Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition has an overwhelming amount of quests to do over the course of the game. But of those numerous quests, the kind that most players are going to be most interested in would have to be affinity missions.
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These missions usually offer valuable rewards, such as new arts and new party members, and generally have more to them than most regular quests. Unfortunately, most of these quests are locked behind affinity requirements with a specific party member, which can be difficult to build up at short notice. This guide will detail the different ways to build up affinity quickly and how to go about them.
Keep A Rotating Party
The easiest way to ensure that you meet any given affinity requirement for any given character over the course of the game is to try to rotate party members in and out of your active party until their affinity is maxed out, starting as early as possible during your journey on Mira.
Thankfully, unlike the Wii U original, the definitive edition no longer requires you to have Elma and Lin present for every single story mission, aside from a few exceptions. This means that you can bring in whichever party members you’d like to help you tackle the main story, which can help build up a lot of affinity over time.
It’s definitely best to try to max out Elma and Lin’s affinity first, since they’re the most important characters in the main story, but once you’ve reached five hearts of affinity with one or both of them, feel free to swap them out for the next party member you want to build affinity with.
Grinding Out Basic Missions
One key observation to note about building affinity in this game is that you earn affinity with your party members every time you complete a quest, with very few exceptions.
By going to the B.L.A.D.E. concourse in the Administrative District of New Los Angeles, you can accept up to 20 basic missions at a time. These can range anywhere from defeating a certain tyrant, collecting a certain amount of any material, delivering Miranium, and much more.
Given that these are called basic missions, these don’t require a lot of effort to complete, so we recommend taking whichever party members you want to build affinity with, accepting as many basic missions as possible, and then spending a little while just knocking them out while slowly but surely building affinity with your party members.
The only exception to basic quests giving party member affinity upon completion is basic quests that lead into normal quests. If a basic quest takes you to an NPC who then gives you a normal quest, the basic quest will autocomplete itself but does not give any affinity. However, the normal quest will give affinity upon completion, so feel free to tackle those as well.
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Heart to Hearts
Once you reach a certain level of affinity with a party member, you can unlock support conversations with them across New Los Angeles, called Heart to Hearts. These are short conversations where the party member in question either has a problem or is interested in something, leading to a few dialogue options for you to interact with them.
Not only does choosing the correct option in these conversations give a large amount of affinity with the party member you’re talking to, but it also gives a large amount of affinity to other members in your active party who like your answers as well. While this applies to any dialogue option in any quest, Heart to Hearts offer a significant amount of affinity for anyone there during the conversation.
Since the party member at the center of a given Heart to Heart cannot be in the party during that conversation, we recommend adding any party members you want to build affinity with to your active party before engaging in one of these conversations.
Some Heart to Heart conversations will require you to have a specific pet in your B.L.A.D.E. barracks. To unlock the option to have a pet in your barracks, complete the affinity mission Nine Lives. This will give you the Abyssinian cat to put in your barracks. You can obtain other animals, such as dogs, by completing specific basic missions at the B.L.A.D.E. concourse.
Fighting Enemies & Using Soul Voices
Out of all the different methods of increasing affinity present in this game, the one that players will interact with the most is likely the Soul Voices that appear during combat with enemies.
While fighting enemies, you’ll occasionally see a ring appear with a quick-time button prompt. If you successfully hit this quick-time event, your character will gain a bit of TP and shout out a command for the party. When one of your party members acts according to that command, you’ll see a colored flash and gain a bit of affinity with said party member.
You can also respond to the Soul Voices of your party members as well. During battle, you’ll occasionally see one of your party members put out a colored text box on screen. If you use an art that matches the color of that text box, you’ll gain a temporary bonus in battle, as well as some affinity with that specific party member.
Each party member has a different number of soul voices for each art type, with some favoring melee art soul voices and others favoring ranged or debuff arts. For this reason, we recommend keeping at least one of each colored art in your hotbar at all times to be able to respond to any soul voice at a moment’s notice.
Accepting Support Missions
The last method of building affinity between you and your party members is one that many players may initially overlook: support missions. You can access these from the network console in the B.L.A.D.E. barracks, in the same place that you also join and accept online missions.
Despite being on the same console as the online network missions, support missions are available to all players regardless of whether they are online or not, so use them to your heart’s content.
These support missions offer many important rewards for you and your party, including lots of experience, battle points, class experience, Miranium, and for our purposes, affinity. The following missions each give a certain amount of affinity upon completion.
- Frightened Saltat: Required Level 1, Sync Level 10, rewards 60 affinity points
- Dynamic Nature: Required Level 10, Sync Level 20, rewards 120 affinity points
- Food Grudge: Required Level 20, Sync Level 30, rewards 180 affinity points
- Pure Luck: Required Level 30, Sync Level 40, rewards 240 affinity points
- The Unearthed Xe-dom: Required Level 40, Sync Level 50, rewards 300 affinity points
- Water Torture: Required Level 50, Sync Level 60, rewards 360 affinity points
We are unsure of when each of these support missions unlock, but by the time you’ve completed Chapter 12 of the main story, all of them should be available to you. We are also unsure of how the number of affinity points rewarded from these quests translates to the hearts listed in the active members menu, but just like with damage numbers, bigger tends to be better.
With a combination of all these different methods, maxing out your affinity with each party member should be a piece of cake. Whether you want to get to know existing characters like Erina and Gwin or learn about new characters like Liesel and Neilnail, gaining affinity is easier than ever before in Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.
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