Pouch Item

The Pouch Item menu

Pouch Items (also sometimes written uncapitalized as "pouch items") are a type of consumable item in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country. They can be used to temporarily strengthen a Driver and Blade in combat.

Mechanics

Up to 10, or in some cases 3, of a given pouch item may be held at any time. This amount can be increased by 30 by purchasing the Nopox Deeds, Placks Deeds, and Praximo Deeds.

Pouch Items can be used from the Pouch Setup menu. Initially only one pouch item can be used at a time per Driver, however through the use of a Pouch Expansion Kit, a second pouch item slot can be acquired on the Driver which the Pouch Expansion Kit is used on. This allows said Driver to use two pouch items at the same time; these two items must be different, although they may have the same effects. Having two pouch items on the same Driver with the same effect simultaneously results in the effects stacking.

When an item is put into a character's pouch it will provide up to three buffs for a certain amount of time, as well as increasing the Trust of all Blades currently engaged by the Driver. The amount of time a pouch item lasts for will only decrease while the player is outside of menus. Upon expiring, if the player has another copy of the expired item, it will be automatically used to refill the pouch.

Sources

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2

• Purchasing them from Shops
• Crafting them through Field Skills
• Completing Quests
• Completing Merc Missions

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country

• Purchasing them from Shops
• Completing Quests
• Crafting at a Campsite

Types of Pouch Items

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2

• Art
• Board Games
• Cosmetics
• Drinks
• Desserts
• Instruments
• Literature
• Meats
• Seafood
• Staple Foods
• Textiles
• Veggies

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country

• Charms
• Desserts
• Fragrances
• Meats
• Scripts
• Seafood
• Staple Foods
• Talismans
• Veggies

Pouch Item Effects

The "Check contents" menu allows to check the current pouch items' effects

There are 12 different types of passive effects granted from Pouch Items, each corresponding to a different category of pouch item. While a single pouch item can grant up to three different effects, it will always provide the primary effect of its item type.

• Art: Boosts the amount of Affinity gained by any means. (Max: +50%)
• Board Games: Boosts the power of Blade Arts. Has no effect on Nullify Reaction or Debuff Cancel. (Max: +100%)
• Cosmetics/Fragrances: Boosts Affinity at the start of battle. (Max: +300)
• Drinks/Charms: Boosts the amount of Party Gauge gained by any means. (Max: +50%)
• Desserts: Passively recharges all Driver Arts every second. (Max: +1 per second)
• Instruments/Talismans: Passively recharges the Special Gauge every second. (Max: +8 per second)
• Literature/Scripts: Boosts the damage dealt by Specials. (Max: +100%)
• Meats: Boosts the Driver's physical defense. (Max: +30%)
• Seafood: Boosts the Driver's ether defense. (Max: +30%)
• Staple Foods: Grants the Driver a temporary damage barrier, nullifying a certain amount of damage based on a percentage of the Driver's maximum HP. (Max: 50% Max HP)
• Textiles: Reduces the Affinity lost by any means. (Max: -50%)
• Veggies: Boosts HP restored to the Driver by any means. (Max: +50%)

Favorite Pouch Items

The pouch item selection menu shows the characters' currently known favorites

Every Driver and Blade has up to two favorite types of pouch items, as well as two specific favorite items. All Drivers, Rare Blades, and Legendary Blades have two predetermined favorite pouch item types and two predetermined favorite items. Common Blades will have at least one favorite item type, but might not have any favorite items.

Favorite Items are hidden, and only revealed upon using a fitting one for the first time.

Favorite Pouch Item Bonuses

Depending on how much a Driver or Blade likes a Pouch Item, its effect may be enhanced.

• If a pouch item belongs to a character's favorite category, then its effects are boosted by 20%.
• If a pouch item is one of a character's favorites, then its effects are boosted by 50%.

If a character's favorite item happens to also belong to a favorite category, then only the favorite item bonus is applied.

If a pouch item is liked by both a Driver and Blade, then the bonus will stack multiplicatively.

Pouch Item glitch

When a Driver has two pouches due to them having used a Pouch Expansion Kit, the two pouches interact slightly differently with characters' favourite Pouch Items. Specifically, the item in the left pouch not only receives a bonus if it is a favourite (and/or of the favourite category) of the Driver or equipped Blade; it also receives a bonus if the item in the right pouch is a favourite/in the favourite category. This stacks multiplicatively with boosts from the item in the left pouch itself being favoured. (None of this affects the effects of the item in the right pouch; the item in the right pouch is boosted if and only if it itself is favoured.)

The upshot is that, if two Pouch Items are being equipped to the same Driver and only one of them is favoured, that one should go in the Driver's right pouch; doing so will provide a boost to the effects of both items, whereas if it is placed in the left pouch then only the favoured item would be boosted (as would be expected). Alternatively, if both items are favoured but one of them has better effects, the item with better effects should go in the Driver's left pouch; this will make it so that the item with better effects is boosted twice, whereas the item in the right pouch will only be boosted once.

List of favorite pouch items

Drivers

Driver	Favorite food category	Favorite hobby category	Favorite item 1	Favorite item 2
Jin	Staple Foods	Seafood	Oyster Stir-Fry	The Millenarian Titan
Malos	Desserts	Art	Grilled Anchortail	Argentum Noodle Soup
Mòrag	Veggies	Art	Quoteletta	Steamwork Organ
Nia	Seafood	Textiles	Cream Orange Paratha	Ardainian Bear Carving
Rex	Drinks	Art	Pan-Fried Tartari	Coral Reversi
Tora	Drinks	Instruments	Juicy Samod	Silken Stool
Vandham	Staple Foods	Board Games	Armu T-Bone Steak	The Alrestogony
Zeke	Meats	Textiles	Addam's Embercakes	Snow-Crystal Vase

Blades

Driver	Favorite food category	Favorite hobby category	Favorite item 1	Favorite item 2
Adenine	Veggies	Literature	Torigoth Marinade	Leftherian Life
Aegaeon	Desserts	Art	Fondant Rice Cake	Montecoran Doll
Agate	Drinks	Art	Fish and Herb Broth	Les Awfuls
Akhos	Staple Foods	Board Games	Smoke-Braised Killifish	Witness the Crustip
Azami	Drinks	Literature	Steamflake Tabbouleh	Red Opal Lipstick
Boreas	Staple Foods	Cosmetics	Massive Mushroom Pie	Frozen Odifa
Brighid	Desserts	Cosmetics	Thawing Mille-Feuille	Titan-Oil Hand Cream
Catalyst	Seafood	Instruments	Snowbaby Potato Salad	Sneak-Thief King
Corvin	Drinks	Board Games	Twinklejuice	Nopon Chess Set
Cressidus	Meats	Textiles	Mustard Kordeth	The Blizzard Choir
Crossette	Staple Foods	Desserts	Sunshine Pie	Spicy Stralu
Dagas	Seafood	Art	Aromalocaris Sauté	Black Flower Field
Dagas	Seafood	Art	Aromalocaris Sauté	Black Flower Field
Dahlia	Veggies	Cosmetics	Poached Fruit Samod	Tantal Icecube
Dromarch	Meats	Board Games	Dried Sunfish	Cedarwood Koto
Electra	Meats	Instruments	Honey au Lait	Hammerplate Snare
Elma	Seafood	Art	Codweave Safety Blanky	Pipestraw Smoothie
Finch	Veggies	Cosmetics	Stuffed Meaty Carrot	Sparkly Snow Perfume
Fiora	Seafood	Cosmetics	Whitebait-Samod Hotpot	Elastifying Tonic
Floren	Veggies	Art	Leaf-Weave Cape	Snow Dumplings
Godfrey	Meats	Instruments	Estral Steak	Adventures of Myram
Gorg	Desserts	Textiles	Neon Grape Flan	Imperial Secret Escapes
Herald	Drinks	Board Games	Lunana Smoothie	Jeweled Billiard Balls
KOS-MOS	Staple Foods	Board Games	Gladiator Wrestling	Master's Curry
Kasandra	Staple Foods	Cosmetics	Felmeri Fairy Statue	Astrology Made Simple
Kora	Drinks	Cosmetics	Blossom Custard	Conch Hairpin
Mikhail	Drinks	Literature	Vegetable Mille-Feuille	Tantalese Velvet
Mythra	Desserts	Art	Cloud Sea Crab Sticks	Final Chorus
Newt	Meats	Instruments	Army Field Manual	Zaproast Power Bowl
Nim	Seafood	Instruments	Tricolor Bowl	Don't Feed the Armu
Obrona	Seafood	Instruments	Masterpieces of Alrest	Tantalese Porridge
Pandoria	Meats	Literature	Fried Octomayo	Moonstar Lipstick
Patroka	Veggies	Cosmetics	Odifa Gelée Tart	Felt Cushioning
Perceval	Drinks	Art	Vinaigrette Ice Cabbage	Scarlet Shamisen
Perdido	Drinks	Art	Armu Milk Earl Grey	Skywards by Titan
Perun	Seafood	Textiles	Black Roast Coffee	Fonsan Viola
Poppi QT	Veggies	Art	Sky-Jewel Tart	Genbu-Weave Cloth
Poppi QTπ	Staple Foods	Textiles	Melodious Melon Parfait	Flurrycomb
Poppi α	Staple Foods	Instruments	Fizz Juice	Roly-Poly Maracas
Poppibuster	Meats	Board Games	Tasty Sausage	Nopopo Yard
Praxis	Desserts	Literature	Sno-Bake Cheesecake	Curled Eyelashes
Pyra	Veggies	Literature	Jenerossi Tea	Woodgrain Alphorn
Roc	Seafood	Board Games	Wood-Dye Waistcloth	Abyssturgeon Medallion
Sever	Meats	Instruments	Chooby Tubes	Hotplate Fry-Up
Sever	Meats	Instruments	Chooby Tubes	Hotplate Fry-Up
Sheba	Desserts	Textiles	Indoline Tea	Copper Ephem Statue
Shulk	Veggies	Literature	Addam's Supercakes	Ardainian Arms Album
T-elos	Instruments	Literature	Army-Issue Violin	Salvaging Made Easy
Theory	Veggies	Board Games	Steamed Veg Stralu	Sparkly Snow Perfume
Ursula	Desserts	Cosmetics	Torigonda	Steamwork Organ
Vale	Desserts	Textiles	Prickly Snowpickle	Crinkly Wool
Vess	Seafood	Cosmetics	Fruity Rice Ball	Torigoth Snowpouch
Wulfric	Staple Foods	Literature	Marine Stir-Fry	Smack-A-Nopon
Zenobia	Meats	Literature	Char-Grilled Grumbird	Portrait of Ger the Hero

Torna ~ The Golden Country

Driver	Favorite food category	Favorite hobby category	Favorite item 1	Favorite item 2
Addam	Staple Foods	Charms	Energy Stir-Fry	Galaxy Charm
Aegaeon	Desserts	Talismans	Rich Platinum Bonbon	Farsighted Talisman
Brighid	Seafood	Scripts	Gormotti Sashimi Plate	What You Must Protect
Haze	Veggies	Scripts	Wildflower Salad	The Knight of Torna
Hugo	Veggies	Fragrances	Rhogul à la Ardainaise	Eternity Perfume
Jin	Seafood	Charms	Steel Salmon Tempura	Organic Charm
Lora	Meats	Talismans	Ruby-Stew Buloofo	Golden Land Talisman
Minoth	Staple Foods	Fragrances	Ruska Dumpling Soup	Exquisite Perfume
Mythra	Desserts	Meats	Miracle Parfait	Bunnit-Stuffed Peppers

Strategy

Pouch items are often overlooked by new players, but when used properly, they are one of if not the most critical part of out-of-combat setup in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country, and the best ones are essentially always worth any money needed to acquire them.

Effects to prioritize

The most important use for pouch items (which becomes mandatory for many setups) is to speed up the rate at which Driver Arts and Specials can be used. This allows for more Driver Combos and Blade Combos, and thus more everything else such as Fusion Combos and Chain Attacks. Driver Arts are made more available with effects which passively recharge Arts every second (the main effect of Desserts). Specials can be made more available directly by effects that passively recharge the Special gauge every second (the main effect of Instruments), but in practice it is usually more effective to focus on Art recharge and let the more frequent use of Arts do the job naturally. This makes Arts recharge by far the most important pouch effect to focus on in all stages of play.

Another very practical (albeit secondary) effect to focus on is party gauge gain increase (the main effect of Drinks and Charms). This is most useful when using strategies that focus on quickly building up Chain Attacks or Overdrive, or if party members are being Incapacitated a lot. It is less useful for strategies that focus on building up many element orbs for a large Chain Attack, as the party gauge will ideally have filled up anyway when the time comes to use it, although the benefit of it being easier to revive fallen party members remains if that is a concern. Importantly, it is often all but necessary on Bringer of Chaos difficulty, where party gauge gain is much lower by default.

Increasing the damage dealt by Specials (the main effect of Literature and Scripts) is always a major boon. Blade Combos, Chain Attacks, and Fusion Combos are where most of the party's damage comes from, and all of these are based on the damage dealt by Specials. Therefore, increasing Special damage is an excellent way to increase the player's overall damage in the few situations where Arts recharge does not have as great an effect.

Other effects have varying levels of practicality. Affinity is crucial in combat, but unless it is constantly being lost (which is usually avoidable), it is usually more effective to start the fight with it high or maxed via Hunter's Chemistry Aux Cores or Skill RAM, than to use Pouch Item effects to manipulate gains or losses (although the two may be used in conjunction if only the former is not sufficient). Higher-base-affinity pouch items apply their effect to all equipped Blades, rather than only the first as Hunter's Chemistry does, so it may be useful if very high affinity is necessary on multiple Blades very quickly (e.g. in setups that go for immediate Chain Attacks).

Additional physical and/or ether defense can be handy, especially early on, but its practicality is very strategy-dependent (for example, it becomes accordingly less useful in parties with high Evasion). Likewise, boosting HP recovery is useful early on, but in the lategame and postgame, sources of healing (if necessary at all) are already typically strong enough to near-fully heal the Driver all at once. Damage barriers provided by Pouch Items are typically single-use per battle, making them suboptimal except in specific speedkill setups. Some Blade Arts have useful effects, but it is almost always better to focus on other combat elements, especially because arguably the two most useful Blade Arts are unaffected by Pouch Items.

Early-game strategy

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the dessert Narcipear Jelly is available for purchase at Honeycomb Sweets in Argentum from the start of the game. It provides 0.4 Arts recharge per second (as strong as the effect gets among easily-obtainable items) alongside substantial defensive bonuses, making it one of the best pouch items in the game. A simple but very effective strategy early on is to buy as many of these as possible and use them on every Driver; doing so makes all Drivers much more capable and speeds up combat substantially in the early game.

Near the end of Chapter 2, the player obtains a Pouch Expansion Kit. The most effective use of this is on whatever Driver the player most often controls. Maxing out Arts recharge with two Pouch Items this early in the game, while possible (by using the favourite pouch items glitch as above), is not actually very effective. This is because the player will almost certainly not yet have unlocked the Arts Chain skill (or its equivalent on other Drivers). Without the ability to cancel arts into arts, the best way to charge specials is to cancel auto-attacks into arts, so some auto-attacking will be needed regardless of whether arts need it to recharge. Therefore, since some auto-attacking will be happening regardless, going all-in on arts recharge with both pouch items is overkill. It is still ideal to avoid auto-attacking any more than what is necessary for cancelling, so Narcipear Jelly remains valuable, but the second pouch item may be best used for other effects, chiefly Special recharge (from Instruments).

Midgame and lategame strategy

The picture changes drastically when the player gets access to each Driver's Arts Chain-like skill, typically around Chapter 4 for Rex and Nia. By this point, auto-attacking is no longer necessary except for recharging Driver Arts; therefore, bypassing the slow process of auto-attacking as much as possible becomes central. The main goal is to stack as much Arts recharge as possible - a quick and dirty way to do this is to simply put a strong Dessert in each pouch, e.g. Narcipear Jelly and Sparklesugar. The benefits of doing so are great, and while more optimal setups exist, they have diminishing returns given the effort required.

Such more optimal setups make use of the favourite Pouch Items bug to boost the effects achieved. In this way, a pouch item that's weaker on paper may in practice turn out to be stronger if it is favored by the character in question. This is especially useful if the pouch item's other effects are desirable. Finding Pouch Items which have good Arts recharge, good additional effects, and which may be the favourite item of a character in use often requires completing Merc Missions which give Contracts as a reward. Some good items are also made available through exchanges by unlocking specific Field Skills of various Blades: Gorg's are the best for most purposes, yielding strong Desserts (including the Lovemerry Cake, which has the single strongest Arts recharge effect in the game), but Dahlia's and Vale's crafted items may also be useful in certain circumstances. However, crafting requires gathering the necessary ingredients compared to just going to a store and buying stuff. "Optimal" does not necessarily mean "is worth the effort" - that is up to the player.

Postgame strategy

For difficult postgame content, especially Challenge Battle Mode and playing at higher difficulty levels, the benefits of optimal Pouch Item setups become more relevant. At these stages, reaching the cap of 1 Arts recharge per second becomes more desirable and, if the player has been completing Merc Missions, more achievable. This cap cannot be reached without exploiting characters' favourite pouch items. A sample setup for each Driver which provides 1 Arts recharge per second, regardless of equipped Blades, is as follows. Note that because of how the pouch item glitch works, it is relevant which item goes in which pouch - swapping their positions means the effect is weakened.

Driver	Left pouch item	Right pouch item
Rex	Lovemerry Cake	Victory Smoothie
Nia	Narcipear Jelly Hot Ruby Steamed Bun	Cream Orange Paratha Fish and Herb Broth
Tora	Lovemerry Cake	Victory Smoothie
Mòrag	Lovemerry Cake	Pickled Ice Cabbage
Zeke	Char-Grilled Grumbird	Glarna Stir-Fry

For Nia, any of the two options in either the left or the right pouch may be used.

The above table is only an example of a Blade-independent setup which allows for 1 Arts recharge per second on each Driver. When using a Blade who likes Desserts (e.g. Mythra or Brighid), it may be better to focus on those instead by placing the Dessert in the right pouch of the relevant Driver, specifically a Dessert with beneficial additional effects (e.g. Hot Ruby Steamed Buns).

This page or section is incomplete. In other words, yes we know it's unfinished; we just didn't want to leave it blank in the meantime. You can help complete it. The editor who added this tag elaborates: Torna-specific strategy

Other setups

Specials and/or Driver Arts are always necessary in combat, so having a good way to recharge Driver Arts quickly is paramount. But if this can be done using methods other than Pouch Items (aside from auto-attacking, which is essentially never optimal), it may free up Pouch Items for other uses. There are two main methods of doing this: crit recharge and Blade/Vanguard switching.

Several weapon classes (most notably Greataxes and Knives) have Driver Arts that partially recharge if one of their hits is a critical hit. If these are levelled up to level 5 (or to level 4 and used at maximum Affinity), the partial recharge becomes a full recharge, allowing them to be used instantly again — including (assuming Arts Chain or equivalent has been acquired) being able to cancel the Art into itself. (Mythra's Lightspeed Flurry also has this effect.) If this can be done consistently, it makes Arts recharge pouch items redundant while allowing for extremely fast Special gauge buildup. For these setups, a good effect to focus on is Special damage (from Literature and Scripts) to maximise damage output. However, crit recharge can seldom be relied upon to work all the time (the exceptions being if Pneuma or Fiora are being used). If the player's crit rate is below 100%, it is advisable to keep a lower level of Arts recharge active from Pouch Items (around 0.3-0.7 per second is a reasonable amount, depending on crit rate) to recharge the Driver's other Arts for use when the crit recharge fails and to only partially focus on Special damage (and/or other effects).

All Driver Arts are fully recharged upon a Blade Switch (in the main game) or Vanguard Switch (in Torna ~ The Golden Country). A strategy which makes constant use of this may not need to use Pouch Items to recharge Arts, especially if only one or two Arts will be used between switches. An example of such a strategy is Driver Combo locking, in which the player constantly cycles between different characters in order to use Driver Combo Driver Arts and/or Switch Arts. Here, only one Art is necessary to use between switches, and so such an Art will necessarily be off cooldown when it is needed. This makes Arts Recharge unnecessary.

With arts recharge offloaded elsewhere, which other Pouch Item effects to focus on vary depending upon specifics. However, as such strategies necessarily require managing the Affinity of two or three Blades as opposed to only focusing on one, Affinity-increasing effects (primarily from Art, Cosmetics, and Fragrances) may be useful. Such strategies are also often used in Bringer of Chaos difficulty in combination with damage over time from Blade Combos; in these cases, Party Gauge gain is very worthwhile to focus on. On the other hand, while a Special is necessary to begin the damage-over-time effect, it is only this Special that leads to the bulk of the damage throughout the fight; therefore, Special-damage-increasing Pouch Items are useful on the character that performs the Special in question, but may be forgone on everyone else.

In other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
English	Pouch Item	—
Japanese	ポーチアイテム	Pouch Item
French	Sacoche	Pouch
German	Taschen-Item
Spanish	Objeto de alforja
Italian	Oggetto della borsa
Chinese (simplified)	收纳包道具	Item held in bag
Chinese (traditional)	收納包道具	Item held in bag
Korean	파우치 아이템

Gallery

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Tutorials

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  Pouch Item Tutorial

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  Pouch Item Tutorial

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  Pouch Item Tutorial

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  Pouch Item Tutorial

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  Pouch Item Tutorial

Screenshots

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  Notification that the pouch was refilled automatically

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  Notification that the pouch's pouch item expired

Torna ~ The Golden Country

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  Pouch Item Tutorial

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  Tutorial tip on Pouch items

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  Tutorial tip mentioning pouch items as a way to strengthen a team