Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Interlink Level Explained

There is a lot to Xenoblade Chronicles 3‘s combat mechanics. While the game doesn’t shy away from lengthy tutorials, some aspects of its systems are a little on the vague side. One such mechanic that’s important to successful Ouroboros transformations is your Interlink Level.

The game’s Interlink mechanic is introduced in full in the game’s third chapter and while the details surrounding how to transform and how to switch which character is in charge are pretty clear, Interlink Level is glossed over pretty quickly. If you’re struggling to make Interlinks work for you, take a look at the guide below to see how to use your Interlink Level to your advantage.

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Understanding Interlink Level

As soon as you gain the ability to freely enter Ouroboros form in Chapter 3, you’ll notice that you’re given an Interlink Level in the bottom left corner of the screen whenever engaging in combat. The number ranges from zero to three and essentially gauges how powerful you’ll be when entering Ouroboros form by hitting left on the D-pad. You can see the UI element circled below:

Ideally, you’ll only want to Interlink when at level three to deal the most amount of damage and healing when in Ouroboros form. Although you can Interlink immediately when a battle starts, your level always starts at zero so raising your Interlink Level is a good idea if you want to be most effective.

Raising your Interlink Level is done gradually as a fight goes on, but can be sped up by performing Fusion Arts. As you unlock more Master Arts slots, you’ll be able to perform Fusion Arts in quicker succession, increasing the speed that your Interlink Level rises. Unfortunately, unlike the Chain Attack Gauge, there’s no way to see how close you are to increasing your Interlink Level so it makes it a little bit more difficult to plan when the perfect time to transform is.

Increasing your Interlink Level does a handful of things, the most basic of which is that it increases the overall damage output for Noah/Mio’s form, heals your entire party upon transformation in Eunie/Taion’s form, and greatly increases Lanz/Sena’s aggro value. The other essential thing that it does is that it allows you to stay in Ouroboros form for longer.

You can’t stay in Ouroboros form forever as indicated by the Heat Level on the left side of the screen. Once the bar is filled up, you’re immediately kicked out of Ouroboros form and have to wait for a cooldown before entering it again. With a higher Interlink Level, it takes much longer for the bar to fill, giving you significantly more time to get attacks/heals in and perform Talent Arts.

As you can see above, some Ouroboros Class Arts gain additional bonuses if you’re at the proper level. For example, in the above image, the Phantom Slash Class Art would cause a Break status effect if we were at Interlink Level 3. It’s important to know which Class Arts will require higher Interlink Levels if you’re trying to be as effective as possible.