Once you reach Chapter 3 in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, you’ll gain the capability to recruit Heroes to your party, acting as a pseudo-seventh party member in your combat team. There are a lot of Heroes in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and most of them can be recruited after finding their lengthy but usually relatively straightforward Hero Quest.
However, a few Heroes are a bit trickier to recruit than others. One of those said Heroes is Alexandria, who you will likely meet in Chapter 3. 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 this 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 also described this in detail in our full Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Side Quest Guide.
Below is our description of Alexandria’s Hero Quest “Her Reasons”.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – How to Recruit Alexandria
This 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.
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.
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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, 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.
