Classes

Every discussion of jobs in Octopath Traveler 2 starts in the wrong place. People argue about which secondary job is strongest before checking the only number that actually constrains the decision: how many licences exist. A job with three licences is a job you can hand to half your party. A job with one is a job you assign once and then live with.

That split runs straight down the middle of the system. The eight base jobs issue three licences each and their guilds are marked on your map. The four secret jobs issue one, and none of them is marked, because each is buried behind a piece of work: a hundred thousand leaves, a six-item scavenger hunt, a tower with five bosses at the top of it, or a shopping list that never really ends. This guide sorts the nine jobs on our wiki by that entry fee.

How licences actually work

Walking into a job guild for the first time hands you one licence automatically. The guild master then gives you two side tasks, and each completed task pays another licence, which is how a base job ends up shared between three of your eight travellers. The Cleric guild is the clearest illustration: the two extra licences come back for the High Priest's Amulet and the High Priest's Book of Scripture.

Two practical caveats. Guilds sit in areas around danger level 30, so this is mid-game work rather than something you tidy up in chapter one. And a secondary job never brings its path action with it, only its skills, which means multiclassing changes what a character can do in combat and nothing about what they can do in town.

The nine jobs on our wiki, by entry cost

The eight base guilds are listed together on our guild locations page, including the Warrior, Merchant and Scholar guilds that do not have a page of their own yet: the Warrior guild is inside a dojo in Sai, the Merchant guild is a camp at Western Crackridge Wilds, and the Scholar guild is the library-like building in Winterbloom.

The five base jobs you can hand round the party

Each of these belongs to one traveller by default and can be lent to two more. The default owner is the only person who can unlock its EX Skills, which is the one part of a job that never transfers.

Apothecary

Castti's job is a single-target healer that also poisons, which is a stranger combination than it sounds. Poison Axe, Weak to Poison and Sweeping Cave give it an offensive spine that most support jobs lack, while Healing Touch, Replenish Health and Rehabilitate cover the party. Its full skill list is worth reading for Preventive Measure alone, which blanks enfeebling effects for the first three turns of a fight and costs the top rung of the JP ladder.

As a sub-job it goes best on Throne, who already leans on debuffs, or on Partitio, who can gather BP for allies alongside it. Castti's own Drastic Measures EX Skill comes from the Altar of the Charitable on the Northern Conning Creek Coast and strips a target's resistance to status ailments as well as hitting it with an axe.

Cleric

Temenos brings the only party-wide revive in the base eight. Heal Wounds restores everyone's HP, Revive brings the whole party back for 40 SP, and Sacred Shield halves the damage from the next hit on a chosen character. Light damage comes with the package through Holy Light and Luminescence, and Mystical Staff steals SP worth a tenth of the damage it deals, which quietly solves the job's own upkeep.

The Cleric guide makes the case for putting it on Osvald, whose elemental range extends neatly into Light, or on Agnea, who then buffs and heals in the same turn order. Rise Again, the top support skill, lets a downed character come back at a quarter health once per battle.

Dancer

Agnea's job is the buff engine. Lion Dance and Peacock Strut raise physical and elemental attack for four turns, Stimulate moves an ally up the order, and Ruinous Kick strips Shield Points rather than health, which is why it turns up in boss guides as often as it does. Sealticge's Seduction, the divine skill, extends the reach of a party member's skills and is the single reason several late-game combos work at all.

Our Dancer guide pairs it with Partitio, whose Merchant abilities amplify what the buffs are worth, and with Hikari, who converts them straight into damage. Agnea's Windy Refrain EX Skill waits in a cave off the Northern Wellgrove Trail.

Hunter

Ochette's job is the one that manipulates the fight rather than the health bars. Leghold Trap forces an enemy to act last for two turns, Mercy Strike leaves a target on 1 HP instead of killing it, and Abating Orb cancels an incoming attack outright. Precise Shot and Thunderbird are yours from the start; the Hunter guide argues for buying Cleaving Blow and Leghold Trap before anything else.

Mercy Strike is also the backbone of jerky farming, since a monster has to survive to be captured. Put the job on Hikari for the weapon coverage or on Throne, who can push a target to the back of the order and then spend the gap debuffing it.

Thief

Throne's job pays for itself early. Steal takes an item straight out of an enemy's pocket for 2 SP, HP Thief returns half the damage dealt as health, and Armor Corrosive and Shackle Foe cut physical defence and attack for two turns each. Life in the Shadows, the last support skill, adds EXP and JP to every battle fought at night, which quietly compounds across a whole playthrough.

The guild is the hardest of the eight base guilds to find. It hides behind a stack of boxes in the Industrial District of Clockbank and nobody is home during the day, so the Thief guide is worth following turn by turn. Throne's Veil of Darkness EX Skill sits in a cave reached by boat from the Southern Clockbank Highroad.

The four secret jobs, cheapest first

One licence each. Choosing who gets it matters more here than anywhere else in the game, because there is no second copy waiting behind a side task.

Inventor: free to join, expensive to finish

Arkar hands the guild over for the price of a conversation in his house east along the New Delsta Highroad. The catch arrives immediately afterwards, because the Inventor is the only job in the game that does not spend JP on skills. It spends items, and every one of them sits somewhere different.

Changeable Catapult and Springy Boots come free with the job, and every Inventor skill costs zero SP, which is what makes Changeable Catapult so useful when you are grinding rather than fighting. The Inventor guide has the full route for each item and recommends Agnea for her speed.

Armsmaster: one path action, then six rusty relics

A debt collector is standing in front of Porta's house in Gravell and will not move for conversation. Throne's Ambush or Hikari's Challenge clears him, and Porta hands over the guild inside. She also converts any Rusty weapon you bring her into a Divine Weapon at no charge, which is the actual point of the job: an Armsmaster can carry all six weapon types on one character and therefore cover every physical weakness in any fight.

Sixfold Strike is the divine skill and the reason Armsmaster turns up in boss recommendations across the wiki, hitting multiple enemies with all six weapons at once. Hikari is the obvious holder, since he already handles every weapon type. The Armsmaster guide maps all six locations.

Conjurer: a completed storyline and a five-boss tower

The Five-Tiered Tower in Ku only opens once Hikari's story is finished, and inside are five bosses in sequence, the last of which is the Conjurer itself. Nothing about the entry fee is optional or skippable, which makes this the latest of the four in practice.

What you get is a party-wide elemental switch. Conjure Flames, Conjure Ice, Conjure Lightning and Conjure Gusts hand your whole team a chosen element for a couple of turns, which solves the recurring problem of a boss whose only weakness is one you cannot hit. Rites of the Sun fully restores HP and raises both defences, at the price of doing nothing until the sixth turn, and BP Boost is the divine skill at 50 SP. Our Conjurer guide puts it on Castti or Temenos.

Arcanist: 100,000 leaves and a sea monster

The most expensive door in the game. You need the ship from Terry, which costs 100,000 leaves at the end of Partitio's Scent of Commerce, then a voyage northeast into the Sundering Sea, then the Scourge of the Sea waiting in a whirlpool between Toto'haha and the Brightlands. Only then do you reach the Lost Isle, follow a sign west and receive Proof of the Arcanist from the Arcanist Descendant.

The job is worth the trip. Malice and Blessing deal dark and light damage in tiers while returning HP and SP respectively, Reflective Barrier bounces enemy magic back, and Seal of Eternity makes buffs last the entire battle for 50 SP. Price of Power doubles both the reach and the SP cost of a magic attack, which pairs with Osvald more happily than with anyone else. The Arcanist guide covers the sail out and the full seal list.

The JP ladder is the same everywhere

One number that saves a lot of guesswork: support skills cost the same in every job that uses JP, and they unlock in the same order. The fourth skill costs 130 JP, the fifth 630, the sixth 1,630 and the seventh 4,630. Divine skills open once you own all seven job skills and cost 5,000 JP on top.

That 4,630 rung is where most runs stall, and it is the reason JP farming is worth a session of its own once you have licences spread across the party. The Inventor is the exception that proves the rule: no JP at all, just the shopping list above.

Deciding who gets what

Two habits make the licence economy easy. Spend base-job licences on characters who close a gap rather than on characters who are already good at the same thing, and hold the four secret licences back until you know which fight is stopping you.

Our best secondary jobs guide gives a recommendation for each of the eight travellers, job combinations goes deeper on the pairings that produce real combos, and the character tier list is a useful sanity check on who is worth the investment in the first place.