accessories to start the fight with master arts ready. And I'm pretty sure taht high level enemies only drop very high tier materials. I spent ages farming Piranhax for a specific tier two item and only the mid tier level ones would drop the item. The early ones wouldn't and the endgame ones would only drop the most rare type of item. Basically it's a nightmare fo farm for material in this game :D Fun.
I agree. That's my biggest complaint with this game. It would be bad enough to farm a material, but that material comes in multiple different rarities and you need a specific rarity to craft specific gems, which is just stupid.
I don't think you mentioned this so imma ask it here, how does the arts cancel buff work with AI? Do the AI cancel their arts so all their arts get the arts cancel buff or no. I we dunno for sure yet, how'd it work for 2?
All of the mechanics in this game feel so polished, you can really tell they put a lot of work into improving old systems and making them feel new! I'm pumped as hell to finally have a few days off work to really sink my teeth into all of it, I keep realizing how little I've done compared to how massive the game must be.
What was the second Best gem in the game? I know the obvious choice is empowered combo but what was the other contender for best in the game? Sorry my reading comprehension bad, too many video games.
This game really need a way to locate specific mat materials on the map. Stuck on gem level 3 to 5myself from the same mob across the three main gems I use and im near the end of the game.
Keves arts really got the short end of it with cooldowns. Even accounting for their reliability in situations with evasive, blocking, and reaction-inflicting enemies, it just doesn't make up for all the ways you can make Agnus arts charge faster, and their effective cooldown times end up way longer on average.
One thing I don't think you went over was so we HAVE to craft from 1 to 10 or can we jump straight to 10? I really don't want the Monster Hunter Generations Deviant system again... ESPECIALLY if I have to do it for 6 party members...
You do not have to craft all of them, you can skip straight to 10 if you have the materials (I was unaware of this at the time of making this video and did it the terrible way of getting them all lol)
My biggest question is this: Do your allies get the cancel timing? If so, then the gem that buffs damage when you cancel (and any arts that have that effect) would be amazing, period. If not, then that gem and similar arts would only be useful when you're controlling the character. And while you can swap control mid fight with no real penalty, you can't make the most of the gem that way because of your allies not cancelling while you're on another character. This effect is still good even in this case, of course, but not as good.
They do not cancel, unfortunately. It's not too difficult to swap between a select few, so there are still great uses for the gem, but it's nowhere near as powerful as it first appears.
So smash doesn't give more enemy drops now? Only burst? What's the benefit now of smash, aside from the launch prior effect making enemies take more dmg?
I have been testing for a bit and it seems the ai cancel rarely. I am still in chap 3 so it is possible that the ai could become more competent after more options are unlocked, but for the time being it seems the gem should only be used on the player controlled characters.
Yeah, this was something I worried about, too. Xeno 1 ai was terrible with position-based characters, too, so I've been controlling that class most of the time
@@EnelXC I have used auto battle to test it and as far as I can see in my tries the empower gem is doing hardly anything for the ai (i tested it with and without fusion first tactical command). There are limitation in the way a tested it since I currently don't have my last master art slot and can't cancel arts into arts without fusion so I hope more people will test it as well. The ai might have been changed a lot considering how much the gameplay has been modified from xb2.
@@EnelXC After further testing It seems that the ability of the ai to auto cancel heavily depends on the class (attack speed might be a factor). Anyway the best thing to do is to use auto battle to check how the ai plays a specific build and make a decision based on that.
What is the number one best gem to max out to X asap? I ask because I'm nearing 99 gold Nopon coins. Most of my gems are around level VI. Some are lower, some are as high as VIII, but since I haven't actively hunted for items, none of them were on purpose yet.
I was in the same boat yesterday and went with Analyze Weakness. The two gems Enel points out as being the best are Analyze Weakness and Empowered Combo. He doesn't state which one is his preference IIRC but Analyze Weakness works on AI characters and in Chain Attacks so I went with that.
@@brett3706 He does say that, but I feel like the buff gems are just as nutty as far as support goes. So I'm trying to decide between them and the crit one. I'll probably choose the crit one as well though.
So I found out if you’re using vaidi in the chain attacks, and you’re versing a metal character he gets a 50 point bonus. So if you get a Oroborus ending he gets refreshed and he has like 140+50+99 with the Point limit+ The points that heal normally generate after doing the attack. What I just said was an example but I got a insane number of 387 tp….. @enel
I think tanks using the aggro boosting item is better than the art cancelling for the sole fact that the AI doesnt cancel 100% of the time. Its almost a wasted slot on the AI.
I'm not sure how much technical knowledge is needed for this, but would you be able to make a video explaining how the party ai works? It's not that major of a thing but I very often find myself wondering how smart the ai is. Like, do tanks try to lose aggro when their health is low? Do they consider party composition when making decisions? Do they try to better take advantage of their equipment based on what they have? Does the ai straight up cheat and know the cooldown of the rest of the party's arts? Just a lot of small things like that.
I really thought you'd say revival gems suck since you don't want to have anyone die anyway and no one has to if you play well... But you didn't so I guess in this game preventing death is much harder than in the other three games?
you have 6 party members and enemies hit harder this time to account so death is much more possible I've found. Especially because reviving is an easier process too
So you know how you can use nopon coins to make gems if you don’t have materials I have been hording my coins and I want to know if they cap at 99 also I hope the challenge mode in the upcoming dlc waves gives coins for rewards
@@EnelXC I hope so. What I'm missing the most is the specials. They were very flashy and the elemental reactions gave that little sense of strategy that this one is lacking right now. I feel like the only meta is going to be controling agility tanks while the AI does literally all the damage until you chain attack and straight destroy the thing. In XBC2 you could go full specials, full arts, full chain attacks, full orb burst, full driver combos... and every strategy could be broken to some extend. However in XBC3 I can't feel that diversity. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that there are 7 characters on the field. At the end of the day you can barely manage/control 2 characters, while the rest do whatever they feel like. It's like I don't have full control on what's happening, and if I have, it's all because of the building I did previously. A similar situation would be FF12 when you elaborate a complex gambit system that let's de AI literally do all the background work (healing, buffing, attacking, combos...) while you just focus on surviving, making sure nobody does anything stupid, until the big damage moment comes (quickenings in FF12, chain attacks here mainly).
I also like XBC2's menu and ui color scheme. The lighter blue colors are much better than this ugly orange/red shit all over everything. Playable characters also looked better to me. Only 2 characters I really even like in this game are two of the hero characters and I don't think you even get to control them. And one is a tank and I hate playing the tanks :/
they won't cancel arts into other arts but they do occasionally cancel out of auto attacks. It's not nearly as efficient though and may be worth using something else.
Enel, do you reccomend maxing out the starting classes for everyone? I'm mostly there and wondering if I should push to finish. I just unlocked my first hero.
Question: Can I skip a Gem Level? Like if I cannot find a specific material for a gem,, can I just skip that level for the gem and just go to the next one? (Because I'm cannot get a Rare Wisp Sun Bead off of these Wisps to save my life.)
I have to disagree on Steady Striker (reduce cooldown of auto attacks). The reason being exactly what you said. Agnus arts have and advantage, you can exploit that advantage even more and do close to unlimited art spam that have a really short cooldown. I would recommend using Mio with and without that gem, i think you would notice a difference in how fast you can spam her low cooldown arts.
lmao looks like I succeeded in shielding myself from discussions and spoilers so well that I completely missed the early release announcement wtf? this is a treat, I'm going to go buy the game and come back here when I'm done/stuck
