A few questions.

My first discovered blade through story progression does not show up in the Blades collection. Is that because only very rare and unique blades are there or is this a bug? My first blade has the lowest rarity. After that I discovered a blade with very high rarity and it did show up in the collection. Can you discover high rarity blades multiple times or are there Blades you can only discover once?

What is the roadblock preventing you from getting high level field abilities? So far it looks like they're only tied to the blade affinity.

@1st Bolded: Did you bond with the blade yet? or is it not showing in your "Bond With Blades" section?

@2nd Bolded: You can discover lots of rare blades, mostly from core crystals(through luck) which others refer to as the "lootbox" of the game, and some you can get through sidequests and story.

@3rd Bolded: I believe he is talking about a roadblock you encounter at a later story mission where you need to have a specific level of the field abilities to pass through.

1. Blade albums only show the 5 star blades. Any lower won't appear in the album

2. The highest star blades are unique so you can have one of them. The lower star blades are just generics with different field abilities and stats. They are usable but I like using the 5 star blades.

3. Occasionally the game throws roadblocks that require high level field abilities to overcome. For example a dark miasma is blocking a pathway. You will need to have level 4 wind mastery and level 4 dark mastery field to disperse it. I found it stupid as they are just carelessly thrown in a middle of a major setpiece hoping that you have the right level, if not, then halt everything until you have the requirements. 

Just a tip for everyone please level up (and/or have many blades with) the field ability Focus, wind mastery, water mastery, fire mastery, dark mastery, leap, ancient wisdom and noppon wisdom.

Thanks for the answers and tips. Looks like even more grinding for me. Currently I'm having a bit of trouble leveling up because Nia left my party. Fighting multiple enemies alone can be pretty tough. Looks like I will have to advance the story so I can grind efficiently again.

A quick tip on field skills (for the questions above)

FIELD SKILL MENU NAVIGATION
* DO NOT enter the affinity menu to scroll over to check them, it will take you like 20 Minutes to see all the field skills.
* DO THIS:
1. Select + to access your main menu
2. Select Blade Management
3. Hit the L button 2 (maybe 3) times.
4. You will see the the list of field skills for the Blade selected, and you merely need to use the left joycon to navigate the menu in order to see each Blade’s field skill in a neat little list.

The UI in this game is not perfect, and there are a few traps. So if something seems overly hard to do, it is probably because there is an easy way.

While I am at it, another tip: FAST ATTACKS WITH SLOW BLADES

No one asked about it, but this is useful to everyone.
Some Blades, including Pyramid/Mythra have very long auto-attack animations. The initial hit only takes a very brief portion of the animation before the connection, however, the rest of the animation can take a while.
1. Stop, allow auto-attack to connect
2. When the weapon connects, TAP the directional stick- this will cancel the rest of the attack animation and your character will hit very quickly.

So you won’t want to do this for all Blade types, since some have much faster auto-attacks, and it will be faster to just stand still. But with someone like Pyra, you can move>tap>move>tap and get your ARTs up very very quickly.


Another tip: CHAIN & COMBO ATTACKS
For combos, wait until you have a clear chain of at least I, II, III between your characters before using these. I have seen some people using special moves before their party members have at least a II and a III, and while this can work some times, it is much safer to make sure you can launch a full combo. For those early in the game and aren’t sure on the combo system:
1. Look at your ARTs palate, the A button will be assigned a level, either blank, I, II, III, or IV.
2. Notice on your left and right you’ll see characters with 1, 2, or 3 little balls floating around them, these indicate their levels for their A button Art. You can chain these into an attack, and it causes lots of extra damage.
3. If you are Rex, and you use Pyra’s I, II, III, or IV A-Art, then in the upper right of the screen you will notice a little flow chart. In this case, it will show the next stages can be done by either a water or a red (fire) or blue (water) art.
4. If Nia has two or three of those little balls floating around her, then you can continue the chain by hitting the zL button, and it will take the combo up to level 2. Which leaves with a red (fire) art remaining.
5. Early in the game, it is likely only Pyra that can complete this combo (which actually makes my example bad for early players) so imagine you have a third character with a fire Blade, and they have 3 little balls floating around them, when executing the level 3 A-attack, it will finish the combo (but early on enemies deplete very slowly, so you can probably charge Pyra up to a III or IV to finish the combo.
6. Notice at the end of the combo there will be a floating red ball around the enemy. This will allow you to deal extra damage in your chain attacks (hitting the + button with a party gauge of 3 bars, this is in the upper left corner), and including water elementals (like Nia’s Dromach) in your chain.
7. If you do multiple different combos attacks, you can have multiple different balls floating around the enemy, and can break them all at once in one chain for hundreds of thousands of damage. Essentially you can Crush big enemies quickly.

Mastering the two attack strategies above pretty much makes everything from Chapter 4 or early chapter 5 onward to be fairly easy. I would use screen shots if I could, but I am currently on a train and have no access to a PC.

My problem with combos is that enemies die much too fast for me to actually pull one off. And if a fight goes on for a long time it's usually because I'm already losing and barely hanging on. Healing is really clunky in this game. I wish you could just chug healing potions.

After 100 hours of play. I managed my first complete elementar break during a fight by breaking 4 orbs in a chain attack.

You can by letting your arts recover automatically. Give your drivers the right food and you can spam healing and other arts all you want.

Yeah, I could make a lot of things so much easier if I just used my pouch^^

For now I'm just hoarding cash and try to get familiar with all the other mechanics before I really go into the pouch business.

If you pick a healer as your main, the game is almost too easy. With Pyra/Mythra, if you keep spamming Anchor shot, then there will be heal potions everywhere. Combos on their own do extra damage, so it is good to do them regardless, even if only going to step 2. They're also good with multiple enemies as some combos target area zones which can do massive amounts of damage; I forget early game combos, so maybe someone else could be of help on that.

But if you are finding specific enemies too difficult, I might be able to help from memory. In the early game, I know resources are limited.