Best driver for each blade/weapon at endgame is an easy question to find answers for.

My question is, how should I be spending core crystals throughout the game? I know that at endgame Rex can bond all blades, but I would wager that using no crystals on him for a massive portion of the playthrough is likely not a viable option for a novice.

Should I just feed each driver equally? Is there something I should fish for, and then back off the bonding once I have it? What do I need to have a serviceable team in the early-to-mid game? What mistakes should I try to avoid in regards to giving crystals to drivers?

I'm not asking for a 'good build'. I'm asking for 'a methodology for developing a good build as I progress through the game'.

An adjacent question is what to do with Tora/Poppy? I'm personally not a fan of Tiger-Tiger and would rather not interact much with it, but the DLC pack gave me a bunch of ether. I suspect I can't use that ether to completely make her an endgame fighter (and I wouldn't want to do that even if I could), but I figure I might be able to buy upgrades for Poppy to make her a serviceable crutch until I can replace them with a standard driver. Any suggestions on how viable this method would be, or how to go about doing it?

I'm on chapter 4 and have been breezing through the game on Easy mode with very little skill. I tried the first Easy mode challenge and can't even get past the third wave.

Party is Rex/ Mythra, Nia/Dromarch/ Fiora/ Lightning Healer Girl, and Tora/ Poppi

My main goal is unlocking all costumes as early as possible

Just thought to ask to get this community rolling. What's everyone's number of hours for each entry? They're quite big games but it feels like time just flies playing these titles.

For myself, I only played DE and 2 (currently busy with this one), and I expected them to be around equal length but it seems I was wrong in that respect.

Spent about 100 hrs in DE (powered through the last bit from Lorithia onwards since I just wanted to wrap up the story and see where it would go at that point).

For XC2 I am at around the same playgime but I'm still messing around in Tantal (ch7 I think? Been spending too much time maxing affinity charts for rare blades and doing blade missions, need me those field skills haha), so it will likely be at least twice that amount before I finish (if I don't burn out before then).

This also makes me wonder about XC3, is it more akin to DE lengthwise, or does it have similar mechanisms as XC2 to keep you engaged (and waste time not moving the story forward)?

Love to hear your stories, and whether you felt the time was well spent (some of these blades just seem not worth the effort...)

I played Xenoblade Chronicles and had heard the system of Xenoblade 2 is lot more complicated.

Please assume in your answer that I'm not very good at this game, I've been running around in casual and spamming topple