Driver Skill

Driver Skills are unlockable upgrades for Drivers in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country. They appear on a Driver's Affinity Chart and can be unlocked using. Each one provides beneficial effects which increase the battle prowess of their Driver, with a variety of effects available such as increases or lengthening the duration of Driver Combo stages. Each Driver has two Affinity Charts worth of Driver Skills: one of which is available from the start of the game ('Overt Affinity'), and one of which is only available in ('Hidden Affinity').

Overview
Each Driver has 30 Driver Skills to unlock: 15 on each Affinity Chart. These are further divided into three '', with five skills per level per chart. Unlocking a level 2 skill on a chart requires having unlocked at least two level 1 skills on the same chart, and unlocking a level 3 skill requires having unlocked at least 5 skills of level 1 or 2. Moreover, each level 2 skill requires a certain level 1 skill to have been unlocked beforehand to become available, and likewise for level 3 skills with a certain level 2 skill. Each Affinity Chart is visually arranged in a circular structure, with higher levels corresponding to skills farther out in the circle, and specific skills required to unlock higher-level skills being on the same radial line as the higher-level skills.

Driver Skills are unlocked with. Each skill requires a certain amount of SP to unlock; higher-level skills and skills on the hidden Affinity Chart tend to require more SP than lower-level skills and those on the overt Affinity Chart.

Driver Skills can be divided into various categories, each represented by a different icon. Those represented by a blue icon with the silhouette of a flexing torso tend to increase the Driver's s. Orange icons with a sword mark skills that improve the Driver's offense, and yellow icons with a shield correspond to skills that improve defense and healing. Finally, green icons with a circle above a halo broadly correspond to skills which improve party support, although miscellaneous effects may also be placed into this category.

Many Driver Skills appear on the Affinity Charts of multiple Drivers (albeit with different names). In particular, if a skill is on the overt Affinity Chart of one Driver but not another, it will typically be on the latter Driver's hidden Affinity Chart.

Strategy
The most important Driver Skill for each Driver to obtain by far is Arts Chain (or the equivalent on other Drivers), which allows one to cancel a Driver Art into another Driver Art. This should ideally be obtained as quickly as possible (how quickly this is depends on the Driver, but in most cases it will be obtained around the early-middlegame at the earliest).

Each Driver has three skills which allow for certain Driver Arts to be used at the start of battle. This can be nice, but as it is necessarily a once-per-battle benefit (and only saves a few seconds) it is not necessary to prioritise over other skills. As the relevant skill for the Driver Art bound to the X button will generally be unlocked first, binding Driver Combo-inflicting Arts to this button may be helpful to increase the chance of an early Driver Combo setting the flow of battle. With the exception of the above, the Driver Skills with green icons are all generally very useful and it is wise to prioritise them after obtaining Arts Chain.

Other skills vary in utility, but there are no general rules as to in what order they should be obtained; the best are often dependent upon the player's chosen setup.