Octopath Traveler and the grind

[OldDirtyGamer]

Well , I really like this game and had a ton of fun with everyone in their first chapters of their stories .
But when it comes to the 2nd part of the stories I feel I am getting wrecked and need to grind to way higher than the the suggested level .
Grinding isn't too much fun as it'd basically the same enemies over and over and it's kind of getting frustrating to the point where I just may call it quits .

Any tips out there on how to ease the grind and just get good ?

 

[WestEgg]

Don't grind. Get better gear. Gear is way more important than levels. Have Tressa and Therion buy or steal everything you can get away with.

 

[Quinton]

This is sadly why a fair number of folks sour on the game. It's absolutely my GOTY 2018, personally. But you're going to see a lot of contention here and I get it.

I wish I had some good tips for you but I grinded like nobody's business and honestly didn't mind it. I'm sure somebody will have a genuinely insightful response.

 

[cubicle47b]

You also want to get secondary jobs. The boost in attack or spell power mixed with more ways to break enemies makes a huge difference.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Don't grind. Get better gear.

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[YozoraXV]

Yeah starting the chapter 2 is hard, what I did was gather the secondary job shrines. After you have those the game becomes a lot easier....except for bosses.

 

[Disclaimer]

There is no grind.

Level in Octopath means little statistically compared to equipment and build. (e.g. a level 40 character and a level 10 character equipped and built identically would deal comparable damage.)

The #1 thing you should do to bridge the gap between Chapters 1 & 2 is to unlock the sub-job system. Each sub-job is hidden in a shrine in each region's Chapter 2 field area, with the sub-job corresponding to whomever began in that region (e.g. Dancer - Sunlands; Cleric - Frostlands; Scholar - Flatlands).

And while you absolutely should do that for a large power boost, I would recommend you stop paying too much attention to Danger Levels & Recommended Levels, because of my first point. Once you're comfortable with the battle system and decently equipped, you should be able to tackle stuff in excess of 10+ levels of your group.

And finally, because level doesn't matter much, and EXP scales generously: don't worry about characters becoming underleveled while benched. A low level character can contribute when kitted with high tier gear, and will catch up quickly when fighting high level enemies regardless.

If you're struggling still, you need to reassess your understanding of the combat system, because the difference between fully utilizing it and failing to do is is gargantuan; the same boss fight could take an hour or 3 minutes. Buffs & debuffs are crucial, and you want to aim to create exponential damage windows by breaking the boss and 3x boosting with your buffed damage dealers on a debuffed boss.

 

[Arrrammis]

Level isn't really the biggest thing honestly - it certainly helps, but synergy and equipment meant more for my playthrough. About 1/3 of the way through, I started just beating most normal combats in a 1-2 rounds by managing speed (or doing this over the course of two rounds) to have Ophelia go first and buff Therion's attack, Tressa go second and pass over all of her AP to Therion, then using Therion's ulti skill to hit all enemies, and pretty much kill anything that isn't super tanky or resistant to dagger damage. That kind of thing works much better than a 'normal' fighting style, just isn't as sustainable against bosses.

There are definitely storylines that are easier, like I definitely recall doing some character's story 3 before doing other's story 2 because the difficulty difference was so crazy, or at least ran counter to my strongest party members.

 

[Liliana]

There is no grind.

Level in Octopath means little statistically compared to equipment and build. (e.g. a level 40 character and a level 10 character equipped and built identically would deal comparable damage.)

The #1 thing you should do to bridge the gap between Chapters 1 & 2 is to unlock the sub-job system. Each sub-job is hidden in a shrine in each region's Chapter 2 field area, with the sub-job corresponding to whomever began in that region (e.g. Dancer - Sunlands; Cleric - Frostlands; Scholar - Flatlands).

And while you absolutely should do that for a large power boost, I would recommend you stop paying too much attention to Danger Levels & Recommended Levels, because of my first point. Once you're comfortable with the battle system and decently equipped, you should be able to tackle stuff in excess of 10+ levels of your group.

And finally, because level doesn't matter much, and EXP scales generously: don't worry about characters becoming underleveled while benched. A low level character can contribute when kitted with high tier gear, and will catch up quickly when fighting high level enemies regardless.

If you're struggling still, you need to reassess your understanding of the combat system, because the difference between fully utilizing it and failing to do is is gargantuan; the same boss fight could take an hour or 3 minutes. Buffs & debuffs are crucial, and you want to aim to create exponential damage windows by breaking the boss and 3x boosting with your buffed damage dealers on a debuffed boss.

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Excellent post!

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

Most of the gear I've been able to purchase hasn't helped much. I'm on therions part 2 and the boss is just smashing me .

What is the secondary jobs? I may have missed that

 

[zswordsman]

Yeah getting dual jobs helps and expands the game a lot. It really made it fun and the game works a lot better when you can just start breaking it via the job system. That said, grinding is a bitch since regular mob enemies tap out at around lvl 50-60 if I remember correctly.

 

[Puggles]

I just stole everything from everyone. Never had to grind.

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

This is sadly why a fair number of folks sour on the game. It's absolutely my GOTY 2018, personally. But you're going to see a lot of contention here and I get it.

I wish I had some good tips for you but I grinded like nobody's business and honestly didn't mind it. I'm sure somebody will have a genuinely insightful response.

Click to shrink...

I do really like it and want to stick with it but it's frustrating as hell rn 🤣

 

[Disclaimer]

Most of the gear I've been able to purchase hasn't helped much. I'm on therions part 2 and the boss is just smashing me .

What is the secondary jobs? I may have missed that

Click to shrink...

I explained where to get the secondary jobs in my post.

With regard to gear, if you're purchasing from the typical town vendors: that's your mistake. They almost always sell vastly inferior gear to things you can Steal/Purchase with path actions. You can acquire some super powerful stuff right off the bat if you're diligent and patient—one of the most powerful axes in the game is in Alfyn's starting town.

 

[WestEgg]

Most of the gear I've been able to purchase hasn't helped much. I'm on therions part 2 and the boss is just smashing me .

What is the secondary jobs? I may have missed that

Click to shrink...

You can multiclass every character with another character's starting class. As Disclaimer said, every second area of each region has a job shrine, all you have to do is find it, and you can get the secondary job for any character. It gives you access to that classes spells, perks, and most abilities.

 

[zswordsman]

Most of the gear I've been able to purchase hasn't helped much. I'm on therions part 2 and the boss is just smashing me .

What is the secondary jobs? I may have missed that

Click to shrink...

Oh, you're way way under level/ equipped. You need to be using your characters special abilities in order to procure better equipment. Trisha to get deals, therion to steal weapons, etc.

There's npcs at the towns and you can see what they have in their pockets and steal it. Easiest way to get good gear.

Also there's like temples or whatever that grant you access to higher tiered jobs that have greater damage and abilities.

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

Ugh you guys are giving me a headache 🤣 but much appreciated info ill hsve to dig deeper into this tomorrow

 

[zashga]

I didn't grind, but some of the chapter 2s are definitely harder than others. It does seem to be a real difficulty spike; I don't remember having as much trouble with the chapter 3s and 4s.

If you're having trouble rather than grinding I'd recommend unlocking at least a few of the jobs so you have more options with team composition and abilities.

 

[demi]

OP, if you play this game like a "traditional" JRPG you will hit a brick wall very quickly.

I gave up trying to figure out the game's obtuse systems and just looked up how to break the game, now that it's on gamepass.

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

OP, if you play this game like a "traditional" JRPG you will hit a brick wall very quickly.

I gave up trying to figure out the game's obtuse systems and just looked up how to break the game, now that it's on gamepass.

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Yeah I'm playing on gamepass and looks like I'll have to investigate some more stuff that I thought I would haha . Fun game tho

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Yeah I'm playing on gamepass and looks like I'll have to investigate some more stuff that I thought I would haha . Fun game tho

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I went back to the game on Switch recently after having not touched it in over 2 years, and I had forgotten all about the secondary jobs. Thanks to a post by Disclaimer I was able to go around and find nearly all the temples with these jobs when I was partway through doing everyone's chapter 2s. (I even found one of them that I was clearly not meant to be in yet!)

 

[Zyae]

OP, if you play this game like a "traditional" JRPG you will hit a brick wall very quickly.

I gave up trying to figure out the game's obtuse systems and just looked up how to break the game, now that it's on gamepass.

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the only thing you need to look up is secondary job locations. I have no idea what game systems you're describing as "obtuse"

 

[OldDirtyGamer]

Like I had no clue about the jobs and still don't understand that 🤣 but I'll definitely look into it

 

[Disclaimer]

Like I had no clue about the jobs and still don't understand that 🤣 but I'll definitely look into it

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Just explore each region's Chapter 2 outdoor areas. If you look on your mini-map there, you'll see a conspicuous new icon; follow it, and you'll reach a shrine where you'll unlock a secondary job, allowing anyone in your party to have a second fully functional job.

The job system will let you massively customize your group—not just because each member will be 2x as versatile with active abilities and useable weapon types to break with, but because you can mix-and-match job passives to create OP builds.

 

[matrix-cat]

I dropped Octopath about 20ish hours in because I was just getting stomped by bosses, but the thing was that grinding didn't help me. I did go and grind for a while, and when I came back I still got stomped by those bosses. I realized there had to be more to it that I just wasn't understanding, and that was what made me give up. I asked myself whether I really wanted to put the time in to learn what I'd been missing, and weighed it up against a story that I really wasn't into and didn't care about seeing the end of, and said nah baby, I'm out.

 

[Dinjoralo]

Don't grind. Get better gear. Gear is way more important than levels. Have Tressa and Therion buy or steal everything you can get away with.

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In my playthrough, it still felt like a lot of grinding was needed in order to get that money for outfitting at least four party members decently. I also hit the same wall at the second chapters.

 

[Deleted member 4090]

Well , I really like this game and had a ton of fun with everyone in their first chapters of their stories .
But when it comes to the 2nd part of the stories I feel I am getting wrecked and need to grind to way higher than the the suggested level .
Grinding isn't too much fun as it'd basically the same enemies over and over and it's kind of getting frustrating to the point where I just may call it quits .

Any tips out there on how to ease the grind and just get good ?

Click to shrink...

Grinding does functionally nothing. Like, among the least RPG has ever done in a non-scaling RPG.

It is all about gear, and the way to get gear is to push into higher tier areas and loot/shop/PATH your way to better gear.

In my playthrough, it still felt like a lot of grinding was needed in order to get that money for outfitting at least four party members decently. I also hit the same wall at the second chapters.

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Path actions and regular chests are more important than just buying from shops.

 

[psynergyadept]

Don't grind. Get better gear.

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Don't buy better gear....STEAL THE GEAR!!!

i scum-saved the shit out of that game to steal fucking everything! Specially gear that has like a 3% chance of success, carried me through most of the game.

 

[Calamari41]

Ugh you guys are giving me a headache 🤣 but much appreciated info ill hsve to dig deeper into this tomorrow

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I feel you, but it sounds a lot more complicated than it is. It's very intuitive once you get moving on it. Secondary jobs really open up the combat system big time.

 

[EmptyGirl]

I genuinely don't understand what people mean when they say Octopath requires grinding. Except for maybe the super boss if you haven't been using all the characters equally, I'll give you that. I never had to grind, the experience from just playing the game normally was enough. If I lost a fight, I changed my strategy, build, or equipment. If you understand the game's systems you can get through most of it without much resistance.

 

[Metroidvania]

Gear is key - steal whatever you can if you've therion as a higher level party member, or Tressa if you've got some spare cash and/or don't have therion at a higher level.

(Honestly, even with Therion, unless you've already grinded, resetting/save scumming for low% steal attempts felt like another form of grinding for me, but may not for you)

But realistically, there are ways to 'cheese' the level grinding with abusing Cyril's 'less encounters' skill to get some monster end-game-ish staves super early on, and then you can get guaranteed encounters on one of the spots in the southwest, abuse the hunter's multi-hit multi-enemy bow skill, followed by the merchant's donate BP skill, to get off a full-power multi-lightning hit and kill the level 45 enemies at as low as level 20 or so.

The main thing the levels provide is only really HP and some SP boosts, though - the BP boost was honestly nicer.

Youtube's got several better summaries.

edit:

Also, the Dancer has a 'mysterious dance' skill that can include a variety of effects - but the big ones are that you can get EXP/JP multipliers up to 10 or 100x.

The catch is that you can get negative effects as well, so you have to be careful, but it's by far the fastest 'easy' way to grind by just fishing until you get a multiplier.

 

[Conrad Link]

Just do that dance that can make it a certain x exp points reward and try until you get a huge one.

Ez pz.

 

[Tohsaka]

You shouldn't ever have to grind in that game.

 

[Creed Bratton]

I grinded for like an hour outside of Stonegard and ended up going from level 17 to 22 on my main party to where I could start doing some chapter 2 stuff. Not the most exciting, but it was worth it.

Also, check out some guides on YT on how to get better gear. Finding shrines that had really good gear was a big help as well, even if some of the shrines will completely kick your ass (I ran away from encounters a lot in some of them).

 

[Jaded Alyx]

In my playthrough, it still felt like a lot of grinding was needed in order to get that money for outfitting at least four party members decently. I also hit the same wall at the second chapters.

Click to shrink...

Money seems to flow like water

 

[ActStriker]

Most of the best gear is stolen anyway iirc

 

[Terror-Billy]

I'm 30 hours in and while I'm loving the game, I had go grind like a motherfucker twice in order to beat 2 bosses. Great game tho.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

I just finished this game and the final ending last week. 60 hours. Lots of grinding. Grinding didn't bother me much once I got past the initial hump of those early chapters.

 

[twofive]

I got the second jobs very early and I didn't have to grind for this game. Obviously, I didn't went into this game blind.

 

[dyreschlock]

I don't remember grinding in this game at all.

 

[thediamondage]

thanks for the thread, ive been playing the game off and on on Gamepass and while I don't love the game I wanna stick with it a few hours a month and the thought of grinding for hours would have me abandon the game asap. Learning its more about gear and sub jobs is cool and will help me stick with it, I think.

 

[Tibarn]

The only grind I did in this game was after completing the 8 stories, the gap between the last bosses from the main game and the secret global boss is really big IMO (or I'm not good enough at the game).

 

[Gotdatmoney]

There is no grinding in this game. It's gear and ability based, not level based.

 

[DevilMayGuy]

Just steal everything that isn't bolted down. It's dumb that it is basically required to do that if you don't wanna grind, but don't worry about levels. Maybe save scumming doesn't suck as bad on PC

I'd worry more that the game loses most of its appeal after doing the first 2 chapters of everyone and realizing they all basically have cut and paste backstories and don't meaningfully interact with each other for 99.9% of the game, and that every dungeon has the same shitty layout of a few corridors with 2 side chests that aren't at all hidden. At least the boss music is good.

 

[Grunty]

Even now with following the advice of not grinding and relying just on equipment and abilities, I still feel I'm having to grind after a boss kicks my ass. I think if Square had allowed passive experience gain where everyone gets experience regardless of who is or isn't in your party would have really helped.

 

[Tailzo]

Well , I really like this game and had a ton of fun with everyone in their first chapters of their stories .
But when it comes to the 2nd part of the stories I feel I am getting wrecked and need to grind to way higher than the the suggested level .
Grinding isn't too much fun as it'd basically the same enemies over and over and it's kind of getting frustrating to the point where I just may call it quits .

Any tips out there on how to ease the grind and just get good ?

Click to shrink...

I'm doing a solo run, that is clearing 4 chapters without recruiting any of the other travelers. My tip is to do the inverse of that, get other party members as soon as possible.

Anyway I'm at the chapter 4 last boss. Wish me luck :)

 

[LordHuffnPuff]

"Don't grind, just steal" people say, not remembering that stealing is gated by Therion's level relative to the level of the target...

 

[DevilMayGuy]

"Don't grind, just steal" people say, not remembering that stealing is gated by Therion's level relative to the level of the target...

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Save scum, homie

Yeah you're right it still sucks

 

[zswordsman]

The only grind I did in this game was after completing the 8 stories, the gap between the last bosses from the main game and the secret global boss is really big IMO (or I'm not good enough at the game).

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Yeah i don't take everyone saying that there's no grinding seriously because of this. The gap between each characters stories and the post game boss is huge and grinding on enemies that don't go much higher than the last character chapter sucks hard.

 

[CaviarMeths]

Leveling up gives you a bit more HP and SP. Everything else comes mostly from gear. If you're getting wrecked, the better solution is to improve your gear and improve your party composition. You shouldn't need to grind until after Chapter 4.

"Don't grind, just steal" people say, not remembering that stealing is gated by Therion's level relative to the level of the target...

Click to shrink...

"Stealing is gated by Therion's level relative to the level of the target," people say, not remembering that saving the game before stealing is a neat trick.