Xenoblade Chronicles Basics- Collections and Key Items

As you travel about Bionis and the world, you will see floating here and there little glowy balls in blue or red, that seem to be dripping flows of sparkling unknown.  These objects are two categories of thing that you want, and want badly.  The blue balls that you find are collectible items.  These are both valuable for trading and valuable for the Collection Book.  The Collection Book lets you record these items when you find them, and grants you rewards for finding all the items in a set.  Each set of items consists of a category (Fruit, Flower, Parts, Strange, Vegetable, and Insect) and a locale in which they can be found.  Once you record a full set of items in your Collection Book, you will be rewarded with an Ether Gem.

If, on collecting a blue light, you find it’s an item you already grabbed, don’t be dismayed- the appearance of the collection items is randomized, with some rarer than others.  It will take time and a lot of duplicates to collect all of the items in all of the sets for an area- but that isn’t such a bad thing.  With the Trade function in the game, you can easily turn those duplicates into extra gear and other useful items that will be more than worth the effort.  Also keep in mind that the rarer Collection Book items are found more often and more easily during the night time- so a certain amount of blundering hither thither and yon in the scary dark will go a long way to enabling you to fill up the book and get the ever-useful Ether Gems it provides.

There is an additional page in the Collection Book, for things that do not belong in any of the other Collection sets- completing any of these earns you a very special Ether Gem as a reward- so make sure you keep your eyes peeled and check your Collection Book every time you gather a new item from one of those sparkly blue lights.

The sparkly red lights are something else altogether.  These are Key Items, which are used to complete quests.  Unlike some games, though, in Xenoblade Chronicles, you can find Key Items before you get the quest that requires them.  This is convenient, but can sometimes be puzzling (you may wander around for an hour or two wondering why you have a Spanner).