Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Production Notes #13: Details on Challenge Battle Mode

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- Challenge Battle Mode is all about tackling a series of challenges
- take on waves of tough enemies and earn some rewards
- Rex and co. travel to some sort of alternate world where they end up meeting Shulk and Fiora from Xenoblade Chronicle
- Kunihiro Tanaka redesigned Shulk and Fiora
- they are voiced by Shintarou Asanuma and Eri Nakao respectively

Shulk: Light element. He has a special ability called “Future Vision” in the Japanese version of the game, based on the Vision mechanic from Xenoblade Chronicles. When one triggers, you have to press the button displayed on the screen with the right timing. If you’re successful, you will dodge the incoming enemy attack

Fiora: Wind element, and focus on healing.

- you can only battle with Shulk and Fiora in the Challenge Battle Mode at first
- if you get a specific reward, you will be able to bring Shulk and Fiora with you to Alres
- to start a Challenge, you have to talk to the Nopon Archsage
- each challenge has its own set of conditions
- if your characters are over-leveled, their level will be lowered accordingly
- if your characters are under-leveled, they will keep whatever stats they have when going into the challenge
- select the difficulty level for the Challenges
- additional harder difficulty levels will be added at a later date
- Challenges have you battle a wide variety of enemies, ranging from small to big monsters, and past bosses
- enemies come in waves
- when you defeat enemies, they drop items called Ether Cubes
- depending on the amount you collect during the Challenge, you will get a certain number of treasure chests
- you can unlock up to three treasure chests per Challenge, and you can see the chests being filled up as gather Eather Cubes
- take on “impossible situations”, such as a Challenge that has you play as Jin “infiltrating” an Ardainian battleship
- in this mission, you have to defeat 100 soldiers within the time limit
- not all Challenges are available from the start, but more unlock as you complete available challenges
- Challenge Battle Mode is unlocked right away, and can be accessed as soon as you reach the Oltethro Playhouse
- some of the Challenges require specific unique monsters to be defeated first in order to be unlocked
- in select treasure chests you'll find a key item called “Nopon Stone”
- if you bring those to the Archsage’ Orderly, you can trade them for special items that change the appearance of characters
- costumes are for all characters, not just Blades
- these require an Aux Core slot for Blades
- costume examples include:

Mythra outfit for Pyra
prototype diving suit for Rex
sakura (cherry blossom)-coloured outfit for Nia
Tiger-like mange for Dromarch
Poppibuster-like outfit for Tora