Appendage Crusher

Appendage Crusher is an Augment in Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Overview
This is the best offensive Weapon Augment in the game.

Many people overlook it, and they'd be forgiven for doing so — its effects make use of a little-known mechanic, Appendage hardness, which places an (independent) multiplier on how much damage is dealt based upon what appendage of the enemy is being targeted, and more specifically, how hard/soft said appendage is. Appendage hardness ranges from -5 to +5, although most appendages have a hardness of 0. Appendage Crusher decreases the hardness of the targeted weapon by 1 (unless it is already at -5, in which case it does nothing). The Augment stacks with itself; if a character has 3 Appendage Crusher augments equipped and they target an appendage with hardness 1, the appendage hardness damage multiplier would be the same as that of targeting an appendage with hardness -2 and no Augments.

Attacking an appendage with the lowest hardness, -5, results in a damage multiplier of x2.5; therefore, equipping five Appendage Crusher Augments (something which is incredibly easy thanks to Appendage Crusher being ridiculously cheap to craft) will multiply all damage dealt by 2.5 as long as an appendage with hardness 0 is being targeted. (Targeting appendages with positive hardness results in a similarly effective bonus over the default, but the exact number will be different. Targeting appendages with negative hardness results in less of a bonus over the default, as the default already includes some of the damage bonus, but appendages with negative hardness are rare.) This is just about as good as one can get with five Weapon Augments.

This Augment meshes well with Core Crusher — the bonus to core damage remains (and stacks multiplicatively with the appendage hardness effect) even though the targeted appendage does not actually receive any damage. This is especially useful when fighting Global Nemeses for RP; the use of Core Crusher means that appendages are not destroyed (assuming only damage is dealt in large quantities), so the player will not lose out on the Appendage Crusher bonus due to running out of appendages to target.