Octopath Traveler

[Robert Stewart]

1 hour ago, Sasori said:

Also are those job switching stuff well hidden? I walked from Atlasdam to Noblecourt, but the only dungeon I came across rewarded me with a Moonblade instead of a job switching chance.

They're marked specifically as shrines on the minimap. Check the world map for anything that looks like a circle of columns or something. They're not dungeons, they're all just little caves that have a pedestal that gives the subclass.

---- 

Over 20 hours put into the game and I've only just started one of the chapter 2 stories. Wonder if that says more about me or the game...

 

[Sasori]

9 minutes ago, Robert of Normandy said:

They're marked specifically as shrines on the minimap. Check the world map for anything that looks like a circle of columns or something. They're not dungeons, they're all just little caves that have a pedestal that gives the subclass.

---- 

Over 20 hours put into the game and I've only just started one of the chapter 2 stories. Wonder if that says more about me or the game...

 

Ah alright in that case i've probably just not looked good enough.

[Sasori]

I just got to the scholar shrine and trader shrine so I have access to some second classes. Is there a way to get your old outfit back in battle without dropping the second job though? Primrose looks pretty good as a scholar, but I do not like the look of Therion as a merchant.

[Robert Stewart]

2 hours ago, Sasori said:

I just got to the scholar shrine and trader shrine so I have access to some second classes. Is there a way to get your old outfit back in battle without dropping the second job though? Primrose looks pretty good as a scholar, but I do not like the look of Therion as a merchant.

Not in battle I think. Though the overworld sprite doesn't change based on subclass, oddly.

[Etrurian emperor]

So how does travel banter work exactly? I know that you get the option to view banter between several characters if you have them in your party after a particular cutscene and that the window those banters are available is extremely brief. 

But there seems more to it than that. I diligently return to the inn to swap my party members after every cutscene but sometimes some characters just don't get a conversation at all despite me swapping my characters so often. And if you missed the first travel banter between two character does this lock you out of future banters between them?

[Ottservia]

3 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So how does travel banter work exactly? I know that you get the option to view banter between several characters if you have them in your party after a particular cutscene and that the window those banters are available is extremely brief. 

But there seems more to it than that. I diligently return to the inn to swap my party members after every cutscene but sometimes some characters just don't get a conversation at all despite me swapping my characters so often. And if you missed the first travel banter between two character does this lock you out of future banters between them?

as far as I can tell it you have to:

1. have the character in your party

2. be near the spot the game drops you off at at the end of the cutscene

 

[Sire]

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So how does travel banter work exactly? I know that you get the option to view banter between several characters if you have them in your party after a particular cutscene and that the window those banters are available is extremely brief. 

But there seems more to it than that. I diligently return to the inn to swap my party members after every cutscene but sometimes some characters just don't get a conversation at all despite me swapping my characters so often. And if you missed the first travel banter between two character does this lock you out of future banters between them?

From my own experience and what I have briefly seen on Youtube, there seem to be a max of 1 travel banter per character in a chapter (7 interactions total). So, if you miss the window for a character, I guess it is gone completely for that chapter. Future chapters should not be affected.

If you want, a certain Youtuber have already made a compilation of the Travel Banters of each character's storyline. Here is the link for Cyrus chapter 2.

[Robert Stewart]

Can locked chests be opened without Therion? I've been trying to use everyone nd changing up my party for most  dungeons, so it's  really annoying whenever I get to one of these if I don't have him in my party.

[Sire]

23 minutes ago, Robert of Normandy said:

Can locked chests be opened without Therion? I've been trying to use everyone nd changing up my party for most  dungeons, so it's  really annoying whenever I get to one of these if I don't have him in my party.

The purple ones? I'm pretty sure only Therion can open them due to his innate talent (like how Tressa gets money by walking around and how Cyrus can discover weaknesses before battle). So yeah, if he's not in the party, you'll have to backtrack and remember where all the unopened purple chests are.

I don't have Therion in my main party, so I'll have to go back at some point to unlock those chests...

[Samias]

Yeah, Therion is needed for purple chests. It's a bit of a pain because Tressa is my main character and I can only have three of thr others, but everyone is so good!

The usual team as of chapter 3:

Spoiler

 

Tressa - Merchant/Thief - Very good for low BP breaks using Steal HP or Steal SP, has high SP efficiency and a free regain from Rest anyway naking her a great donator of SP to the team. If her offenses are not needed, she can also donate BP to others. Attack debuff has been a huge help on a certain chapter 3 boss. Weak in aoe situations if you don't spend on Hired Help though.

Olberic - Warrior/Apothecary - Strong single target damage with swords and axes. Pretty good aoe damage too. Fast spear breaks if I am lucky. First Aid and the SP regen from attacking gives him extremely good sustain for duels without having to dip into items, and making himself immune to status effects is somewhat important too. Apothocary also buffs his HP passively. Cover kicking in has been a lifesaver on many occasions. All around a great tank and damage dealer.

Alfyn - Apothocary/Merchant - Concoct is broken for healing. Absolutely, 100% busted. Tanky healer, extremely resource efficient. He is the only one with aoe status cures, and he can take all the BP he isn't using and hand it off to Olberic or the next one...

Cyrus - Scholar/Dancer - Busted aoe damage. He's not even level 40 yet but has dealt 9999 twice on occasion. Funneling BP into him makes him a nuke. He is only a dancer for the SP regen trait and dark magic honestly, but the dagger can help with a break sometimes and I have high elemental damage daggers too. Analyze also really speeds up the weakness scouting overall. He's frail but that's why Olberic is there. Absolutely the most insane damage dealer I have right now.

Subs:

Therion - Thief/Hunter - Very useful against bow or dagger weak enemies with arrowstorm and the ability to top his SP back up. However struggles to find something to do in large enemy groups that aren't bow weak. Not bad, maybe my fourth best offensive unit. He subs in for Alfyn usually.

H'aanit - Hunter/Warrior - My other big damage person. Leg snare has been very helpful, and arrowstorm is also good. REALLY good with the right monsters in stock but less good than Olberic if she doesn't. She's also not as bulky. Third best offense, usually subs for Olberic during her story segments.

Usually benched:

Ophilia - Cleric/Scholar - She's fine but redundant. Her healing and revive magic are so much more expensive than Alfyn's because they are aoe, but Alfyn can aoe heal for a small item cost for more hitpoints and has a roughly 1000 HP lead. Shame about not having light magic usually, though. If she were higher level with the same gear as Cyrus, she would probably be mini Cyrus though. Only having one weapon type at her disposal is probably the worst aspect of this combo.

Primrose - Dancer/Cleric - Support orientated but ultimately is a bit of a weak combo to start out. She'd eventually turn those single target buffs into a wide party buff with the Dancer's ultimate ability but as a supporter she falls a little short when characters like Cyrus, H'aanit and Olberic can buff themselves.

Edit: That said I hear cleric/dancer is an extremely good combo lategame as you can turn the single target elemental damage reflect into a party wide buff. It's just not very great early on.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2018 by Samias

[Shiki]

Just for self-indulgence I will do an analysis for each of the eight Travelers. One by one because franky I don't have the time and patience to do everything at once.

Ophilia

Spoiler

Btw. I'm not going to spoil the 4 extra jobs so I will limit myself to the 8 basic jobs you get.

It's kinda sad we're starting with the one character who is probably the most underwhelming one.

Base Job & Stats:
Ophilia has at base the Cleric Job. This gives her very good E.Def and a large SP pool while E.Atk is still pretty decent. Surprisingly her P.Def isn't even that bad, having 2nd best out of the entire party (tying with Tressa and Alfyn). On the other hand she is terrible in every other stat. Most noticeably she is very slow which can be amended by using buffs or the Leghold Trap from the Hunter.
The main problem with the Cleric is the coverage. It is very lacking on the offensive side, having only access to 1 weapon and 1 element with none of them being able to hit multiple times or having amplified damage. It is very basic and later on this is pretty lackluster.
Aside from that she can either buff the E.Def or cast a single-time reflect on one ally. That's ... a thing I guess? It doesn't come up a lot though the Reflect can be useful once you get the Divine skill from the Dancer class.
Now what defines the Cleric is its access to healing skills. Unfortunately even that is mediocre at best. Both healing skills are party-wide and since healing scales with E.Def she will heal a decent amount with the cheap one while almost reaching full heal with the more expensive one.
While that is fine not being able to clear status ailments is a major downside since those are pretty relevant in this game. It also doesn't help that Revive is prohibitively expensive and without Boosts it only restores a single HP point. That's pretty awful.
The one saving grace of the Cleric job is its Divine Skill, Aelfric's Auspices. It allows the affected character to use a skill twice. This is incredible for the break rounds where you only have that much time to deal damage. Being able to use them twice doubles the damage potential which can make or break your battle plan.

Sub Job:
Based on what you heard what kind of Job do you think fits her? Well she wants a class that supplements her with more offensive tools since she lacks those, preferably something that capatilizes on her good E.Atk.
... as if it is not obvious enough I'm talking about the Scholar. It patches up her problem with a wide array of elements and the 2nd tier spells hit twice which is excellent for cracking down the shield meter. Even stats-wise she gets a big increase in her E.Atk and a bit more E.Def & SP for good measure. The only "downside" here is the overlap of staffs but really you're not going to use her to whack enemies with a staff.
One other option is Dancer. While this will gimp her offense entirely it still adds some variety to her kit, giving her access to Daggers and the Dark element. The goal here is to emphasize on a more supportive role. It complements her kit with several offensive buffs and the Divine skill of the Dancer that allows her casted buffs to become party-wide.

Verdict:
As you may guess from this analysis what makes a character good is his/her base Job and unfortunately Ophilia has arguably the worst one. Cleric doesn't offer much besides the Divine Skill and every other utility can be found in other jobs or job combinations. That being said every character is more than useable and her path action counterpart, Primrose, is not even that much better, so you may wind up using her anyway. Just keep in mind that she is the most limited character in terms of job choice if you really want to make her work.

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by The Priest

[Samias]

Ophilia character analysis

Spoiler

I think the issue with her, based on what you wrote, is that she IS good... but the parts about her that are good don't happen until late game, so she's very underwhelming before she gets a massive power spike when she locks in those Divine Skills. This makes her a great candidate to improve her skill set for those secret bosses but very underwhelming for the main game that doesn't need her crazy gimmicks. The cleric support skill of healing people over their max health is great and all but for a loooong time she's totally outpaced by Concoct/using items. She's so late game focused and her own story starts off perhaps the most lackluster of them all so she doesn't leave a great impression. What she IS good at doesn't happen until late and it becomes a toss up between whether or not you'd use Primrose for the same function.

 

[KymilliaWIN]

I'm somewhere around the middle of chapter 3 for most characters now and I have to say this game has been enjoyable. I started with Ophilia and have to say the only thing I've been annoyed with in the game is that it makes taking Primrose anywhere kind of pointless. But my big concerns about it becoming a grind fest seem to have been for naught. I regularly swap out my characters and try different sub classes on them for fun, and have been happy to enjoy the game so far mostly just based on which characters I like. My main thing is I try to keep a variant of each of the NPC interaction skills on me so I can do quests and stuff as I go (which has only caused issue when Prim is in my party and I wind up with two guides).

I am curious if it's because Ophilia is my main character (and thus highest level) that she tends to carry my party, or if it's because between healing and blasting everything with light, fire, cold and lightning. I'm only just getting Cyrus caught up a bit (as a dancer subclass), and he does seem to fill a similar role.

One criticism I have with the game is that I can just bank JP as my cleric/scholar Ophilia and then switch to dancer, unlock her useful dancer skills, and then switch back without ever entering (well I entered one and hated it) any battles. It felt cheap, but I had no motivation to stay in the dancer subclass.

[Samias]

The dancer buffs are extremely strong multipliers on damage. It's actually a very useful subjob, especially with the divine skill. The localization only says it affects foes, but it actually applies to buffs that target allies too. In this case it makes Prim a fairly good hybrid with either apothecary for a cheap, strong aoe heal and multi-turn status immunity (!!), or with cleric for party-wide elemental damage reflection (!!!). Alfyn and Ophilia can do the same with dancer as their sub job as well, although Alfyn breaks the game with concoct and is generally pretty busy pumping up BP across the team. That said, divine skills take a long time to unlock until around chapter 3, which makes it slightly harder for her to get off the ground. Then again, summoning powerful townsfolk is an extremely effective way to get in a lot of extra damage in the early game with a lucky seduction.

[Slumber]

Only just finished the intros. Excited to really get into the game now. 

Dancer, Apothecary and Merchant all seem pretty busted, so I'm sure pretty much everyone is going to be one of those, with maybe another Cleric in there somewhere. 

[Robert Stewart]

Spoilers for H'aanit's story:

I finished her chapter 4 last night. It was good, but I feel like I was missing something wrt Redeye. H'aanit said something about not being able to sense it's emotions, but what that meant was never clarified? Kinda felt like an explanation of what Redeye was or where it came from was missing. I also never had to use the herb of Grace since Redeye never tried to petrify any of my party - that was weird.

[Shiki]

Cyrus

Spoiler

"O, woe is me, doomed to never realize the full depth of my good looks and Charisma."
Indeed, you should have realized that your gaze alone is breaking the game.

Base Job & Stats:
As the typical RPG mage Cyrus focuses heavily on E.Atk with good E.Def and a large SP pool, only second to Ophilia. He has the lowest P.Atk of all 8 characters and his other stats aren't particularly amazing either. That isn't much of an issue though because the Scholar Job is utterly ridicilous and he never has to worry about anything else.
For one it offers wide elemental coverage and all of them are AoE-based. Since there is no mechanic that punish for attacking with the wrong element (like in SMT) this makes him by far the best character for the majority of the game. He can clear out mobs faster than others, be it those during random battles or accompanying bosses, thanks to his multi-hit spells, allowing him to crack down shield meters in a matter of few turns.
But there is more. Cyrus' personal trait allows him to reveal an unknown weakness at the start of the battle. This is very useful because you spent less time to snuff out weaknesses and can exploit them right from the start.

Sub Job:
Since he has high E.Def Cleric is an easy and probably the best choice for him, giving him access to healing spells with great effectiveness. This will give him another role beyond just hitting elemental weakness which can be missing in some fights.
In general Cyrus can take any 2nd Job because Scholar carries him all the way. Even physical-based jobs aren't necessary bad because all of them offer weapons to him that he can use to break gauges and he only starts with staves.

Verdict:
Cyrus is the best character throughout the game and it is highly recommended to use him in your party. Between his wide coverage of elements and free revelation of weaknesses he will always be relevant in fights and never disappoint you.
That being said he definetly falls off during the endgame because of a certain hidden Job and other characters are able to fulfill his niche on a greater scale while retaining another use from their innate Job. But that will only happen at the very end of the game where you are probably through with most of the game and by then you have unlocked far more broken Job combinations.

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by The Priest

[Slumber]

Alright. Well, I got the 100x EXP multiplier from Bewildering Grace during Alfyn's chapter 2 boss fight. Everyone in my core team went from level 30 to 50 instantly. Can't say I was expecting that.

It let me go out and explore the later areas...

Spoiler

Found all 4 of the Advanced Class shrines. Beat the Runelord after a LOOOOOT of trial and error with that boss. Immediately realized what Transfer Rune could do and gave it to Tressa. Went to the Warbringer Shrine and unlocked that job. I'll get to the Archmage and Starseer shrines soon.

 

 

[Robert Stewart]

I finished Cyrus's chapter 4. the ending was...okay, I guess.

Not sure when I'll get around to doing the lv50 dungeons.

[Sasori]

Just finished Therion's story and it felt good to see my Olberic break the damage cap several times during the boss of that chapter.

I do have a question about something else though. I purchased the apothecary's divine skill and the descriptions says it allows all items to multi target. Isn't that kind of lame since you can already do full party heals, tp heals and bp restores with the concoct command alone? It doesn't seem as good as the other divine skills so far.

[LowestRes]

I was fighting Tressa's last boss and everything was going dandy and then it was Primrose turn and I 4xBoosted her weird random dance thing for the hell of it and then the ground exploded under my feet.

She was my main mage so her elm atk was through the roof. 

I finally saw what the Game Over screen looks like.

[Samias]

1 hour ago, Sasori said:

Just finished Therion's story and it felt good to see my Olberic break the damage cap several times during the boss of that chapter.

I do have a question about something else though. I purchased the apothecary's divine skill and the descriptions says it allows all items to multi target. Isn't that kind of lame since you can already do full party heals, tp heals and bp restores with the concoct command alone? It doesn't seem as good as the other divine skills so far.

The Apothecary Divine skill affects Concoct. You can use Purifying seeds to get an even better effect for the whole party vs using dust. This means you can do crazy things with overheal health when combined with the Cleric support ability, max out on BP, and have a crazy strong party raise, all without spending further BP.

[Sasori]

5 minutes ago, Samias said:

The Apothecary Divine skill affects Concoct. You can use Purifying seeds to get an even better effect for the whole party vs using dust. This means you can do crazy things with overheal health when combined with the Cleric support ability, max out on BP, and have a crazy strong party raise, all without spending further BP.

Oh yeah single target concocts are a bit stronger then their multi counterparts. I'll try experimenting with it a little.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Sasori

[LowestRes]

 

30 minutes ago, Samias said:

The Apothecary Divine skill affects Concoct. You can use Purifying seeds to get an even better effect for the whole party vs using dust. This means you can do crazy things with overheal health when combined with the Cleric support ability, max out on BP, and have a crazy strong party raise, all without spending further BP.

I hadn't realized that skill affected Concoct. It was already the main reason I kept Alf around and this makes it even better!

[Shiki]

On 31.7.2018 at 8:49 PM, Slumber said:

Well, I got the 100x EXP multiplier from Bewildering Grace during Alfyn's chapter 2 boss fight. Everyone in my core team went from level 30 to 50 instantly. Can't say I was expecting that.

... can I just say that I want to strangle you for that?
Everytime I use that skill in its boosted form I get HP reduction to 1 followed by an explosion ... even against Caits.

Spoiler

I'm bit surprised you had such trouble with the Runeblade. He was the first Shrine I visited as well and compared to the others he was an utter joke. In comparision Warbringer took me a couple of tries with her stupid amount of damage and the other 2 became a bit more heated once they start using their Ultimate attacks.
tbf Tressa wasn't in my main party yet so I couldn't abuse the Merchant + Runeblade combo.

3 hours ago, Sasori said:

Oh yeah single target concocts are a bit stronger then their multi counterparts. I'll try experimenting with it a little.

Probably not much of a spoiler but once you can buy his best ingredients Alfyn with his Job's Divine skill breaks the game left and right.
Between multi-hit elemental breaks, debuff cleanse and 2 BP for the entire party he becomes pretty insane and that doesn't even factor in what kind of secondary Job he could take to expand his arsenal.