#5: Got A Bad Reputation In Town? Go To The Tavern To Spread Some Rumors
A bad reputation isn’t something that you want. To spare yourself that fate, you’ll want to save some extra coin — you can travel to the local tavern and bribe the barkeep. He’ll spread rumors about you, improving your local reputation so you can start buying / selling again. It costs money, but it’s the only way to fix a bad reputation in a town — or, you can do good deeds, but that takes a lot longer.
Path Actions are a pretty great way to get free stuff, but you don’t want to risk using them too often and making everyone angry. If you’re worried about failing, just save your game in town and reload — save-scumming it totally possible, but I don’t recommend it. The price for a bad reputation isn’t that bad, and you should be able to afford the tavern bribes. Hopefully.
#6: Save Point / Merchant Combos Warn You Of Impending Boss Fights
Here’s a classic JRPG trope that thankfully makes a return in Octopath Traveller. When you’re exploring a dungeon, you’ll know it’s almost the end when you encounter a Merchant and a Save Point in close proximity to each other. When both of these conveniences are together, you know there’s a boss battle up ahead. The bosses in Octopath can be tricky, and healing items are cheap — stock up on more than you need.
This simple Merchant / Save Point combo doesn’t really make any logical sense. Why is there a merchant in the middle of a mansion, or in the darkest corners of the Dark Woods? Don’t worry about it! The convenience is worth it, and it means you don’t need to run back to town to stock up on the basic items you’ll need — HP restoring items, SP restoring items, and revives.
#7: Use Every Weapon At Your Disposal To Learn Weaknesses
In combat, you’ll need to exploit enemy weaknesses to succeed. Every enemy has two important elements you should be aware of — the “?” question mark boxes, and the shields. The question marks represent unknown vulnerabilities, or weaknesses — enemies have multiple weaknesses, and once you learn their weakness, it will be permanently marked on that particular enemy.
Enemies can be weak to different weapon types, or different elemental damage types. Fire, Lightning, Ice, and other special attacks can break an enemy’s shields. And you’ll need to break their shields often — lower the shield number to zero, and the enemy will “Break” — they’ll be stunned for a turn, and take extra damage. This is an important strategy for bosses and standard enemies alike.
#8: Save Boost Charges To Break Bosses — You Can Interrupt Powerful Attacks & More
And, finally, let’s talk about Boost. You earn Boost charges every turn — one each turn that you don’t use a Boost charge. You can use up to three Boost charges to enhance your attacks, or stock up to five per character in a battle. Offense is the best defense, and if you want to stun tough enemies or bosses, you’ll want to save those Boost charges.
Why? Because charging standard attacks with Boost will allow you to attack multiple times in a row. At the start of the game, you can attack up to four times (x4) in a single turn when you spend three Boost charges. That means you can know off four shields in a single attack.
That’s incredibly powerful, and once you encounter the second boss, you’ll know why. Bosses often employ two super-annoying strategies — they’ll charge up a devastating attack, or buff themselves with a deadly counter-attack ability.
You can either defend, or attack the boss vulnerabilities to Break them. Once broken, you’ll stun them for a turn, and interrupt their super-attacks or counter-attack abilities, canceling them. During tough boss battles, you’ll want to keep an eye on the blue shields of the boss, and how many Boost charges you have ready. If you can stop a boss from using its super-attacks with Boost, you’ll always want to do it.
Any important tips you think we missed? Let us know in the comments!
