Npcs

Most of the people you meet in Solistia exist to be scrutinised, bribed or robbed. Three of them are worth going out of your way for, and the honest way to compare them is not by how interesting they are but by what a single encounter pays. On that measure the gap between the three is enormous, and the ranking is not the one most players assume.

The payouts, side by side

Two things jump out of that table. The top-tier Cait and the top-tier Octopuff pay exactly the same, so if you are hunting either, take whichever the area you are in actually spawns. And at the common tier the two creatures are not interchangeable at all: an ordinary Cait pays twice the leaves and twice the experience of an ordinary Octopuff, while the Octopuff pays twice the job points. Caits are for levels and money. Octopuffs are for filling out a job.

Guilds: the encounter that pays once and forever

A job guild hands over no currency at all, which is exactly why it sits at the top of this page. What it gives you is a licence, and then two more once you finish the guild master's tasks, so a single building can change what three of your eight travellers are capable of for the rest of the run. Nothing else on this page produces a permanent effect.

All eight base guilds are marked with a shield icon on your map, and the neighbourhoods they occupy are hostile enough that the journey is the real price of admission. The Warrior guild is a dojo in Sai, the Dancer guild a studio in Wellgrove, the Merchant guild a camp at Western Crackridge Wilds, the Apothecary guild at Conning Creek, the Scholar guild in Winterbloom, the Cleric guild in Bolderfall in the Crestlands, the Thief guild in the Industrial District of Clockbank, and the Hunter guild out among the hunters between Tropu'hopu and the docks at Beasting Bay.

The four secret jobs work differently and do not issue three licences. Our classes guide ranks them by what they cost to unlock, which ranges from a conversation to a hundred thousand leaves.

Caits: the fastest levels in the game

Caits return from the first game with the same infuriating habit: if you fail to kill one in a single turn, it leaves. That single rule shapes everything about hunting them, because it converts the encounter from a fight into a puzzle about burst damage.

Their weaknesses are Sword, Dagger, Axe and Staff, but their evasion is so high that physical attacks miss often enough to lose you the round. Soulstones are the answer, since magic damage lands with complete accuracy and cannot be dodged, which is why the Staff is the most useful of the four weapon weaknesses: it comes attached to a character who can also cast.

Three other levers help. Ochette's Heighten Senses improves your chances of acting first, which is the whole ball game when you only get one turn. Her More Rare Monsters skill raises the encounter rate. And Partitio's Hired Help, at a cost of 7,000 leaves or more, buys a summoned ally with a better chance of connecting than your own party has. The Cait Powder accessory raises encounter rates further and comes either from the My Beloved Catherine side story or from a chest in Toto'haha, behind a woman blocking a doorway.

The west side of Crackridge Wilds is the one spot our guide singles out for encounters, though the whole of Solistia can produce them. Ochette can capture a Cait rather than kill it, at roughly one attempt in four, but with 3,000 leaves and 1,000 EXP on the table for an ordinary one and fifty thousand for a Chubby Cait, killing is usually the better business decision.

Octopuffs: the job point engine

Octopuff Travelers are small orange creatures with low health, high speed and a strong instinct for leaving. They share the Caits' weakness list of Sword, Dagger, Axe and Staff and the same problem of being hard to actually hit.

Where they differ is in how you find them. The Octopuff Pot raises their appearance rate in random battles and there are three of them in the world: one from the Fisherman NPC at Conning Creek after a side story, one from the Will Research for Money quest given by the Octopus Researcher at Crossed Paths in Montwise during Ochette's second chapter, and one in a red chest by the pine trees on the cliff edge of Lighthouse Island. Agnea can also simply create them, because Bewildering Grace has a chance of turning a normal enemy into an Octopuff when her BP is maxed.

To stop them fleeing, our guide recommends Hikari with Merciless Blade, and to make sure your hits land, Elemental Soulstones or Partitio's Hired Help again. The suggested party is Agnea, Partitio, Temenos and Ochette, with Ochette adding the same roughly one-in-four capture chance she brings to Caits.

A Queen Octopuff exists too, living in areas that want your party above level 20, though our page does not record what she pays. The King is the one worth building a hunt around, and the danger level 45 requirement makes clear that this is late-game work rather than a shortcut through the middle of the game.

Which hunt to run

Visit the guilds first, because a licence is worth more than any amount of currency and the trips are the only ones on this page that stop being useful once done. After that, pick the creature by what you are short of. Levels and leaves mean Caits; job points for that 4,630 JP support skill mean Octopuffs, especially with a Pot equipped.

Both hunts feed directly into our EXP farming, JP farming and money farming guides, which cover the support skills and items that raise your take on every one of these encounters.