AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Not gonna' lie, that improved drop rate has gotten me out of quite a bit of grinding for quest items.

That and the fact that I like breaking off enemy weak points. I went Partisan Eagle and the Shrapnel ability you get from that is a great opening move on an unsuspecting enemy if you can target a limb from the get-go.

Does anyone know what the stat bonuses are for being in the different classes? I changed class to learn the other arts/skills and other than the number of available skill slots I can't figure out a difference.

They are plain stat bonuses as I know, being a shield trooper will boost your health and attack, etc.
Though after getting all the skills you want it's good to go back to Drifter as it has 5 slots, that extra slot can be much more helpful than the stat boosts.

Well, at first I was planning to go through all the classes just to max everything out, but it's taking a lot longer to rank up in them now. So maybe I will class change to Drifter once I finish the one I'm on (I think I'm at rank 8 Duelist or something, I don't even remember anymore).

I wish the spear arts you learn through affinity were better. Balance Breaker has a long startup and doesn't Topple, just Staggers, and Bozé's skill is an AOE with pitiful damage in a game where AOEs can potentially bring in more enemies that are too tough for you to handle. Maybe if I poke around with the numbers I can figure out a way to build them into better combos but for now I'm left wondering "Why?"

Now I can be part of this conversation since I got the game a few days ago as a present, and I quite like it so far. Right now, my main problem is trying to figure out all the quirks for the combat system because I'm dying, a lot.

I find the best tactic for fights is to just avoid anything of equal or higher level to you. If I do get into a fight, I either run towards water or spam 1-4 arts to open and try to keep some on the side for Soul Voices.
Quests tend to give you more than enough fights and experience as is. Unless it's a tyrant. Kill tyrants. They are dumb.

Aren't they suppose to be the bad-asses of the species?

Anyways, my tactics, thus far, have been to kill things equal to (With moderate success) or below (With rare instances of dying) my level, trying to avoid groups of more than two, and to press any of the arts that glow or have something special happening to them (Unless it's an attack, I try to pace those except when the previously listed happens).

Also, out of curiosity, does size play a factor into anything at all aside from more places to lock onto?

Giant monsters tend to stomp your shit even if they're lower levelled, just because being big can knock you around and do a lot of damage to you.

If you're good, you can avoid a big monster's attacks, and some are pretty easy to beat. The absolutely massive monsters should be fought mostly with skells though.

To me, the most important active thing to do, is choosing arts that work well with the whole team (you'll often be with Elma and Lin), and with yourself. Maybe choose arts around toppling, or choose a lot of melee attacks because Elma does a lot of soul voices for melee, ... Things like that.
Also I avoid fights as much as possible. I don't want to eradicate every species on the planet, and that'd take a lot of time anyway.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of things. Though, seeing how deep the game's stat systems are really showed how much I'll be in it for the long haul. I think I've spent about a third of the time just adjusting everything (And, I'm already 9 hours in).

Also, out of curiosity, has anyone else tried playing "The floor is lava" while in NLA. For some strange reason, it's a lot of fun to do.

This reminds me...
What the HECK is Potential?

From what I've read it increases how much health you recover from Soul Voices and also increases the damage from abilities that use TP.

When I did quick research in December, it led to random forum post that claimed that Potential was the deciding factor of TP arts' damage output. Since I couldn't find a clear, definitive definition of what it is, I decided to ignore Potential entirely.

I'm playing the first game and it just kinda bludgeons me over the head with new game mechanics every five minutes. When will it stop? I'm not even through the Tephra caves.

I don't know, but XCX kept pausing to introduce mechanics until I finished the third chapter (So far).

Yeah it's a bit rough at first, but after a while, you'll have discovered about everything. You need to know what a lot of things are, but there are only so many things to teach you. I don't think there's anything to teach you after Chapter 3, with the online functionalities getting unlocked at that time. I didn't get into a single tutorial pop-up until I got around Skell business, as far as I remember.