Don’t Worry TOO Much About Your Starting Character
Octopath Traveler Beginner Tips
At the start of Octopath Traveler, you can pick any of the eight starting characters as your main protagonist for that playthrough. While there are a couple of characters that are slightly trickier to use, here’s our advice: just pick the one you like best. Whether it’s for story reasons or you feel their skill set suits your play style best, just pick the character you resonate with the most. It’s worth noting that once you pick a character, they become your protagonist and they can never be swapped out of your party. Because of this, we don’t recommend starting with Alfyn or Cyrus for a first playthrough as they’re rather situational compared to the rest of the cast.
However, if you do decide to go with them, you’ll start unlocking secondary classes during chapter 2 of Octopath Traveler. This allows you to diversify their weapon types and skill sets, so they feel more flexible in any party composition you have. In short, if you find yourself in a position where you really like a particular character’s backstory but aren’t a fan of their starting class, those troubles will go away pretty quickly once you reach chapter 2.
Gear Up When You Can
Octopath Traveler Beginner Tips
Gear and equipment are extremely important in Octopath Traveler. You’ll find that the difficulty can spike a little as you attempt the later chapters, and if your characters aren’t geared up properly, they’ll do very little damage even to regular enemies, regardless of your level. Whenever you get to a new town, talk to all the NPCs and steal whatever items you can. You’ll also want to use Alfyn’s Inquire Path Action or Cyrus’ Scrutinize Path Action to glean more info from them, and there’s a chance you could get the armorer to sell a wider variety of equipment this way.
Check in with the armorer, and start gearing up your party. If you’re lucky, you might be able to steal some high-level equipment off NPCs with Therion as well. If you’re short on money, have Therion steal valuable items from NPCs, then sell them off. If you have Tressa in your party, she’ll occasionally find money on the ground for you, and can also extort extra cash from enemies. Don’t forget that side quests are also a great source of income in Octopath Traveler.
Level Everyone Up, Especially Olberic and H’aanit
Octopath Traveler Beginner Tips
If you want to experience every character’s story arc in Octopath Traveler, you’ll definitely need to make sure they’re all leveled up evenly. There’s about a 10 level difference between each chapter for every character, so you’ll want to keep swapping out party members as you go along to give them all equal amounts of experience. Your main character will inevitably get a little over-leveled, but don’t neglect the rest of Octopath Traveler’s cast.
More importantly, make sure Olberic and H’aanit are always getting experience. These two characters have similar Path Actions in that they can engage in 1v1 battles with NPCs. During some of their story chapters, you might find yourself in a situation where you have to fight duels with just these characters, and the rest of your party won’t be able to back you up. These battles can be a little grueling, so make sure they’re strong enough to take them on.
Be Smart About Boosting Attacks
Octopath Traveler Beginner Tips
Octopath Traveler features a boosting system where you can save up BP during each turn, then boost your attacks by several levels to deal a ton of damage. For physical attacks, boosting allows you to attack multiple times. This is extremely useful for breaking an enemy’s guard and leaving them stunned for a turn. However, you don’t get multiple attacks with elemental spells. Instead, boosting magic will simply increase the damage of that one attack. As a general rule of thumb, you should always break an enemy’s guard before unleashing a boosted magical attack in Octopath Traveler.
As you get further into Octopath Traveler, you might find that it’s also wiser not to waste your BP trying to break an enemy’s guard quickly. This is especially true for boss fights, where bosses can start charging up for their next attack. If you’re completely out of BP when this happens, you won’t be able to break their guard before the next turn, and this will allow the boss to deal massive damage to your party. Sometimes it might be wiser to only expend BP in cases of emergency, or only when their guard is broken, so you can maximize your critical damage.
Don’t forget that healing abilities can also be boosted for extra effectiveness.
Choose Complementary Secondary Classes
Octopath Traveler Beginner Tips
Once you reach chapter 2 of Octopath Traveler, you’ll start unlocking secondary classes for your characters. However, do note that each class can only be equipped by one character at a time. For instance, if you let Primrose equip Thief as a secondary class, the rest of your characters (aside from Therion, of course) won’t be able to equip it. Because of this, you’ll want to choose secondary classes that complement your characters’ starting classes. You’ll also want to take a look at the support skills from each class, and see which ones would benefit your characters the most.
For example, Alfyn’s apothecary class is well complemented by the warrior class because of the high HP he gets from one of his base support skills. The high HP allows him to tank more hits, and the warrior class gives him access to a support skill that lets him defend his allies from finishing blows. Dealing high damage also lets him recover more SP with each turn, so he always has enough to throw out an emergency heal if needed. In addition to that, you can also equip a secondary class on one character, spend some JP on some skills and unlock the support skills you want, then unequip that secondary class for someone else to use. Even if the secondary class isn’t equipped on a character, they’ll still get to keep the support skills you’ve unlocked.
Be sure to check our wiki for more information on Octopath Traveler.
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