List of bugs and glitches (XC2)

The following is a list of bugs and glitches in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country: examples of unintended behaviour displayed by the game. Note that while in some cases it is obvious that behaviour was unintended, it is not obvious in others; therefore, there is a possibility that some behaviour in this list was intended, or that it mistakenly omits unintended behaviour.
Some bugs were fixed ("patched") in updates to the game; others remained unfixed, or were introduced in later versions. All names below are unofficial.
In the following, a "crash" refers to a situation where the game closes due to an error being recognised. A "softlock" is a situation where the game does not recognise an error, but its state becomes such that it cannot advance; either its state gets stuck and does not return to a playable state, or the next story trigger becomes inaccessible for whatever reason. In general, softlocks can only be escaped by closing and reloading the game.
==Unpatched bugs==
===Death Code===
The Death Code consists of the buttons L, R, ZL, ZR, X, and D-pad down. Holding these simultaneously for 5 seconds incapacitates the player-controlled character, entering the same animation as when they contact the . This can be performed even at times when it is normally impossible to incapacitate the character, such as during cutscenes, speech-bubble dialogue or s. The game treats this as a full-party incapacitation, albeit potentially with strange behaviour:
* If the incapacitation occurs in the overworld ordinarily, during speech bubble dialogue, or during regular battle, the screen fades to black and the party teleports to the most recent .
* If it occurs in the overworld of the , the party instantly respawns without the death barrier animation (which also occurs if the death barrier is reached in the Land of Challenge ordinarily).
* If it occurs during a , the battle ends in failure.
* If it occurs in the title menu or the Events Theater, the game crashes.
* If it occurs during a Field Skill check, the game softlocks due to not returning to the general overworld state.
* If it occurs during the early stages of loading the overworld, the game crashes.
* If it occurs during the late stages of loading the overworld with at least two Drivers/Teams in the active party, the game enters a special state called Zombie Hover (see below).
This can also cause crashes or softlocks due to an interaction with other gameplay elements:
* Reaching the top of a ladder while in the death animation (which can be achieved using the auto-run feature) crashes the game.
* The game can be softlocked by entering the story trigger to reach a new area but becoming incapacitated before a is encountered. This sends the party to the previous landmark with no way to reach the new area. Doing so when Argentum is first reached allows the player to explore the otherwise-inaccessible area.
The Death Code only incapacitates the character if none of the button presses perform an action. It is therefore often easiest to initiate when in a falling state (out of a jump) or when gameplay loads in after a cutscene or when leaving the menu. Performing an action with the A button cancels the Death Code, with the exception of advancing through menus and/or text boxes.
====Zombie Hover====
If a party consisting of at least two Drivers/Teams is "incapacitated" via the Death Code during later stages of when the overworld loads, the game enters a Zombie Hover state. (A simple way to do this is by performing the Death Code on a character with a shorter death barrier scream, and holding down the buttons until after the overworld has loaded in again.) This results in the player-controlled character entering the death barrier animation but not teleporting to the last landmark.
The death barrier animation can be escaped via any of the following methods:
* Swapping to (or otherwise being on) while controlling using the ZL button.
* Targeting an and drawing weapons with the A button.
* Bonding with a Core Crystal without skipping the bonding animation.
The Zombie Hover state has the property that and do not bring the player-controlled character below 1 HP. (The death barrier still causes incapacitation.)
If the death barrier animation was escaped via targeting an enemy or bonding with a Core Crystal, and the player-controlled character does not enter water or the Cloud Sea, it also has the following properties:
* Opening the menu and performing a Blade Switch can be done in midair.
* Characters will not enter a standing animation when landing from a fall, instead maintaining the falling animation. This allows for certain floors to be clipped through, but prevents enemies from being targeted. Due to the previous property, this does not prevent the player from opening the menu or switching Blades.
* Cutscene, location, and landmark triggers are ignored.
The Zombie Hover state can be left by performing any of the following actions:
* Skip travelling. (This includes forced skip travel after incapacitation.)
* Watch a cutscene other than for Core Crystal bonding.
* Changing the or Aux Cores of anyone not in the active party.
* Reordering Drivers in the menu.
* Reordering Blades in the menu (not via the ZL button).
* Loading a save file (including one which was saved during Zombie Hover).
====Zombie Jump====
In Torna ~ The Golden Country, Zombie Hover can be used to gain arbitrary height in a Zombie Jump. This requires enacting a Zombie Hover state on both of a Team's Blades, which can be set up as follows:
* When controlling one of a Team's Blades, initiate Zombie Hover via any standard means.
* Switch to the other Blade using D-pad left.
* Enter a Camp.
* Input the Death Code for 5 seconds.
* Exit camp. A Zombie Hover state is now active on both of the Team's Blades.
* Switch Blades again using D-pad left (exiting the death barrier animation).
Once this is done, a Zombie Jump is executed by jumping, switching Blades with D-pad left, jumping, switching Blades, and repeating. This is possible because a Blade is set to a standing state (and therefore can jump) for 1 frame (1/30 of a second) after a Blade Switch, and because the Zombie Hover enables a Blade Switch to be performed in midair. If done correctly, the player will be able to repeatedly input jumps in midair to gain height. The 1-frame window to input a jump makes execution difficult, but it can be done consistently with practice.
===Memory leak===
When almost any program (such as a video game) executes, it must allocate a portion of the device's memory to use in performing calculations and operations, then deallocate the memory once it's done. The deallocation is necessary so that the device knows the memory is no longer in use and may be used for other purposes. Memory leak is when the latter step is performed incorrectly, and not all of the allocated memory is deallocated. If done repeatedly, this results in more and more of the device's memory becoming allocated but not deallocated, until there is insufficient memory to allocate for other purposes.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country experience memory leak when loading a new area (e.g. when skip travelling). The amount of memory leaked is small, but over the course of many skip travels, it adds up, leading to undesired effects:
* After a moderate number of skip travels, load times become longer, due to less memory being available to perform the loads.
* After a high number of skip travels, entities may fail to load entirely. This may include characters in cutscenes or even enemies.
* Eventually, the game softlocks due to being unable to complete a load, or crashes.
Closing the game automatically deallocates all memory, resetting the bug. It is therefore advisable to close the game every so often (once every several hours is usually sufficient) to avoid undesired effects.
===Chain Attack bug===
Ordinarily, performing a increases the initial damage ratio of the next by 1%, resetting at the end of battle and after each Chain Attack. However, if the "Enemy Attack Power" setting is any greater than 100% (as it is in Bringer of Chaos and some Custom difficulties), the first cancel will also reset the damage ratio to 100%, meaning it starts incrementing from 101% instead of whatever it is set to ordinarily.
This is assumed to be a bug rather than intentional behaviour, because it overrides any other means of controlling the initial Chain Attack damage ratio (such as Burst Symbols and the "Chain Attack Damage Multiplier" difficulty setting).
===Pouch Item glitch===
When a Driver has used a Pouch Expansion Kit, the two different pouches they have interact differently with favourite Pouch Items. This is believed to be due to a misplaced parenthesis in the formula determining the strength of Pouch Item effects.
===Wall clipping===
Several walls can be bypassed when approached from the correct angle. A famous example is the door immediately before the Skywalk atop the 7th Perimeter Skyport; the frame on the left can be clipped through via jumping over and being pushed through by the terminal. This allows a high-requirement check to be bypassed.
Certain wall clips use the fact that has slightly different collision when she rides . For example, this can be used to clip through the Tardy Gate before the water around it is lowered:
* Player-control Nia with a Blade other than Dromarch active, but with Dromarch equipped.
* Swim into the rightmost edge of the gate at a 45 degree angle.
* While holding forward to swim, swap to Dromarch using ZL, then pause.
* In the Change Order menu, swap Nia's position with a different Driver, then swap her back into the first position.
* Still holding forward, exit the menu. If performed correctly, Nia should clip through the gate.
===Pity Group duplication===
When a new game is started, the file is randomly assigned one of five groups. The group determines the rate at which various rare Blades are obtained, and three "pity" rare Blades which are guaranteed to be obtained after enough Core Crystals are used.
However, files in group 5 actually use the pity Blades intended for group 1, and therefore the group 5 pity Blades cannot be obtained in this way. (They can still be obtained by getting lucky with a random Core Crystal, as usual.)
===Common Blade Field Skill generation===
Common Blades have many of their aspects randomly generated, much of which depends on the of the Driver they bonded with. s are one such aspect; the number of Field Skills a common Blade has was intended to scale with the Driver's level. However, the generation function mistakenly assigns higher levels the same distribution as lower levels, meaning that the odds do not change for Drivers above level 16, and the chance of getting the maximum of 3 Field Skills is capped at 15%.
===Appealing Lamp===
The Appealing Lamp , which was intended to increase the amount of time in Driver Combos/Blade Combos when switching to a which could continue the combo, has no effect.
===Combat commands===
In Torna ~ The Golden Country, holding the R button brings up options which affect the party member behaviour, which are selected via the D-pad (for example, R and D-pad up has all party members target the enemy targeted by the player-controlled character). The options corresponding to D-pad left and right are assumed to have been intended to control whether the AI focuses on Driver Combos or Blade Combos, due to their icons. However, they do not affect this, and are believed to have no effect at all.
===Projectile bugs===
Arts which produce projectiles, and more generally any Art which allows the user to act before at least one hit lands, are bugged in that gameplay effects can alter the properties of projectiles in-flight. For example, initiating a before the hits land will result in the Chain Attack's damage multiplier applying to the projectile, and swapping a different Blade results in the projectiles taking on that Blade's and other attributes. Moreover, when calculating the damage of a Blade Combo, the damage formula normally only takes into account the damage of the Special against the targetted enemy; however, for projectile Specials which attack multiple targets, the Blade Combo damage formula takes into account damage dealt to all targets.
While the above bugs were not patched, the accuracy of projectiles in-flight when a Chain Attack initiates was reduced in a patch to compensate.
 can typically only be activated during combat, and she turns back into or when combat concludes. As such, there is no intended way for her to be active outside of combat. However, it is possible to do so in by exploiting that the 2nd phase of the and fight begins with her active, and that New Game+ skips the tutorial text boxes at the start of the fight.
It is sometimes possible to pause this phase of the fight at its start before is drawn. This can be done by setting up the first phase such that every Driver has the maximal number of Blades, and , , and are in the active party. If the player successfully pauses at the start of the 2nd phase, Rex can be swapped out of the active party and other areas can be skip travelled to. (Skip travelling with Rex in the active party softlocks the game.) After this, Rex can be put back in the active party; he will have Pneuma as his active Blade.
Pneuma's menu art is a low-quality version of Mythra's, albeit far off-centre, and her icon is the same as in ordinary battle. Her is blank, although her stats are displayed correctly. This is the only way to see the names and descriptions of her s and Battle Skills in-game.
While Pneuma is active in the overworld, the menu cannot be reopened, and talking to s results in a softlock.
===Noblade Chronicles 2===
The above exploit can also be used to remove all Blades from Rex, something which is normally impossible. A potential way to do this is as follows:
* After the game is paused at the start of the 2nd phase of the Malos and Jin fight, add in Rex's second Blade slot and in Rex's third.
* Move Rex out of the active party and skip travel to another area.
* Change Nia back to a Driver.
* Without exiting the menu, put Rex in the active party, change Mythra to , and send her on a Merc Mission.
Rex will be left in a state without any active Blades. Pneuma is still visible in this state, although she disappears upon conclusion of any combat. With no Blades, Rex does not act at all in combat.
Changing Rex's position in the party automatically equips a Blade. The state can also be exited normally by simply equipping a Blade on Rex manually.
===End-of-phase softlock===
The first phase of certain multi-phase fights against Driver opponents can softlock if the trigger to end the fight is reached while the enemy is lying down (due to , , or ) and their Blade is performing a . The game waits for the enemy to stand up before loading the next cutscene, but in this situation the trigger for them to stand up does not occur, so the cutscene never loads.
Affected fights include and at the Olethro Ruins, and and in the Old Factory.
==Patched bugs==
===Zombie Walk===
In early versions of the game, disconnecting the controller allows for otherwise-fatal to be survived. If the player-controlled character is by fall damage, disconnecting the controller on the frame the damage numbers disappear (and reconnecting when prompted) prevents the party from being warped back to the previous , and the player-controlled character will automatically be revived after around 20 seconds.
This exploit, the zombie walk, was patched in version 1.5.1.
===QTπ Skill RAM===
In early versions of the game, any Skill RAM added to 's third Skill RAM slot had no effect. This was fixed in version 1.2.0.
===Union Sword crash===
In version 1.4.0, using Union Sword crashed the game. This was fixed in version 1.4.1.
Category:Gameplay mechanics (XC2)Category:Gameplay mechanics (TTGC)