One of the most exciting things in Xenoblade Chronicles X is obtaining your first Skell. Not only does it make enemies, especially larger ones, significantly easier, it also opens up new exploration opportunities and a faster way to transverse Mira. However, before you’re able to pilot a Skell you need a license and to get that you need to complete an eight part mission after chapter six. While this mission can be fairly tedious to accomplish, we made a quick guide so you can quickly finish it and enjoy your new Skell.

Proficiency Exam 1

Activate the probe at FN site 117 in Primordia. This probe is about two hexagons away from where you start in New LA, so odds are quite high you’ve already got it by now.

Proficiency Exam 2

For this part of the exam you need to kill 12 blitz blattas’ in Noctilum. Selecting this mission will show you three spots where they appear. The spot on the right usually has four of them, is a lot easier to get to and very easy to kill them all. I strongly suggest going there and just reloading the map three or so times to do this mission.

Proficiency Exam 3

Shatskikh, the Flash is a tyrant class enemy that rarely spawns in the water of Northpointe Cave in Primordia. This should be a fairly easy fight if you have a decent level team, especially if you don’t aggravate other enemies and stick to stun locking him. A lot of his moves are telegraphed and this is a very non-hostile enemy. As for finding him, if you don’t see him spawn after running around the indicated location, reload the zone and see if he appears. I had him appear 50% of the time, so the wait shouldn’t be too bad.

PROFICIENCY EXAM 4

Go to Noctilum’s Humdrum Peaks and inspect the indicated item. Shouldn’t take more than a minute to do.

PROFICIENCY EXAM 5

Believe it or not, this is probably the hardest exam to complete, since it’s one of the few exams without a waypoint indicating where the items are located. While these items can be found a number of different locations and there is a chance you might already have them (I had two of the three completed by the time I got the quest), I included one location where I found each of these items. Out of the three Beagflea Squashes are the most annoying to obtain.

8x Rock Armadillos – Located by probe site 208 (near the top of Noctilum)

3x Beagflea Squashes – Can be found at FN site 316 (top of the map) or at the entrance to the Devil’s Colony (it’s that cave near the entrance to Oblivia)

6x Multi-Speckled Ladybugs – Check Sickle Rock Rise (one of the first areas you go to) if you somehow don’t have these

PROFICIENCY EXAM 6

Earning credits via FrontierNav is the same as earning Miranium, except you use research probes instead of mining ones. Now the difficulty here lies in how many research probes you have, what type they’re and the locations you have at your disposal. The best advice I can give is to find the highest letter grade research sites and plant a research probe there. You also want to try to chain as many probes as possible. This is accomplished by having three probes of the same tier on the same connection (the gamepad map will show them connected with a line). Three and five increase the effectiveness, so it’s a good way to increase your gain without getting better probes. The last thing you can do is uninstall mining probes. Generally mining probes impact your ability to gain credits and vice versa, so you can usually gain a few grand by simply removing stuff for the time being. Once the gamepad says you’ll earn a sum over 15,000 you just need to wait around until you get your profits from FrontierNav.

Proficiency Exam 7

For this one you need to equip one of the provided weapons and defeat three giant grexes. You do not need to complete all three, nor do you need to actually defeat the grexes either. Simply having the weapon equipped and having the monster die is enough to complete the mission.

PROFICIENCY EXAM 8

Your last exam asks you to complete one of three different quests. I personally did The Handy Ma-nan” and it was a total and complete pain in the ass. So for anyone looking to get this done I strongly suggest “The Pip-Squeak.” For this quest you need one Noka Mirrorstone (if you lack one check FN site 207 [basically most of the places located at the top of the map]), talk to three people, select the bottom two choices, spend around 2,300 for supplies and then talk to another person to complete it.

The Skell License

Completing all eight missions will unlock the test required to get your license. Before you get too worried, the test is really just an explanation of why you did those quests and the usual responsibility nonsense. Once you finish you’ll have your license and you’ll be gifted with your first Skell.