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loregoddess · 2 months

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Would you be willing to share your builds/levels for the final boss(es) of Octopath II? I'm trying to figure out how much more grinding I realistically need to do to actually finish this game.

Oh yeah, sure! I uh, had a lot more thoughts on this than I realized I would, so I'm sticking most of this under a read more, and I've tried to be vague about spoilers bc I wasn't sure how much you knew already from osmosis or looking at other online tips/guides. Also I ended up breaking things up into sections for easier navigation, because there is...a lot.

Table of Contents

General Thoughts

General Overarching Strategies

Character Preferences

Notes on Bosses

General Thoughts

Full disclosure, I've basically just been rotating my party and using whoever's the lowest level to try and catch them up on levels. Because I started with Ochette, she's locked into the party and is ungodly powerful as a result, but this will occur with literally anyone you start with (my first run I was using Osvald and he was so damned powerful by the end of the game). So I don't have a real "strategy" per boss (except for the optional superboss) so much as I switch around passive skills and subjobs based on who's lowest in levels and who I have to have in the party (Ochette + whoever's story I'm completing).

I will say, I don't feel like most of the bosses require a lot of level grinding, at least not for the character story final bosses. I kinda assume that the recommended level of 45 is like, the average of the entire team. As a general rule, I rarely use the fast-travel feature until I'm in the postgame section, and will literally walk my team everywhere, which helps to maintain levels so that I don't have to grind (and even if I do it's like, running laps in the dungeon right before the boss area until my lowest level person gains two or three levels, which only takes about about half an hour for me usually). Like, when I finished Hikari's route first, I had to run laps before the miniboss to get my two lowest team members to lv. 40, but Ochette was already lv. 52 at this point, and Hikari was about 42 or 43, I think. But I haven't needed to run any laps for any of the other bosses so far.

Also, I feel like Octo2 is a lot more balanced when it comes to stats/subjobs, and you can get away with doing a lot of weird things that work out in the long run so long as you're familiar with the battle mechanics and passive skills and how to make them work for you (which was true for Octo1 too, but I found myself almost always having at least Tressa and Therion in my team so I could get free money and open the purple chests w/out needing to backtrack, which limited my team compositions a lot more than Octo2, where no one character has a field-specific skill that makes them more or less useful than another).

General Overarching Strategies

I do have some general preferences. I like to have a at least one cleric and one apothecary in the party, and they can't be the same character (unless there's multiple clerics or apothecaries) just in case I need one of them to revive the other. This is mostly bc I like having the option to heal all, heal single, cure status ailments, or revive on hand at all times (as a result, if I'm using these as subjobs, they usually end up on a character who isn't my main damage-dealer, but even then it depends on the damage-dealing character).

I also like to have a merchant so I can use Collect bc I like having money, and giving the merchant subjob to certain characters is really helpful bc of the Rest skill being able to restore SP and cure status ailments. Generally I also like to have a hunter for Leghold Trap, or Agnea with Windy Refrain (gained by visiting Sealticge's shrine in the Leaflands) so I can manipulate when the boss attacks. Aside from those classes, I end up being really flexible depending on what I think I need. (As a side note, Leghold Trap + A Step Ahead from the inventor job can be really useful if you go in knowing a boss's weaknesses ahead of time, since you can break the boss and deal a lot of damage before they even get a chance to act).

Oh, but as a general rule, whenever I notice a character start to hit the 9999 damage limit output, I go and get DMD from the warrior class for them, because I love seeing big numbers go boom by optimizing my damage output. I also switch around subjobs a lot depending on what I think I'll need, and if I die during a boss fight I will go and rearrange my jobs or skills before I try level-grinding.

I also don't use any stat-enhancing nuts until the optional superboss, but I really don't think they're needed for any of the character story final bosses anyhow. If you've used them already that's fine though, I've totally mismanaged my nuts in both Octo1 and Octo2, and it's nothing a bit of level-grinding won't solve when it comes to the post-game bosses.

Character Preferences

Here's an outline of how I like to use all the characters. Keep in mind, everyone has their general preferences for how they like to use each character, and there's no right or wrong way to use a character, this is just what works for my playstyle.

Ochette

General: I use Ochette mostly to break enemies quickly with her Provoke monsters ability, and to output a lot of phys. damage. She's one of my main damage-dealers, and I rarely use her for support.

Latent power notes: She has one of the best latent powers for dealing damage, since the damage of her attacks scales with her level. I use her latent power as soon as the boss is broken, and I'll save Ochette's BP to use it at a full boost. Generally I use Beastly Fangs, but if the boss has multiple enemies that need to be taken care of (i.e. Partitio's final boss fight), then Beastly Claws is excellent as well. I don't really use Beastly Howl because there are better options to achieve the same effects that don't require Ochette to drain her latent power. I always use Ochette's latent power before I use divine skills or legendary beasts, since the latent power will refill throughout the battle and it doesn't cost SP.

Favorite subjobs: My primary subjob for Ochette is warrior, since it gives her access to Brand's Blade which is a good alternative to Beastly Fangs, and the warrior stats buff her already high physical stats. Alternately I will use her in merchant, but specifically for the optional superboss so she has access to Hired Help's Beastlings in case she has to use them (notes on that in the boss section below).

Notes on monsters: In general you can have whatever monsters you enjoy using for Ochette's Provoke ability, but I highly recommend having at least one monster that can deal axe damage twice to all enemies (any level, even the highest level "2x axe (all) monster" will only deal 1 damage to the postgame bosses, so choose whichever monster you like best), and a monster that can deal either dagger, axe, staff, lightning, or light damage to all (recommend getting a 9/10 strength monster for this, as they tend to have additional effects to their attacks such as debuffing the enemies or buffing the party; the Peek-a-boo from the area around Timberain tends to be a favorite because it debuffs enemy phys. and elemental defenses). Those two monsters will be the most useful for clearing the optional superboss, and a lot of bosses in general have a weakness to axes.

Castti

General: Castti works well as either a damage-dealer or support, so I tend to change her subjob depending on the rest of the team.

Latent power notes: I refuse to use concoct unless I have her latent active so that I can save on the ingredients. The only time I use concoct without the latent is during the two postgame bosses. I managed to get through the final boss fight my first run with only one pomegranate leaf thanks to her latent power (I uh, forgot to stock up at the secret market, but if you need more rare ingredients for concoct, the merchants that show up at night in the area to the west of Healeaks will sometimes sell stuff like pomegranate leaves).

Favorite subjobs: If I'm using her as a damage-dealer, than warrior and armsmaster are my go-to. For support, I tend to stick with inventor or merchant.

Notes on concoct: I use it almost exclusively for healing and buffing the team, and the ability to give everyone BP is super useful for setting up other damage-dealers and support characters.

Throne

General: One of my main damage-dealers, one of the best damage-dealers in the game. I was able to hit the 99,9999 damage limit with Throne thanks to the fact that Aeber's Reckoning scales with speed and seems to take the phys. attack stat into consideration as well. Optimize her speed and give her a high-damage dagger and she's golden for dealing wild amounts of damage.

Latent power notes: I don't have a particular pattern for how I use Throne's latent power, since how I use it depends on the battle situation. Sometimes I use it so Throne can act as temporary support, and sometimes I use it to set up Armor Corrosive and then use Aeber's Reckoning. Really, whatever I need a double-turn for, this power comes in handy for.

Favorite subjobs: Hunter for sure, it gives Throne an excellent boost to speed and evasion while also buffing the phys. attack stat nicely. Dancer is a decent subjob as well bc it gives her even higher speed/evasion stats than hunter, and access to Dagger Dance which is a nice aoe attack when level-grinding, but overall Dancer!Throne is kind of glassy for my tastes, and I like having Leghold Trap as an option for Throne's debuff repertoire in boss fights. I don't mind using merchant for Throne either, since Rest and Collect are useful skills for her to have.

Osvald

General: One of my main damage-dealers, magical edition. He's very squishy though, a true glass canon, so I have to either patch up his defenses with equipment and passive skills, or have someone dedicated to healing on the team.

Latent power notes: Love his latent power, it's especially good if you stack it with the buffs from either Advanced Magic (or the Stone of Truth, which just provides the 2x spell buff from Advanced Magic permanently), or Alephan's Wisdom. I would recommend using this at a full boost for optimal damage output. Like Ochette, I use this as early as I can so it an refill as the battle goes on.

Favorite subjobs: Cleric. Osvald's base stats make him an excellent healer, and the extra magical stats do him nothing but favors; plus having access to Holy Light is useful when his latent is empty since it'll typically deal more elemental damage for less SP than one of his aoe spells, and Mystic Staff can restore his SP. Alternatively though arcanist will grant him the best magic stats possible. I also didn't mind using him as an apothecary high elemental defense means good healing, and he can be a decent support when he's not blasting enemies off the screen.

Partitio

General: I tend to use him mostly as support, but he can deal decent damage when he's not supporting. Mostly he's a main support character for me though.

Latent power notes: Very useful for getting extra BP whenever you need it, and it tends to refill pretty fast so I use it liberally whenever I need BP.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to have Partitio mainly as an apothecary because it gives him a nice buff to his physical stats and more support skills to use (he doesn't make a bad healer either, especially with access to lots of BP from his latent). It also gives him access to a decent aoe attack (Sweeping Cleave) and Poison Axe, which are both handy to have. Alternatively, Paritio does okay as a warrior, thief, or hunter if I want to boost his damage-output, and inventor or dancer are good jobs to give him for extra support options (although I really only use dancer for the optional superboss). I'm thinking of trying him in the conjurer job for a while in my current run to see if the extra magic stats make Bifelgan's Bounty more useful for Partitio, since he seems to lean more physically for me than magically. (I hardly used conjurer except to get SP Saver my first run bc I couldn't figure out how to use it effectively, but I know it's gotta be useful somehow).

Other notes: If it wasn't obvious, the merchant job is one of my favorites as a subjob, and it gives Partitio a really nice set of skills. I don't actually use Sidestep that often and instead focus on things like Donate BP to boost my main damage-dealers in a pinch. Collect is a great skill bc I like having money.

Agnea

General: Main support, and a secondary magical damage-dealer. I tend to focus her on supporting, but her high elemental attack (especially paired with the Mooneater dagger) puts her almost on par with Osvald. She also has access to Windy Refrain which moves ALL enemies' actions to the end of the next turn, which is super useful for turn manipulation (and like Leghold Trap, very powerful when paired with A Step Ahead).

Latent power notes: Honestly I rarely use her latent power. Mostly I use it in general battles when I have her subjob set to scholar so she can use a boosted Analyze on all enemies. It is useful for using Collect or Steal on all enemies as well, but again, there's very few bosses with multiple enemies that you can Collect/Steal from. I think I might be able to use the latent with the apothecary's Rehabilitate which would be very useful on occasion, but I've never tried it bc Agnea is so optimized for magic that the phys. aspects of the apothecary subjob don't seem to fit her. Might have to try that out at some point though.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to have her as a merchant (Bifelgan's Bounty is a very nice powerful single-enemy elemental attack for her), but she does well as a scholar (excellent stat boosts to her magical stats) or thief (nice boosts to speed/evasion). She should technically make a good cleric as well, but I've never tried it out since I usually have another cleric present when Agnea's in the team.

Dance session notes: Dance session comes into play any time you use a dance skill, including Dagger Dance, so if you have the right follower, you can really benefit from Agnea's dance session. For most of the game I've been dragging along an NPC from Cropdale who offers Calming Rhythm (restores 500 HP and 40 SP to the target), but there's a dance session called Celestial Chorus which grants 1 BP to the target, which is super useful in boss fights since extra BP means more boosted attacks. The Allure page on the Wiki (here) has a full list of the dance sessions, and potential NPCs who offer them. Dance session boosts the power of the support dances by granting extra support bonuses beyond buffing stats, and Agnea's probably one of the strongest support characters as a result.

Temenos

General: Like Castti, I use Temenos half as support, half for dealing damage, but unlike Castti who I tend to rely on more for support, I rely on Temenos more for damage.

Latent power notes: His latent power is wickedly good for his Coerce path action, especially when paired with Sixfold Strike from the armsmaster job, and technically you could use it the same way in boss fights to break shields quickly, it's just...armsmaster is better on other characters in boss fights for the physical stat buffs it offers as a job (although Temenos did hit the 9999 damage cap when I had him as an armsmaster in one of the side dungeon boss fights, so Armsmaster!Temenos isn't entirely useless as a phys. damage-dealer). But Temenos's latent power + armsmaster + Full Power from the merchant class makes Coercion much easier.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to move Temenos around a lot in subjobs depending on what I need. He makes for a decent scholar due to the magical stats buffs, and dancer offers him decent stats as well and more support options, but my favorite subjob for Temenos is arcanist because it gives him access to light and dark elemental attacks, making the most of the Sunshade staff, and most importantly Reflective Barrier. See, my favorite thing to do with Temenos is have a dancer use Sealticge's Seduction on him, have him use Prayer for Plenty at full boost (hopefully on a team that's at full HP) to boost everyone's HP (up to possibly 9999), and then use Reflective Barrier and/or Sacred Shield at various levels of boost so I can yeet spells back at their caster(s) or otherwise cut down damage for a little while. Also arcanist offers really nice magical stats, and gives Temenos a good boost to his total SP pool, which is handy for when I do try to use his personal EX skill (bc of his personal EX skill, you will want to have something equipped that lets him regen SP, bc he can drain his SP really fast otherwise).

Hikari

General: Main damage-dealer. Makes for a sturdy backup support when you need one though, but I focus on his high phys. damage stats.

Latent power notes: Very useful and somewhat similar to Ochette's latent skills. Depending on Hikari's SP and available skills, I either use Hienka at a partial boost, and then follow up with Brand's Blade, or Tenretsuzan at full boost. Alternatively, if I need Hikari to do some backup support or use another skill, I'll use Hienka at full boost, and then use his bonus action for whatever. Sougetsusen isn't bad as an aoe attack when you need it though. Like Ochette and Osvald, I use Hikari's latent early in the battle so it can refill and be used later.

Favorite subjobs: Hikari does great as a merchant because of the access to Rest, which makes his Challenge path action easier to use without using all your healing items. Also Rest restores SP, which is super useful for Hikari since he can burn through SP really quickly between his warrior skills and Learned Skills. When I don't have him as a merchant, I like to use him as my armsmaster bc it gives him the best phys. stat buffs, and giving Hikari a Blessing in Disguise with the armsmaster subjob means you can use a lot of high-power equipment with negative effects without suffering the negatives (you can do that for any of your armsmasters by the way). When I don't have him in those two jobs, he makes for a decent apothecary (not as good at the healing though) or hunter.

Notes on Learned Skills: Like Ochette's monsters, you can more or less have whichever Learned Skills you enjoy using, but I like holding onto Divine Dual-Edge from the Ch3 fight with General Rou since it's a useful aoe attack, and picking up Limb from Limb from the Sanctum Knight in Stormhail (enter the Sanctum Knight HQ, go down the left hall and knock out the guy standing in front of a room, then go into the room and the guy in there is the one you can learn Limb from Limb from). Limb from Limb offers a powerful 4x sword attack on a single enemy, and was the main skill used in the guide I found when I needed help with the optional superboss. You can find a list of Learned Skills on the Wiki as well (here).

Notes on Bosses

Most of the character story final bosses are pretty easy, or if they're tough it's bc of their stats and not battle gimmicks, so it's just a matter of chipping away their health. Here's a few battle gimmicks I'd keep an eye out for though:

Castti's final boss has an ongoing battle condition where the entire team's max HP is reduced every turn. You can bypass this with the Sealticge's Seduction + Prayer for Plenty tactic, but it's still risky (Angea ended the battle with a total of 5 HP on my current run). It's best to just try and finish this battle quickly. (Your team's HP will return to normal after the battle).

Throne's boss has the ability to lock the party's main job's skills (so Throne won't be able to use thief skills) until broken so subjobs are very important, and this boss can summon all of her previous bosses (not all at once, but over the course of the battle), so this can be a tough fight. There's a few other gimmicks this boss can access (I think subjobs can be blocked until the boss is broken at one point as well), so paying attention to what's happening in the battle and having a flexible battle plan will help. Either bring a lot of healers, or find a way to output a lot of damage so you can skip the prev. boss summons and gimmicks.

Partitio's final boss has three enemy units you have to defeat before the armor on the main boss's shield fall off. Dealings lots of aoe damage is useful for the first part of the battle. A Step Ahead + Agnea's Windy Refrain is probably useful as well (for my current run I did not have A Step Ahead equipped, and had to do quite a bit of healing in the first half of the battle).

Hikari has the most stages to his final boss. You have to fight a miniboss (which you can save after), the final boss part 1, then there's a cutscene and Hikari has to fight a battle via the Challenge path action, and then the final boss part 2. So just be prepared for like, a lot of battle segments.

(I also seem to remember something being kinda tricky about Ochette's final boss, but hers was the first story I completed on my first run, and it's the story I'm saving till last on my current, so I dunno if my troubles with her boss were "this was the first final boss I fought" or if there's actually something weird about the battle).

As for character levels, for my current run I started with Hikari's final chapter, then worked my way to Castti, Osvald, Throne, Agnea, Partitio, and I plan to do Temenos and Ochette next. As I noted earlier, Ochette, my starter, was at lv. 52-ish during Hikari's chapter, with my lowest level team members being at about 38-ish and I had to do some laps to get them to lv. 40. Right now, going into Temenos's final chapter, Ochette's level is in her mid-high 60s (which probably will be closer to or over 70 bc I want to explore some dungeon areas on the Sundering Sea before I head to Toto'haha), and my lowest level characters are like, 51 or 52, which is well above the rec'd lv. 45. So again, I don't think you have to level-grind for the character story final bosses, because just by fighting them and travelling to their locations, your characters are going to get stronger.

As for the two postgame bosses...

If you do want to level-grind, I would suggest the Infernal Castle, as it's the highest level area of the game at lv. 55. There's also ways to optimize the amount of exp and jp you get via passive skills and equipment, so make sure to move that around before you level-grind. Also I found bumping the game speed to x2, and using powerful aoe attacks made the grinding go so much faster (I only spent maybe 4-8 hours grinding total my first run? on a file where I put somewhere between 180-200 hours into, so basically no time at all for grinding). I would not rely on Bewildering Grace, Agnea party-wiped the team more often even than the optional superboss killed me, so it's just not a safe skill. Also if you fight the Infernal Castle's miniboss, it can show up as a random encounter, and I personally found that the exp gained from fighting it again wasn't worth the time spent. I gained more exp per minute just entering minor battles, smacking the enemies with a double-boosted aoe attack (from Step Ahead and Boost Start from merchant), and then moving onto my next battle (courtesy of Vigorous Victor from apothecary). It's tedious, but it does work.

I would suggest completing all the side quests before beginning the final chapter, as there's a lot of nice accessories and equipment you can get. Keep in mind that fighting the optional superboss is actually one of the side quests, so while you can track your completion of side quests by area in the Journal, one of the areas will be incomplete until you kill the optional superboss (you do not have to fight the superboss to complete the final chapter, and the ability to complete side quests opens back up after you defeat the final boss). The optional superboss is absolutely meant to be more difficult to defeat than the actual final boss.

Also there's technically four bosses in the postgame. Two minor bosses during the final chapter segments, the actual final boss, and the optional superboss. The two minor bosses are easy though, they're no stronger than the character story final bosses (although for my first run I had fought the optional superboss first, so I was waaay overleveled for the final chapter segments; still the two bosses couldn't do anything fancy as far as I could tell).

For the Actual Final Boss, I accidentally steamrolled this dude my first run bc I fought the optional superboss first and had misused my nuts and therefore had to level-grind to make up for stats. Half my characters were at lv. 80 and other other were at 74 or 75. I didn't even have my passive skills optimized bc I was expecting the "dungeon" the final boss is in to be an actual dungeon, not a flight of stairs with no enemy encounters. All the characters were in my preferred classes for them (Warrior!Ochette, Inventor!Castti, Hunter!Throne, Cleric!Osvald, Apothecary!Partitio, Merchant!Agnea, Arcanist!Temenos, and Armsmaster!Hikari, but not in that order bc I didn't optimize my party order either).

A few guides online list the recommended level for the final boss as being 72-75, but I wouldn't know bc again, lots of level-grinding (I plan to fight the final boss before the optional superboss for my current run, just to see the difficulty differences). You will get to use all 8 characters though, not in the same way as how the Galdera fight works in Octo1, but you will need all 8 characters for the battle, so keep that in mind. Overall I haven't heard/read about too many people having trouble with the final boss, so you should be fine using whatever your preferred battle strategies are with a full team that's at least in their low 70s level-wise.

The optional superboss is a terrible jerk, I hate this boss so much, and despite being Pretty Good at the game I had to eventually look up a guide. The guide I used is here (major spoilers obviously), although I will say I modified this person's strategy (for example, I optimized Osvald's critical stat, had Castti as a merchant, small changes like that). I will note this person manages to output enough damage to skip one of the mid-battle phases of the first half of the boss fight, and that the Hired Help Beastlings skill from the merchant class is needed for this mid-battle phase if you can't bypass it (if I'm being too vague and you don't care about spoilers, I can actually go through this entire boss fight stage-by-stage and explain the logic behind the guide and my adaptations to the guide). I'm thinking of modifying the strategy here further on my current playthrough, but overall this is the superboss for a reason. Extremely gimmicky, very high stats, very annoying, but also possible to beat in like, 10 minutes with the right setup.

#I don't have a link to a list of monsters for Ochette #bc I haven't FOUND any good lists that include 9/10 and 10/10 strength monsters and their skills #but otherwise I really do stand by the ''mechanics are flexible do what works best for you'' mindset #I've seen some insane builds from other people that I never thought would work that do so this really is just my preferences for things #anyhow here's some thoughts #I didn't realize I had so many thoughts about Octo2 mechanics #youcantencryptyourface #I still don't have an ask tag #octopath ii #also sorry if there's weird typos I've read through this like 10 times but I'm bound to miss something here or there

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