Finally got Xenoblade

If you are talking about the lizard that is inside a fortress guarded by dozens of other lizards, then I only came back to kill him much later into the game.

He is part of a sidequest, isn't he?

I tried luring the lizards out of the fortress one by one once, but when I got to the big lizard guy he just beat me down easily.

@Pierst179: I never beat him. I think that was a timed quest. I tried a bunch of times and finally gave up. When I remembered to go back the quest was gone

He is part of the main storyline.. I am at a place in satorl marsh where I need to find 4 offerings before I am permitted to enter Makna forest.. this guy is guarding one of the offerings

@voljin1987: Do a few quests.

this is weird. Outside of a few instances, I don't remember the game killing me too much.

@voljin1987: what level are you at and what level is the enemy at? I tried to be within 2 levels of most enemies when possible. It didn't always workout that way, but leveling up makes a huge difference.

I am at lvl 29 and he is lvl 26.. his normal attacks arent much of a problem.. he has a three hit combo which does like 2600 dmg to one person.. add to this he has a break resist.. so i need to do that special party attack to topple him.. my party gauge never fills up fully coz i am reviving reyn whenever it fills up

@voljin1987: for tough fights I rarely used chain attacks. I saved my talent gauge for Shulks visions and reviving. Doesn't Shulk have visions before that move? If he does, you can have Sharla use get arte on Reyn that makes him immune to physical attacks. Have you tried controlling Reyn? He has some shield arte that lessens damage too, you could save that for the one attack.

When I got stuck, gamefaqs and YouTube were helpful. There is a vid on YouTube of someone winning this battle, I checked.

Good luck!

@voljin1987: Are you using the Monado Shield? It nullifies damage from enemy Artes as long as you're above their level.

Don't be afraid to use skills in Xenoblade... Unlike other JRPGs, conserving them for when you really need them isn't required.

Ah, ok. So maybe we are talking about different lizards, or perhaps my memory is just foggy and I do need to replay Xenoblade when I get some vacation.

@turtlethetaffer: Doesn't the Monado shield only block enemy talent artes or is it all physical attacks? I thought it was only talent (they come up in white letters on top of the screen)

Use Monado speed or shield on whoever is targeted by it, one of them works, forgot which, it's an easy fight you just have to tinker.

@roboccs: Yeah is that combo not a Talent Arte? If not then damn. You are using Sharla right?

yea i tried with sharla and with dumb-ban too.. doesnt work.. read a guide online which said he is a rare game or something.. so very difficult to kill.. the guide said to just sneak past him and get the offering.. damn it.. who put a MGS in my Xenoblade?

@ttualumni13 speed works for all of 8 glorious seconds before he pommels me again :D and the shield is completely useless.. its a physical attack..

Extract from the guide.

The Igna lizard people aren't too tough; most in this area are level 24. However, the one Igna that's guarding the Radiant -- the Igna called Aggressive Cornelius -- is level 28, and can be one tough customer if you're underleveled. You can try to sneak up behind him, quickly grab the Radiant, and run away. Or, you can grab his attention, run away while he pursues you, and then run back and get the Radiant after you drop aggro. You *should* be able to just sneak up and get it while Cornelius is looking the other way. You'll receive the third Radiant -- the Blue Radiant -- when you've successfully grabbed it.

Yeah, I thought Dunban sucked at first too. But by the end, he became my main tank. Load him up with agility gems and light armor that doesn't bring his agility down and enemies have a hard time hitting him. It's awesome!

So I finally broke down and started a new playthrough of Xenoblade. I had 20 or so minutes to spare so I watched the prologues and fought the first little fight.

This game is so epic. I know I have other games to play but I missed playing this game too much. So I'll still play Arc Rise Fantasia but I will be sprinkling in some Xenoblade as well. Instead of new game + I started from scratch. I'll probably fiddle with more side quests than last playthrough and heart to hearts.

The music in the Prologues is incredible too.

@roboccs: That's how I keep getting sucked back in, doing a new game is really cool for takin it slow and exploring, I found so many more secret areas and cool quests once I got past the generic fetch/kill quests. Plus fighting super bosses is epic haha

Oh man, where is my vacation when I need them so much? =/

finally got past that loser lizard.. i snuck past him and stole the offering.. i must say each new area in the game becomes the best area so far into the game.. reached makna forest and that waterfall.. just wow.. stopped everything and dived down into the water to take a closer look

Now that you say that, I think that's what I did, too. I remember that place, going in for the first time and being like "oh no way..." when I saw all the guys in there. Then one time they just didn't see me.

@voljin1987: ALL RIGHT!! I was hoping it wasn't going to ruin your experience!

I played for like 3 hours last night!! Didn't even get to the first mechon invasion because I was fighting monsters and side questing a bit. Also, for my first playthrough I didn't even know about the collectipedia! It was fun.

Encountered a crappy design flaw/glitch in the game.. I tend to be generally be generous with my monado abilities.. in the makna forest, me and some douchbag called alvin teamed up to fight against 3 telethia.. they have this ability which makes all my attacks fail until i use the monado to purge them..

so here i am my mondo is on cooldown, having just used speed on myself and with one telethia left, he decides to use that skill to avoid all my attack.. so now none of my attacks connects and i cant use monado to purge coz u know auto-attacks which hit reset the cooldown.. so i run around for 15 mins spamming heal on myself hoping that the skill wears off.. guess not, coz if i dont purge it, it aint gonna wear off.. so i let myself get killed and played again.. using the monado only for purge... ugh.. i blame alvin.. crappy wannabe anime stereotype.. if reyn and sharla were on my side this wouldnt have happened.

@voljin1987: yeah that battle stinks. But even though you miss MOST of the auto attacks, I believe you still connect on some, they are just few and far between. So if that happens, keep attacking, some will connect until your talent gauge is filled again and you can purge.

There are a lot of little quirks to the game and kind of cheap boss battles sometimes... Yet it was still not enough to ruin the game.

@voljin1987: Oh yeah, forgot to say, you're getting to some awesome parts of the game soon. Great music parts too!

melia is cute <3

will tackle all her heart to hearts

@voljin1987: she is an excellent character. Her story gets better. She's fun to use down the road too

Just reached Frontier Village and met Riki (heropon lol)

So I am searching for a way to go up to Eryth Sea.. So tell where is this Eryth Sea?? I look up from the top of Frontier Village and I see some simmery stuff which *could pass for water.. Dont tell me that is Eryth Sea.

I don't remember exactly how to get there. All I remember is that it is the most absurdly gigantically enormous location I have ever seen in a videogame.

I remember the area being confusing at first but then figuring it out.

I cleaned up all the leaves in my side yard today.., took a few hours but it flew by because I was listening to the Xenoblade soundtrack while working. Can't get one of the iterations of the colony 6 theme out of my head right now.

Damn, I started Last Story a while back before taking a break, but now started it back up (I'm about 2/5 finished) while also starting up Xenogears (yes, PSX Xenogears). I'm hoping playing both simultaneously isn't too much of a hindrance as my goal is beat Xenogears ASAP so I can start Xenoblade (yeah I know they aren't directly related, but I still wanted to play Xenogears first).

I remember I was trying to look for all the landmarks without a guide, but then I got tired of swimming for about two hours and just picked up a guide to look them up.

Then I found out some of the landmarks were way across the sea, so I had to swim for a couple of hours more.

All I'm going to say is if you didn't hate lizards before this area....

How far are you now, TC?

The Last Story is pretty short, so you'll finish that well before Xenogears.... if you don't throw the disc out the window first. It's one of the most frustrating games I've ever played, in certain parts.

It's been years since I played Xenogears, but I remember being really impressed by it. And knowing the backstory of Xenogears will give you a good backdrop for the story of Xenoblade. They're related thematically if nothing else, though that doesn't really become clear until the very end.

I started Gears but stopped. My biggest beef was the ridiculous random encounter rate. I've been thinking about giving it another go but I'd have to start over because I forgot the story.

Yes, Xenoblade is extremely similar to FFXII, but better in most categories. It's definitely in my top 5. It struck such a good balance between exploration and JRPG-style linearity.

I think that Xenoblade has the best soundtrack since FFX.

This song is absolutely gorgeous.

@GreySeal9: I think my favorite is prologue B. It's really inspiring and is used perfectly within the game. The title theme is amazing too.

Yeah, I agree - Last Story has made me want to break the disc at times. I enjoyed it a lot until some more recent boss fights (I'm in that Spirit Plane place trying to get the Fortress Ship to activate). It just seems like such a poorly difficulty curved game. and the cap of lvl'ing up after a battle doesn't help.

And yeah, good to hear about the thematic relation between Xenogears and Xenoblade. Glad I planned it out that way!

was it too often or too sparse?

And funny you mention the story. I've actually taken a break from Xenogears so I can focus on Last Story and beat it ASAP (my gaming play time ranges from like 3~10 hrs/week, so splitting time seems counterproductive). I was only about 5 hours in to Xenogears, but yeah, I wrote down where I left off on the story, all aspects of it - the surface story of the war, the sub-story of the theological aspect, hints about characters, etc. That way I won't forget it lol.

@GreySeal9 yep lovely music.. my fav so far is satorl marsh night theme

@saint311: I found the random encounters to be too often but I think that was the case for a lot of JRPGs of the time. The first one I can remember that seemed to start to cut the encounter rate down was Final Fantasy 8.

@roboccs: really? i seem to recall ff9 having a higher encounter rate than 8

@voljin1987: Yeah I think you're right. And actually the more I think about it, what I played of FFX seemed to have a high rate too...

@voljin1987: Hey voljin1987, you still playing Xenoblade? I restarted it a month or so ago because I couldn't stay away. Tried to change it up a bit this time by using Dunban earlier and doing more side quests. I must say, the side quests for the most part are kind of weak but there are a few good ones, particularly in Sartol Marsh which is where I am right now. I had a great time on the Kidnapping one (I forgot the Nopon's name that you save). But that was super fun and there's great loot in there.

Hopefully you're still playing it. I took a long break from it in the middle and considered selling it because it was fetching huge $$$. So glad I gave it another go!

how much is it these days? still 90 bucs?

@starwarsjunky: $70 pre owned at GameStop. Expensive.

I initially jumped back into it to finish it so I could sell it on eBay for $100 or something but there's no way I'd sell it, I like it too much.

ugh. i refuse to buy it. buying it would just support the scam.

sadly havent played too much over the last few weeks.. will start playing again coming holidays.. am on my way to the eryth sea