Historically, games in the Xenoblade Chronicles series have been incredibly tough to 100% complete. Technically, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is no exception — but it’s not as time-consuming to complete as Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition. At the time of writing, there’s no official consensus on what 100% completing this game entails, nor is there a requirement to play the game on a specific difficulty. We’ve got a list of tasks to complete right here — do note, however, that there are light spoilers within.

100% Required

There are a lot of tasks listed here, so be ready. That being said, if you clicked on a 100% completion guide for a Xenoblade game, you probably weren’t expecting the requirements to be easy. As someone who has completed all of these tasks, I can say they took just under 200 hours or so.

1. Max out each character and Hero’s level. By the end of the game, your party members should be about Level 75, so it won’t take too much grinding for them to level up to 99. If you use Chain Attacks to overkill Unique Monsters of a higher level than you, you definitely won’t have any problem here.
2. Complete every character and Hero’s Ascension Quest. For the most part, these are self-explanatory. However, completing each Hero’s Ascension Quest entails recruiting that Hero in the first place. In total, there are 21 Heroes to recruit and then ascend.
3. Defeat every Unique Monster. There are plenty of them, though if you’re Level 99, are playing on Easy difficulty, and have a decent loadout, you should be good to go. It’s just going to take time. Please make sure one of your party members is using the Soulhacker class before you go and defeat all these — it’s important for the next two tasks!
4. Obtain every Soulhacker-exclusive Art and Skill. Somewhere around Chapter 5, you’ll gain access to a Hero who uses the Soulhacker class. This class obtains a new Art or Skill to choose from after defeating each Unique Monster. In other words, each Unique Monster has an exclusive Art or Skill that Soulhackers can obtain. That being said, simply having the Soulhacker Hero in your party will not give you that Art or Skill after defeating a Unique Monster. You must have Noah, Mio, Eunie, Taion, Lanz, or Sena as a Soulhacker class. Once you’ve done that, it doesn’t matter which Hero is currently active.
5. Upgrade every Soulhacker-exclusive Art and Skill. Indeed, after obtaining them from Unique Monsters, they upgrade after fulfilling certain conditions. Some require you to heal a certain amount of HP with the associated Art, while some require you to defeat a certain number of enemies with the associated Art equipped. I’d recommend outfitting your entire party with the Soulhacker class and different Arts so that you can upgrade a whole bunch of them at once. You may need to keep a list of the Arts you’ve already upgraded handy…
6. Complete every standard and Hero Quest. In the base game, there are 153 standard quests and 38 Hero Quests. For a full list of where to find these quests and how to complete them, check out this handy spreadsheet! At the time of writing, the DLC adds 7 quests (and four of them are Hero Quests).
7. Craft every Level X gem. This one’s tough — they require lots of materials. It’s important to note that once you craft a Level X gem, you can no longer craft any of that gem’s lower-level versions. If you have that gem’s lower-level versions, you can no longer use them in battle. Therefore, I don’t consider crafting every single gem 100% completion since you won’t even be able to use most of them. For information on where to get the materials, check the link to the spreadsheet above. It’s got pretty much everything you’ll need!
8. Max out every colony’s Affinity level. If you’re completing every single quest in the game, you should be well on your way to finishing this task. If you’re just short of maxing out a colony’s Affinity level, try re-completing Collectopaedia Cards or talking to NPCs you haven’t spoken to before.
9. Upgrade each party member’s weapon. As far as I can tell, these upgrades are purely visual, but they’re still required nonetheless. You can upgrade these via a Nopon in the City during Chapter 7. You’ll need Origin Shards in order to upgrade them.
10. Max out each character’s Rank in every class. This is actually a bit easier than you might expect; all you have to do to earn Class Points is continuously defeat enemies at a higher level than yourself. Ideally, you’d use a Chain Attack to overkill them for an even greater Class Point bonus. This will still be time-consuming, but it isn’t too bad as long as you’re watching a YouTube video in the background or something.
11. Complete all special Unique Monster challenges. The five strongest Unique Monsters in Aionios have special options on their named gravestones that let you “challenge the Superboss”. Every time you defeat it, its level increases before eventually capping out. You’ll need to defeat these Unique Monsters over and over again. Feel free to complete the Unique Monster challenges on every difficulty, if you like!
12. Obtain all of Manana’s cooking recipes. You can get these by ordering food at Canteens! In an early version of the game, many of these recipes didn’t actually apply their respective effects due to a glitch. This has now been fixed. At the time of writing, there are a total of 21 recipes to collect.
13. Find all locations, landmarks, Rest Spots, and Secret Areas. Phew. This game doesn’t let you see which locations you’ve been to via a list, so if you want to be thorough you’ll have to find an interactive map like this one. Change the settings so that you can only see locations, and then visit each area and make sure the name of the location is displaying in the corner of your screen. Rest Spots and Secret Areas appear on the skip travel list, so they’re not as troublesome to keep track of. When you’ve found every location, landmark, Rest Spot, and Secret Areas on a given map, your leading party member will say something like “we’ve seen everything” when you open the map.
14. Purchase every item from the Nopon X-Change. Many of these items can’t be sold, which means they count for 100% completion. As a reminder, Nopon Coins – which you use to purchase these items – cap out at 99. Any Nopon Coins obtained after reaching 99 will be automatically sold. Money is kind of useless in this game, so that winds up being a huge waste. Ensure that you never get too close to having 99 Nopon Coins to prevent this from happening.
15. Complete all Collectopaedia Cards at least once. This means you have to obtain the first-time reward from each card. You can tell if you’ve already obtained the first-time reward because the item bag next to the listing will not be sparkling. If it is sparkling, it means you have not yet claimed the first-time reward.
16. Unlock all of Ino’s Inoswap options. She’s exclusive to the second wave of DLC, so make sure you’ve got it installed before attempting this task. You’ll need to collect lots of Ether Spheres, which are found throughout Aionios in almost every region. They’ll only appear after you accept her initial recruitment quest, though.
17. Purchase one of each accessory from the Land of Challenge. This means you’ll need lots of red Noponstone, but that’s actually quite easy! As long as you’re playing on Easy or Normal, most of the Challenge Battles are rather simple — and the bonuses that appear can help you rack up tons of red Noponstone fast. If you need help farming blue Noponstone, we’ve got a guide on that too!
18. Unlock all of the Land of Challenge’s exclusive costumes. In order to obtain these, you’ll have to complete each challenge at least once on any difficulty. By using the Invincible Signifer exploit, you shouldn’t have a problem clearing these tasks — just remember that this exploit won’t work on Hard challenges. Remember to collect the Wave 3 DLC costumes, too!

Yeah. That’s a lot. But if you manage to complete every single one of these tasks, take a moment to congratulate yourself — this game is no joke to 100% complete. There are a few more tasks you could complete if you really want to go the extra mile; some players might tell you it’s required for 100% completion, while others will argue against it. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide!

100% Optional

Ironically, some of the optional requirements here are less time-consuming than the required ones listed above. It’s usually the reverse! That being said, if you’re like me, you’ll probably look at the first listing and conclude that none of these challenges are worth the time…

1. Craft every level of every gem. This is definitely not required for 100% completion. As mentioned earlier, the game won’t let you use lower-level gems if you already crafted their Level X variants. Furthermore, starting New Game Plus won’t change this fact: you have to completely wipe your save and try again. It’s still being included here just in case, but you definitely don’t have to do this — mainly because you can lock yourself out of ever completing this task.
2. Defeat every Unique Monster on every difficulty. 100% completion and different difficulty levels never mix well. It’s wholly up to you if you want to complete this or not; my personal definition of 100% completion is that as long as you finish everything the game has to offer, the difficulty setting doesn’t matter.
3. Complete every Training Drill. There’s a checklist of them in the settings menu, so this counts! It doesn’t take very long, so you may as well give it a shot if you’ve got time (and you’re reading this post, so you probably do have time). They’re nice and easy!
4. Purchase every shop item at least once. You can sell these items after purchasing them, so this probably doesn’t count for 100% completion. If you really want to obtain every item you possibly can, go for it. I did do this for my 100% run of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but I personally don’t count it.
5. Achieve an S Rank across the board in the Land of Challenge on every difficulty. Besides Noponstone, there aren’t any real rewards for obtaining S Ranks (except for satisfaction, of course). Still, if you’d like to see each of the challenges marked with a nice, shiny S, go for it; it’s just not all that necessary for 100% completion purposes. This includes the Archsage’s Gauntlet, too!

There’s no sugar-coating it: if you manage to finish all the required and optional tasks, you’re kind of crazy. Still, it’s a huge accomplishment, and you should feel proud! It’s important to note that this game is currently receiving updates in the form of DLC, which may change some of the requirements for 100% completion. This page will receive updates shortly after the release of each DLC wave, so feel free to bookmark it and check back later. If you’d like to look at some more 100% completion guides, we’ve got a whole list of them below. Check them out!

If you would like to read more about 100% completion, please follow this link.

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