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Octopath Traveler gives you eight travelers, eight separate stories, and room for four of them at a time. That last number is the one the whole game turns on. Every locked chest, every NPC you can interrogate or duel or escort, every element you can hit and every weapon type you can break a shield with belongs to a specific traveler, and swapping one out means walking back to a tavern.
This is the 2018 original, not Octopath Traveler II. If you are looking for Hikari, Throne or Castti, you want a different game.
The three things worth knowing before hour two
First, your starting character does not matter to the plot. You pick one of the eight, the other seven join later, and you see all eight stories regardless. What it does change is the first ten hours, which our starting characters guide walks through.
Second, Therion is close to mandatory. All 73 purple chests in the game are locked to his Pick Lock path action, and because path actions do not transfer with a secondary job, no amount of reclassing anybody else substitutes for him. Whatever else your party is, he is usually in it.
Third, combat is a shield puzzle before it is a damage race. You break an enemy by hitting the weapon types and elements it is weak to, and the Boost meter is what turns a break into real damage. The rule most people miss is that you can bank five boosts but only spend three on one action, so holding for two turns and releasing three at the moment a shield goes is worth far more than spending one a turn. Our mechanics guide covers that and the rest of the systems.
The six parts of our coverage
Jobs and builds answers the party question four times, once per unlock gate, because the right four travelers change as the game opens up. It covers all eight base jobs, the eight secondary job shrines sorted by danger level, the four advanced jobs behind the secret shrines, the farming routes and which party each one wants, and the Chapter 4 completions that unlock the shops holding the best gear.
Bosses sorts every fight by the kind of shield puzzle it sets rather than by difficulty: fixed weakness sets, rotating ones, shields that grow every time you break them, fights decided by kill order, and the two-body Galdera fight at the end that needs two separate parties built in advance.
Side quests is sorted by which party you need to be carrying, because a quest you cannot finish is almost always a path action you did not bring. It also covers the chapter gates, the chains that relocate their NPC between parts, and the handful of items you have to grab before you start the quest that removes them.
Dungeons runs the optional dungeons in Danger Zone order from level 15 to the four at level 50, with each boss, its weaknesses, its reward and whether you can capture it. The Derelict Mine and the Moldering Ruins have their own walkthroughs.
Items sorts gear by what it costs to get: a party slot for the purple chests, leaves for the Dragon's Scarf, or a 3 percent roll and a lot of reloading for the Golden Axe.
Mechanics orders the systems by the timescale they run on, from the Boost decision inside a single turn to the true ending checklist that spans the whole save file.
The pages that stand on their own
Several of our Octopath pages are single subjects rather than parts of a bucket. On the build side, our best jobs guide gives every base job's full skill list with SP costs and recommends a secondary for each traveler, advanced jobs covers the four endgame classes, best party combinations lays out five comps, and shrines has all twelve locations.
For gear, our best weapons and best armor guides cover every endgame piece with its stats and its vendor. For money and levels, we have money farming, the seven best grinding spots, ten XP farming methods and a dedicated Cait farming guide, since Caits are the one enemy that pays experience, leaves and job points at the same time.
And two pages exist because Octopath punishes carelessness. Our missables guide covers the one missable chest, the six NPCs holding hidden items on a timer, and the four bosses that vanish if your party grows or your story advances. Our true ending guide covers the chain behind the ninth ending, and the first link in it is available in your opening hour.
Where to start
If you have not started, read the starting characters guide and pick whichever opening appeals, then plan to add Therion early. If you are mid-game and stuck on a fight, the bosses guide will tell you what kind of puzzle it is before you walk back in. If you are stuck on a quest, it is a path action, and the quests guide is sorted for exactly that. And if you have finished all eight stories and the credits felt abrupt, the true ending guide explains why.