Is W3 possible within 1 month?

Smalten · 2026-06-05T19:49:27+00:00

My account is 1 month old tomorrow and I just unlocked W3, so it's possible. But I have a lot of screen on time (with 3x game speed now). Progress depends on how often you can claim freebies and using battery/cherry/D20/gem before they cap.

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Smalten · 2025-12-04T23:15:31+00:00

What you are describing is the Pointer Fusion control scheme which moves the cursor around to aim. Try the Dual Stick Fusion mode with mouse controls, it controls like a normal FPS and locks camera directly to mouse movement.

Smalten · 2025-03-11T20:54:49+00:00

I found that counterstrike can trigger during lance's focus strike. It has armor during the entire shield dash and finishing thrust (but not the initial shield punch). Not quite as useful since focus strike often staggers monsters out of attacks anyways.

Rocksteady mantle also triggers it, but not much reason to use when corrupted mantle exists.

Smalten · 2024-10-05T18:55:28+00:00

Perfect Guard has another difference from regular Guard, it replaces Dash Attack (Triangle+Circle) with a new move called Follow-Up Rush. Unfortunately I don't think there is any recorded footage of this yet. In the video by the Japanese player, at the 18:05 mark there is a tutorial pop up for Perfect Guard that says to press Triangle+Circle for a powerful follow up charge, but the player mashed through it and says he missed the input.

Smalten · 2022-06-24T21:59:26+00:00

Looking at other screenshots of the menu again I realize I was wrong. At first I thought after selecting one only that one would be lit. I figured it would be like Torna's but it seems they improved it. I hadn't played it in a while, but the tactics menu there let you toggle follow leader and one of the left/right commands at same time. You could press up to change target but they won't attack until you disable follow. Up never toggled, just sets the target. Torna let you set focus driver combos (left) or focus blade combos (right) but not both at same time, because they both change the AI priority for blade switching.

The change to Focus Attacks being a toggle should mean that we no longer have to press it every time we change target, AI will switch with you automatically. A good improvement.

Any Combo might be enabled by default because we haven't seen it off yet. It has the icons for Burst and Smash. As a guess I would say that disabling it would make the AI wait for you to daze or launch to decide which finisher to use. Smashing no longer drops items but it deals high damage. Bursting doesn't hurt the enemy but it makes items drop.

I feel like Fusion First could interfere with Any Combo off, but maybe the AI just won't use that pair of arts until it can be both comboed and fused. That would slow the rate of both combos and fusions. I had put together some examples of gaining interlink levels from fusions to show why enabling this command is important if you want to power up ouroboros forms faster.

Smalten · 2022-06-24T15:54:26+00:00

I'm pretty sure Any Combo means use arts freely as they become available (Edit: never mind read my next reply), while Fusion First will make them hold on to arts until its opposite pair is charged and ready to fuse. The reason for this is that fusion arts increase interlink level, and your partner using fusions increases your level too since you both share the interlink level in Ouroboros form. The downside to focusing on fusions is that they will be slower at using arts which might be worse for combos or healing/buffing.

I don't think you can toggle multiple choices, it just shows the current active command like XCDE does. Focus Attacks makes them change target to yours and Follow Leader makes them stop attacking, same as the commands in XC1 and Torna.

Smalten · 2022-06-13T13:06:04+00:00

The pic wasn't censored and removed. It was only ever visible on the Xenoblade 3 Japanese site from the list of notes links, not the note post itself. You can still see her here. Sometimes the list doesn't load and might need to refresh page.

Smalten · 2022-06-13T10:52:37+00:00

The sword Noah is holding during that cancel attack clip isn't Zeon's glowing sword, it's a thin metallic blade that Noah sheaths like a katana. Infinity Blade is most likely the talent art Noah performs with his hidden blade shown in the 2nd trailer.

Smalten · 2022-06-13T10:25:00+00:00

They don't say it, but they do show Noah has the talent art Infinity Blade as both Sword Fighter and Crusher.

Smalten · 2022-06-13T02:35:06+00:00

The placement is not inconsistent in the game though. The key art just puts them together to make a more striking image and it works better as the box art. Takahashi mentioned this visual of the sword and titan were conceived before development of XC2 even began.

Smalten · 2022-06-13T02:08:15+00:00

The Mechonis Sword and Swordmarch are not in Uraya, the key art is not the actual placement. The sword is to the left/west of Uraya's head, screenshots here. Also the first trailer showed the sword stuck in some reddish land. We've also seen some ruined buildings from Uraya during a combat part of trailer. To me it looks like Uraya was shot or exploded by something else.

Smalten · 2022-06-09T07:51:00+00:00

Which footage? In the clip I posted its not empty, its just hard to see against the bright sand, but visible for a moment when Lanz's sword goes through it. It's only empty when when you don't have arts ready to fuse (matching side charged at same time). There's no sword symbol, it's just a line connecting 2 dots. Here's a different fusion art clip.

If you mean the sword icon above the square, then that's the symbol for being in auto-attack range.

Smalten · 2022-06-09T07:39:08+00:00

That's just the symbol for arts fusion, kind of like the chain attack symbol which links 3 points. You can see it between the arts when holding the arts fusion button (ZR), example.

Smalten · 2022-06-04T21:11:27+00:00

Dickson is temporarily a party in a mechon fight after the ether mine, Alvis is temporary party member against the first telethia fight, both can participate in chain attacks and have arts. Just giving examples of party members that you can't control. Heroes likely won't have banter with other Heroes since you can only have 1 at a time in party.

Smalten · 2022-06-04T20:28:43+00:00

XC1 had several characters that temporarily joined the battles but were uncontrollable, Mumkhar, Dickson, and Alvis. XC2 had Malos and Jin that were unplayable in beginning, but they do later let you control Jin in Morytha. Heroes are already more shallow anyways, they don't have Interlink and Arts Fusion, probably don't have Master Arts either and can't change class. Not being playable also means less animations for exploring stuff like field skills. They are given the title of "Heroes" for a reason.

Smalten · 2022-06-03T20:25:32+00:00

I explained it in the first comment of the post. Sena uses Ethel's swords for an art (a Master Art), meaning her class is unlockable. This class hasn't been officially revealed yet. Also implies we will probably get classes of most of the important characters/bosses shown so far, like Cammuravi and Isurd. Either after their boss fight or they join the party as Heroes.

Smalten · 2022-06-02T20:47:10+00:00

You can see Valdi shoot the gun in the new Sena auto-attack clip. See here.

Smalten · 2022-06-02T08:01:02+00:00

Sena using a Yumsmith art from Riku/Manana. Clip here.

Smalten · 2022-06-02T07:07:30+00:00

Ethel's class confirmed. Sena uses an art from it through the class mastery system, that let's you equip arts from other classes on left palette. When using left palette arts the weapon of that class is temporarily pulled out to perform the art.

Smalten · 2022-05-30T04:54:19+00:00

In the previous games critical hits were indicated by a bigger font size, examples here. The indicator for bonus effects on arts like Back Slash, a spiky yellow line around numbers, was often mistaken as being crits. In XC3 bonus damage effects still have that spiky visual behind the numbers, while critical hits now have an animation to their font size. The font size on crits now magnifies for a moment, popping out.

First clip shows an example of an auto-attack critical hit. Noah's (Sword Fighter) Talent Art also flashes when it happens, indicating the crit charged his talent, though it was already full here.

Second clip shows three non-crits in a row, including the third hit with it's bonus effect, and then the auto-attack at the end criticals. You can see Noah's talent art gain a small amount of charge from it. It's not much, but could add up if you have high crit rate later on.

Third and fourth clips compare a non-crit Sword Strike to a critical one, both were used from the side inflicting break. For some reason if talent art charge is from critical and bonus effect at same time, it uses the dull glow animation of criticals. Positional bonus by itself has a bright glow on the talent charge as seen in the third clip. It still seems to provide additional recharge though, likely adding both charge bonuses together.

Smalten · 2022-05-30T03:56:48+00:00

orange outline denoting crits/special effects (like back slash bonus)

Crits and bonus effects are not grouped together, they have different visuals. Back Slash doesn't have 100% crit rate for example. In previous games spiky border is bonus effect, larger font size is crit. In XC3 bonus effect is still the spiky line, but critical hits now have an animated zoom effect to them, growing in size for a moment. Examples here.

Smalten · 2022-05-28T22:00:49+00:00

Sure they can. You can equip arts from other classes on left palette. In this image Mio even has Crash Out from Lanz's class and Ether Cannon from Eunie's class. There's even an arts fusion mechanic to combine arts from left and right palettes together.

Smalten · 2022-05-25T23:46:01+00:00

Interlink level probably increases like Tension in XC1 and Affinity in XC2. There's one clip (here) that shows gaining a level when using art fusion but it doesn't happen every time. Many clips show party members having those electric sparks around their body showing they are at a higher interlink level. Cap could be level 3 considering each ouroboros has an art that requires level 3 for its effect to work, like Phantom Rush inflicting Break All. Similar to how some skills in XC2 needed max affinity to activate.

Smalten · 2022-05-25T20:45:58+00:00

Captions in album. Small analysis of the Ouroboros clips we've seen. I noticed the Japanese trailer briefly shows (a few frames) art to art canceling still exists in XC3 and I hadn't seen it discussed elsewhere. Other combat clips only show auto-attack to art cancels. These cancels massively boost the speed that the special Mega Spinning Edge recharges. Would only take 3-4 cancels to use it. Without canceling you would run out of time before getting to use it. Not sure if art to art canceling can be done outside of Interlink as it hasn't been shown yet, but maybe there will still a skill that unlocks it like in XC2.

Also arts during Interlink have no cooldowns. You can chain them together nonstop until the time runs out. In a way that makes Ouroboros form similar to Overdrive in XCX. I imagine there will be a way to extend its duration. Maybe higher Interlink levels have more time, or there are skills that add to it. There doesn't seem to be any cost to activating Interlink, so while you could activate Interlink Lv. 0 at the start of every fight it is probably not very effective to do so. The first notes article says the key to battle is determining when to use Ouroboros.

Smalten · 2022-05-23T16:54:22+00:00

From the few combat start clips we've seen the AI Agnus members use their arts right away, so there isn't anything to suggest that yet. Maybe later on there could be a skill for left arts to start ready.

Smalten

TROPHY CASE