Octopath Traveler: How To Deal More Than +9,999 Damage

Octopath Traveler breaks one of the old-school limits found in many JRPGs — yes, you can go beyond the 9,999 damage maximum. Thanks to a particular skill, you’ll be able to dish out insane damage, up to 99,999, and here we’re going to talk a little bit about that.

Doing more than 9,999 isn’t exactly easy, especially while you’re working on completing the first main story arc. If you haven’t finished your primary character’s story, it won’t happen often, but it can totally happen. If you’ve got high enough physical attack or elemental attack, you can start dishing out insane damage pretty early on. Let’s discuss how it all works.

More Octopath Traveler guides on Gameranx:

How To Deal More Than +9,999 Damage | Advanced Combat Guide

At a certain point, Octopath Traveler isn’t really about using your whole party to attack in a single turn. No — instead, it’s all about the setup. To do the most damage possible, you need to weaken your enemy, buff your friends, and strike with everything you’ve got — sometimes, it’s best to leave the actual fighting to a single, specific, powerful character.

I’ll talk about that stuff later. For now, let’s delve into the basic — how to actually remove the 9,999 damage limit.

To do more than 9,999 damage, you need the Warrior Skill ‘Surpassing Power’
- This skill is the fourth passive skill unlocked by the Warrior Job.
- Once equipped, the character will be able to do a maximum of 99,999 damage in a single hit.

Once a Passive Skill is unlocked, you can use it / equip it forever. If you switch sub-jobs, you can still use and access any passive skills you’ve already unlocked. Any character can unlock and equip ‘Surpassing Power’ — even if they aren’t a Warrior.

To actually start dishing out insane damage, of the +9,999 variety, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind. Leveling up is a good start — you can increase Phys. Atk and Elem. Atk to the max, or you can use buffs.

There are multiple powerful support characters — the Merchant Class and Dancer Class are important. Make sure to include these as main / sub-jobs in your party.

Doing As Much Damage As Possible With Buffs & Debuffs

Every enemy has a Guard — breaking their guard, or attacking them with their vulnerabilities, will leave them stunned and weakened for one turn.
- A broken enemy takes 1.5x damage.
The Merchant’s “Donate BP” ability is incredibly powerful. You can donate one BP or multiple BP — if you use Boosts, you can actually donate multiple BP in a single turn.
- Merchants become even more powerful once you unlock secret sub-jobs. With certain passives, abilities that effect a single character work on the whole party — Rest and Side-Step become incredible support skills.
The Thief is another great support character. “Share SP” and “Steal SP” are a great combo you can use to refill SP on your allies without having to waste items in combat.
- The Thief becomes really important because of their “Armor Corrosive” ability. This lowers Phys. Def on the effected enemy.
The Dancer is another support character you absolutely need. She can enhance Phys. Atk or Elem. Atk with Lion Dance / Peacock Strut respectively.
The Hunter doesn’t have many support abilities, but “Take Aim” is very useful early-on. It increases Accuracy and Critical on your entire party for three turns.

The goal of every boss fight is to do as much damage as possible in a single blow. To do that, you’ll need to take time and setup an amazing attack from your strongest character. This can either be a physical or elemental attack — before unlocking the Sorcerer secret job, it’s most likely going to be a Divine Phys. Atk.

EXAMPLE:

For this example, we’re going to hit a boss with a single-target Divine skill that does Phys. Attack damage. The Warrior Divine Skill, Brand’s Thunder, will work here.
- After unlocking the secret job abilities, you can make your abilities even stronger. Divine skills usually won’t apply to other Divine skills.
- Aelfric’s Auspices (Cleric) buffs a character so their skills will trigger twice.
- Alephan’s Enlightenment (Scholar) buffs a character so magic spells that normally hit all enemies will instead target a single enemy multiple times, and at a higher frequency.
To begin, you can Share BP with the Merchant to unleash a Divine skill within the first or second turn.
Buff your Warrior with the Dancer’s Lion Dance, and debuff the enemy with the Thief’s Armor Corrosive. You can also buff with the Hunter’s Take Aim to improve Accuracy and Critical — very important for multi-hit attacks.
Break your opponent. While your Warrior has a Phys. Atk Buff, and your target has a Phys. Def Debuff, you can strike.
If you have ‘Surpassing Power’ equipped, you can hit for more than 9,999 damage.

Your damage output increases exponentially once you’ve unlocked the secret jobs. You can learn about those classes with a guide in the menu above. It’s well-worth it, but if you’re struggling to tackle some of the harder bosses in Chapter 2, 3 or 4 — using buffs and keeping your team healed with an AoE Cleric is the safest strategy for victory.