Poppi Alpha Guide (Xenoblade Chronicles 2)

Featured with permission by lilbear10

The update is live and if you own the season pass you get 30k ether! If you’re early in the game this will allow you to not only unlock a lot of slots for Poppi but be able to fill them out with basic upgrades. If you’re late game this is basically pocket change. Before i begin i would like to say that this isn’t a guide on how to 1 shot everything but more of a guide to understand and upgrade Poppi.

Lets start with the categories of upgrades

• Energy Converter. Basically a battery for Poppi. Upgrades use up the capacity so if you don’t have enough room then you cant install the upgrade.
• Role CPU. This is your role you want Poppi to take care of. TNK, ATK, HLR for example.
• Element Core. This is your element. Pick whatever element you want for her if you need her to cover a specific one for chain attacks or blade combos. Not all elements work on her
• Art Cards. These are your “Blade arts”. So every once in a while Poppi will give you the buffs of your choosing. Using Pyra as an example she will occasionally buff your accuracy and your next Driver art. you can make Poppi do the exact same thing or make her completely different.
• Skill RAM. These are your “Battle Skills”. This is were your Poppi will get most of her potential from. Things like stronger special, treasure sensor, ect. thats where the RAM comes in.
• Specials Enhancing RAM. These are a little bit more complicated to explain. But basically they tie in to you special and give it a buff. Ex. Pyra’s LV1 Special deals more damage to “Beasts”. So if you are having trouble with a certain archetype of enemy you could tailor your special around that enemy.
• Skill Upgrades. The same as Skill RAM. More expensive to unlock though.

Now on how to build poppy. I’ll be using Rex/Pyra, Nia/Dromarch and Tora/Poppi as the team and tailor Poppi as the tank.

• Role TNK. This is probably the best role for poppy since she has so many tank stats into her passives.
• Element. Since we have 30k to spend. We can change her type to either fire or water. This way we don’t have to worry about her accidentally attacking the wrong element for a 3 orb chain attack. It will also make it easier to finish a blade combo started by either Nia or Rex. This information is wrong on that fact that poppi can’t equip those elements but the idea is still the same for when you have more blades and need diversity of elements
• Arts. So the way Aggro works is that the enemies will chase whoever is hurting the most. You can use Aggro boost/draw. But i prefer to use Recharge boost and system reset. That way my auto attack refresh my arts faster which make the special available more often and more damage output = more aggro.
• Skill RAM. This is where battle knowledge comes into play. Do you want high burst from specials from “Special Lv X Plus” or maybe more utility from “Arts Aggro Boost”? my personal preference is LV2 and LV3 special boosts. Because that way you can deal a lot of damage from chain attacks on the 2nd/3rd round. Since we only have fire/water element blades that means we can actually get to level 3 special in chain attacks. We’ll install Special Lv 3 Plus.
• Special Enhancing Ram. Same as Skill ram. The build depends on what you want the specials to be used for. My favorite is Vital Charge. It gives a massive damage boost just from being 90%+ HP. So all 3 are going to be Vital Charge. That way no mater what special we use it will alway do extra damage once we’re healed.
• Skill upgrades. we already have Special upgrade. So now we want more of the higher boosted damage upgrades. The best ones would be Vendetta since you will almost always have aggro and “Into the Ground” for topple damage.

The way this build is set up you should be able to stack fire and water orbs relatively fast and get your level 2 blade combo started fast as well. After Nia “Breaks” and Rex “Topples”. You can use a level 3 special from Tora to deal insane damage due to fusion combo, Special lv3 plus and topple damage boost on Poppi. During Chain attacks if you have extended topple on the enemy and make it to round 3 it will do even more damage due to the bonus from breaking orbs.

This is just an example of what Poppi can do. But once you understand what each equipment part does it makes it easier. This can also be applied to other blades except you can’t cherry pick the bonuses you get. I hope this helps you guys. If you still don’t understand something let me know. I’ll try to help when i can.

Edit: Made some changes pointing out wrong information. I apologize. But the idea on how to build her is still the same. Thanks u/Cr0wXz for pointing it out.