Items

Octopath Traveler almost never gates gear behind your level. It gates it behind a party slot, a pile of leaves, or a percentage roll, and those three prices are wildly different from each other. A chest you cannot open without Therion is a permanent tax on one of your four slots. A 16,500 leaf accessory is an evening of farming. A 3 percent steal is a save file and twenty minutes of reloading.

So this page sorts our item coverage by what each thing actually costs you, from the cheapest to the most expensive, rather than by item type. The short version: two of the three best items in this bucket have a free route that most people miss.

Costs a party slot: the 73 purple chests

Purple chests are always locked, there is never a key or a switch nearby, and the game unhelpfully tells you only that nobody in your party can open it. The answer is Therion, whose Pick Lock path action is the sole way in.

The trap is thinking you can work around him. Pick Lock is not a job skill, so setting somebody else to Thief as a secondary class does not grant it. No matter who you dress as a thief, they cannot open a purple chest. Therion has to be in the party, which means one of your four slots is committed for the entire time you are chest hunting.

There are 73 of them across 62 distinct areas, with eleven areas holding two apiece. Thirteen of the 73 pay leaves and the rest pay gear, and the money ones alone come to 304,000 leaves.

Our purple chests guide is honest about the payoff, and so should we be: for a completionist they are absolutely worth it, but functionally you can buy better gear from vendors for most of the game. The rule of thumb the page lands on is that any chest in an area with Danger Level 45 or above is worth the detour, and the five best areas are the Maw of the Ice Dragon, the Forest of Purgation, the Moldering Ruins, Refuge Ruins and the Loch of the Lost King.

How the locations are actually described

Two navigation cues do most of the work and are worth knowing before you start. In dungeons, chests are located by counting torches: the third torch in the Derelict Mine, the seventh in Captain's Bane, the Black Market and the Shrine of the Warbringer, the eighth in Ebony Grotto and the Loch of the Lost King, the twelfth in the Shrine of the Archmagus. In towns, the chest is usually inside a house with an NPC standing in the doorway, which you get past with a path action or a fight. S'warkii has a Villager, Noblecourt an Elderly Woman, and Wellspring has a single guarded house holding both of its chests, 14,000 leaves on the left wall and 9,000 on the right.

Two of those areas have their own walkthroughs here: the Derelict Mine and the Moldering Ruins, where the Hypnos Crown chest is the one that finishes the area.

Costs leaves, or costs a side story: the Dragon's Scarf

The Dragon's Scarf returns any SP you spent at the end of the turn, which in a game where every good skill costs SP makes it one of the most efficient accessories available. It has a sibling, the Beastly Scarf, which does the same for health.

There are two routes and they cost very different things. The paid route is Tressa's family shop in Rippletide, open once you have finished her Chapter 1, where both scarves sit on the shelf at 16,500 leaves each, so 33,000 for the pair. That is also the only way to get several Dragon's Scarves, one per character, since you have to visit each scarf location for each copy.

The free route is the Here Be Dragons side story, and it pays you for the trouble. Start in Northreach with a traveling author collecting tales about noble dragons, then gather three pieces of knowledge with Scrutinize or Inquire. Stillsnow has a merchant on the left side of a house who knows about the Dragon of the Frostlands. Cobbleston has an elderly man by a house down the stairs on your left for the Dragon of the Highlands. Orewell has someone on the left side of the bridge for the Dragon of the Cliftlands. Fast travel back, say yes, and you get a Dragon's Scarf plus 11,000 leaves.

The practical read is that the first scarf should always be free and every scarf after that costs 16,500. Our Dragon's Scarf guide has both routes and our quests guide covers where Here Be Dragons sits among the other information quests.

Costs a percentage roll: the Golden Axe

The Golden Axe is the most powerful weapon you can hold early, at 265 attack, and only H'aanit can equip it because it is an axe. Getting it is not a fight or a purchase. It is a 3 percent steal, and everything else about the trip is preparation for reloading.

The rule that makes the second save mandatory: you get four attempts to steal any given item, and after the fourth you can never steal it again and you pick up a bad reputation with the townsfolk. Reloading resets the attempts, which is the whole trick. If you do burn your reputation, a tavern north of Clearbrook will restore it for 2,000 leaves. Our Golden Axe guide has the full run and our Beast Lore guide covers the captures you want beforehand.

What this means for how you play

Two of the four party slots end up spoken for if you want everything in this bucket. Therion is the only lockpick and one of the two acquisition travelers, and H'aanit is the only captor and the only axe user. That is worth knowing before you build a party around damage, because a perfectly optimised four that lacks both of them cannot open a single purple chest or capture a single beast.

If your problem is leaves rather than slots, our money farming guide is the faster answer than chest hunting, given that all 73 purple chests between them hold barely more than 300,000. And if you are choosing what to actually equip once you have it, our best weapons and best armor guides cover the endgame loadouts.