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Octopath Traveler 2 gives you eight protagonists and a party that holds four. Almost every decision the game asks of you is a version of that one: which four go out, which job licence goes to whom, which of the day and night path actions you can actually perform in the town you are standing in. Get comfortable with the trade and Solistia opens up. Ignore it and you spend the middle chapters wondering why a side story will not start.
This hub is the map of everything we have written about the game, arranged in the order the choices arrive.
Choosing who to play
You pick one traveller to begin with and recruit the rest as you find them. That first choice matters less than it looks, since nobody is locked out later, but it does decide which storyline you see first and which path action you have from the opening hour. Our character tier list ranks all eight on versatility and damage rather than on story, and the party composition guide explains which pairs work well once you have a few of them.
Ochette's route contains the one early choice that is genuinely permanent: the animal companion she befriends at the start of her arc. Our Ochette companion guide weighs the owl against the jackal, and it comes down to whether your party already covers magic damage.
There is no difficulty slider to fall back on if the early fights bite. Our difficulty settings page explains what the game gives you instead: danger levels on each area and a recommended level when you tap a region on the map.
Jobs, licences and sub-jobs
Each traveller has one primary job that never changes and one secondary slot that changes everything. Licences for the secondary come from guilds scattered across the world, and our classes guide sorts all nine jobs on the wiki by how many licences exist and what each one costs to unlock, from a short walk to a hundred thousand leaves.
For the recommendation rather than the mechanics, our best secondary jobs guide names a sub-job for each of the eight, and job combinations goes further into the specific skill pairings that turn a good character into a broken one.
The systems nobody explains
Four things run quietly under the story: hidden altars that unlock character-specific EX Skills, an invisible reputation meter kept separately for every town, a steal success rate calculated from four things you are never shown, and travel banter that only fires under conditions the game never states. Our mechanics guide covers all four, including where each of the eight altars is and how to recover a reputation you have burned.
Fights that stop a run
Chapter bosses in this game rarely just hit hard. They confiscate something first, whether that is your job skills, your place in the turn order or two of the four characters you brought. Our bosses guide groups all twelve fights on the wiki by what they take away, which is a more useful preparation checklist than a list of weaknesses.
Side stories and the world
Solistia's optional content is gated by party slots rather than by level, since almost every side story wants a specific path action. Our quests guide sorts them by who you have to bring, from the ones only Partitio can start to the Netherworld chain that wants your whole roster at level 35.
The locations guide covers the places with stock you cannot buy anywhere else, and the NPCs guide compares what the rare encounters actually pay, whether that is a job licence, a Cait's fifty thousand leaves or an Octopuff's job points.
Gear and consumables
Our weapons guide splits the best equipment by the odds of getting it: one guaranteed quest sword, eight Legendary Arms sitting in fixed places, and six Battle-Tested weapons behind a two percent drop rate. The items guide ranks consumables by how long they last, from permanent stat Nuts down to a quest token you hand over and never see again.
One item deserves its own mention. Ochette can capture monsters and summon them in battle, and our best monsters to capture guide picks the ones worth a slot at each stage, from early Cavern of Waves finds to the Savage Shark in the Sunken Maw.
Farming
Three currencies, three guides. EXP farming covers the support skills and break bonuses that speed up levelling, JP farming explains why Agnea with a bow is the most efficient job point engine in the game, and money farming covers Grow on Trees, hiring merchants to sell for you, and the Collect skill.
Start wherever you are stuck. If it is a boss, the fights guide will tell you what the boss is going to take off you before it starts swinging; if it is a locked side story, the quests guide will tell you who you forgot to bring.