Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Alexandria guide: How to Recruit Alexandria in Her Reasons quest

Alexandria is one of the many hero characters you'll have the opportunity to recruit during Xenoblade Chronicles 3. To get Alexandria to join your quest, however, you'll need to complete her recruitment quest, Her Reasons.

Once you reach Chapter 3 of Xenoblade 3, you'll gain the ability to recruit heroes to your party. These characters act as a seventh party member of a sort, joining you in combat. Most heroes are straightforward to get, and are covered in our Xenoblade 3 Heroes guide - but some are trickier to recruit than others. Such is the case with Alexandria - and this guide will take you through her quest.

Her Reasons: how to recruit Alexandria in Xenoblade 3

Once you reach Chapter 3 of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, you'll gain the ability to recruit heroes. Chapter 3 is also where you'll likely first meet Alexandria. After setting off from Colony 4, you'll encounter Alexandria at a ? symbol along the path to the south.

You won't get a quest notification at this point, but this is the start of Alexandria's Hero Quest, titled "Her Reasons". It actually won't be added to your quest log until later, however.

What makes Alexandria's Hero Quest different than most is that there are some optional objectives you can take on, if you want. Essentially, after your first meeting, you can go west to Colony Iota to fight Alex now, or you can hold off a bit and fight Alex's four subordinates in other parts of the Fornis Region and Pentelas Region - and then return to Alex later.

We've also described this in detail in our full Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Side Quest Guide - but on this page, we'll be a little more in-depth.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Alexandria Recruitment Quest walkthrough

Alexandria's Hero Quest - "Her Reasons" - is actually one of the weirdest quests in the game, in terms of how you unlock the quest and how to proceed with it. This will require a bit of a lengthy description, so bear with me.

The very first part of the quest is an optional scene you'll see with Alexandria south of Colony 4, at a ? symbol on the map. You actually won't get the quest added to your log at this point, and not for quite a while.

Once you see this scene, you can continue heading west into the "Elaice Highway" area on the west side of Fornis. This is an area with level 40ish enemies, but if you've been exhausting the map in Chapter 3, you may end up being capable enough to take this area on. You'll find Colony Iota here, and a boss fight with Alexandria and her 4 subordinates - Fili, Chelle, Rhyza, and Sequoia. If you want, you can beat this fight right now, and finish the quest. This skips some optional content, however.

As noted above, this quest also has some optional objectives you can complete before fighting Alex. There are four of these, one for each subordinate (Fili, Chelle, Rhyza, and Sequoia).

After you've seen the initial scene with Alex, four more ? symbols appear on the map - 3 in Fornis and 1 in the Pentelas region (the third main region of the game). At each of these ? symbols, you can fight one of the sub-ordinates. As you beat each subordinate, they'll be removed from the battle with Alex at Colony Iota, making that battle easier.

These optional battles are found at ? symbols in the following areas:

• Team Fili in the NW area of Dannagh Desert of Fornis Region (Chapter 3)
• Team Chelle East of Conqueror's Peak in the southern half of Fornis Region (Chapter 3)
• Team Rhyza far south of Selias Terrace Camp in Fornis Region (Chapter 3)
• Team Sequoia in the Great Cotte Falls area in early Pentelas Region (Chapter 4)

You'll notice that one of the optional battles, against Team Sequoia, can only be done in Chapter 4. Sequoia can be found very early in the chapter in the Great Cotte Falls area. So even if are typically inclined to exhaust optional content before moving on with the main story, you may want to consider leaving this quest until Chapter 4.

You may be wondering "is there a point to doing the optional fights?" and the answer seems to be "yes, barely". It seems completing the optional fights against the four subordinates will have a net positive effect on Colony Iota's affinity chart.

In the long run, it's hard to say if slight affinity chart difference matters at all by the end of the game, but if you are the type hoping to a perfect or optimal Affinity Chart, it might be just best to wait to take on Alex until Chapter 4. It's up to you.

Whether or not you choose to fight Alex's four subordinates or not, you'll gain the quest properly when you meet Alex in Colony Iota on the west side of Fornis. After a few battles, she'll join your team and you'll unlock the Incursor Class.

If you want to read up more about all the classes available, check out our Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Class Guide. The short version is that the Incursor is a pretty useful attacker class, however, with some great skills that focus on boosting your crit rate and damage in particular - more than reason enough to prioritize recruiting Alexandria.