hi, i love all the changes, i miss the second job feature but it what it is...i just have a question... is recomendable add difficulty mod? cause all are modifications too players but the enemies still the same no?
No sub-jobs is the whole basis for the mod lol. The bosses have been buffed a bit, but regular enemies remain the same. It's not easily compatible with difficulty mods, but I do have a "troubler" file that I custom-made for somebody if you want to try that. It will be very difficult.
Partitio DPS Rating: ✦✦✧✧✧ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ 3 Most Used Skill: Generate BP, Sidestep, Arrow of Fortune 3 Least Used Skill: Ember, Negotiate Schedule, Rest Summary: Much more powerful than base game version due to his insane BP gain. Damage output wise, probably the 2nd weakest among the travelers. Never the less, his tool kit remains insanely overpowered and I really love using him for robbing wild animals merchandising. That and he's insanely broken when paired with Osvald, if he doesn't get oneshot. * Ember sees almost no use at all sadly because it's the last skill I picked. And Partitio is busy giving other people BP.
Agnea (Rousing Rondo) DPS Rating: ✦✧✧✧✧ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧ 3 Most Used Skill: Peacock Strut, Lion Dance, Dagger Dance 3 Least Used Skill: Ruinous Kick, Moonstep, Quickstep Summary: Definitely very good for support, and really good at a keeping the party's latent high. Really good at giving BP and is the only character that can give the party Attack up. So she's generally really useful. That being said, her damage is almost non-existent, but that's only because I'm not using her path action on the more broken summons, which can EASILY break the early mid game. * Ruinous Kick were used once so far. Sadly shield breaking attack that's accuracy reliant is not very good in Troubler. * Moonstep as a DPS skill despite being cool, doesn't exactly fix Agnea's damage problem. The only time it can truly show itself would have been if you got to Nameless Village or Gravell early and got yourself an early Strength 6/7 Bewildering Ballad Summon. But at that point... Just get Merciless Blade....
Temenos DPS Rating: ✦✦✧✧✧ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧ 3 Most Used Skill: Heal Wounds, Judgment, Sacred Shield 3 Least Used Skill: Penance, Revive, Holy Light Summary: How the god has fallen. Temenos is definitely severely weaker than its first patch version. That being said, he's still very useful when he's fielded simply because he's a healer. Most of the tools he has is still very powerful, but now he's definitely positioned to be a support/healer now. Unlike the all purpose tool he was. PS: Still trying to see if I can make permanent invulnerability work. * Post nerf Penance damage is too low and breaks only 1 shield. So it went from being used 100% of the time to seeing no use at all.
Hikari DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ 3 Most Used Skill: Hienka, Enervating Slash, Ultimate Stance 3 Least Used Skill: Crescent Thunder, Tenretsuzan, Aggressive Slash Summary: Hikari is really good at providing general support. He's also the only character with innate Atk/M.Atk debuff against enemies (Heckle/Ill Intent FTW). Hikari's damage output with Latent power is INSANELY high due to Hienka, even though he doesn't have access to early late-game-sword. This combined with his innate Sealticge’s Seduction Ultimate Stance, Hikari is insane at causing death and destruction. Here, I want to specifically point out the buff for Incite. The buff is perfect because I now find myself using this skill more and more often. * Crescent Thunder sees almost no use after Ultimate Stance. Damage output is a bit too low unfortunately. * Tenretsuzan unfortunately didn't see that much use. Because Hikari is the crescendo your shield breaking is building for, wasting Hienka for shield breaking is pure insanity.
Support Skills: * Most support skills are really good, and fits around the time where you get them. Some is a bit strong, but not as powerful as I thought they'd be.
My Most Used Support Skills: 1. Vigorous Victor: Every fight in Troubler is a boss fight. So 50% HP MP recovery? Sign me in!. 2. Ensnare: Feels very powerful, but considering the fact that it won't trigger if the attacked is dead, it's a lot more balanced than I thought. And despite it being so powerful, it's not powerful enough to keep a boss permanently slowed. So it's surprisingly balanced, albeit still on the stronger side. 3. Chain attack: 1 more hit and the additional shield break turns out to be a lot more useful than I thought. Apart from Priest's chain attack. RIP. 4. Latent Power Plus: Most character's main source of damage comes from latent power in the early game after all.
About done with the early mid game. Here's more character review.
Ochette DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ 3 Most Used Skill: Beastly Fang/Claw, Cleaving Blow and Leghold Trap 3 Least Used Skill: Take Aim, Beastly Howl, Indomitable Beast Summary: Decent all around, very good support and decent damage potential. Most damage comes from her latent power, which is fine considering she has an early access to late game axes. Ochette is insane at crowd controlling through Cleaving Blow and summon, and her damage is pretty decent, but is no where near THE damage dealer. * Take Aim's value is too low to be used instead of crowd controlling and shield breaking. * Beastly Howl simply can't beat Beastly Fang/Claw because how hard it is to charge Ochette's latent.
Castti DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ ✦ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ 3 Most Used Skill: Healing Touch, Desperate Measure, Elemental Damage Concocts 3 Least Used Skill: Alchemy, Magic Crit Concoct, Rehabilitate Summary: Insanely powerful as a DPS, Support, and healer. Unlike Ochette, Castti can fully utilize the early late-game Axe through Desperate Measure (which after buff is perhaps too strong) and her INSANELY powerful damage concocts. But all of this is possible because she has a late game weapon. * Alchemy's has no innate synergy with Castti's toolkits, and is made for a debuff based boss that isn't in the game. (Side note, used Alchemy on Throne Boss 2. Didn't convert the permanent debuff to a permanent buff. 0/10) * Magic Crit Concoct is bugged and turns off damage concoct.
Throne DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ ✦ 3 Most Used Skill: SP Thief, Steal, Veil of Darkness 3 Least Used Skill: Shackles of Ruin, Armor Corrosive, Swift Step Summary: Throne in the early mid game is EXTREMELY powerful, mostly due to the power of Veil of Darkness. She also has access to early late game dagger, so her damage is pretty high. Like Ochette, at the moment she isn't very good at utilizing it. But, unlike the base game, it's very easy to make Throne spam Veil of Darkness since now she has an easy SP recovery method. * These skills saw less use because Throne was busy dealing damage, and it make sense that these single target skills made for boss fights see less uses.
Osvald DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧ Support Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧ 3 Most Used Skill: Icewind, Stroke of Genius, Seal of Diffusion 3 Least Used Skill: Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Elemental Barrage Summary: Despite not having access to late game weapons, Osvald still manages to output a very good amount of damage in the early mid game. All in all, while he is still teammate reliant on how powerful his support can be, it's honestly pretty fun thinking about how to utilize his toolkit in a team. * The elemental AoE were used less often because Ice potency up accessory. * Elemental Barrage is mostly for shield break. As a damage tool it's weaker because its low invocation value and Troubler's higher enemy defense stat.
Yes the battle-tested weapons have the same drop chance and inventory locations as in base game. I intend to increase the chance of drop though in a near-future update.
Finished Agnea Chapter 1: Need to sleep so, no fancy fonts this time.
Chapter Experience: - Dourdour is definitely one of the strongest powerful chapter 1 bosses. And unlike other travelers, Agnea has almost no way of cheesing around it. Gus isn't that powerful of a temporary NPC, and there's not a lot of powerful summons for Agnea to recruit (though I'm not sure a "fully heal the danced target" NPC should even be considered weak). On top of that, wild encounters in troubler are very strong and demands careful play just to survive them. - Not to mention Dourdour will summon 2 enemies after taking enough damage, and even those summoned enemies is extremely deadly... is what I would say if the power of NUT isn't on our side. The nuts are insanely powerful against early game bosses.
Skills: - 1. [Lion Dance]: This change is nice. While most characters doesn't benefit from having both P.Atk and M.Atk up at the same time, this helps Agnea freeing up a skill slot. - 2. [Peacock Strut]: Peacock now doubling BP regen is pretty nice. This skill was too slow for base Octopath, so having it on Dancer is honestly really nice. I can see myself using this skill quite a lot in the future. - 3. [Quickstep]: The buff is really what this skill should have been. Good change. - 4. [Moonstep]: This now gives 4 random elemental AoE with decent damage output. I think goal is to poke enemy for weakness and AoE finisher? Wonder if this is more powerful than Windy Refrain. - 5. [Sweeping Gale]: Same as other elemental spell.
Latent Power - No change.
Passive - [Chain Skill: Dancer]: good shield breaking tool, makes max boost auto attack into a 6~7 shield break is pretty good.
Personal Opinion: - Agnea hasn't been changed that much, and most of the tools she had is still with her. She is mostly unchanged apart from the addition of BP generation and sprint boot. Moonstep is pretty interesting, though I'm not sure how good it is damage wise, given it's easier to boost Windy Refrain. - Now that we have all 8 travelers, let's count the tools the player has completely lost access to: - Hired Help: GOOD. - Shackle Foe - P. Atk debuff has been removed from player's toolkit, making Hikari the only reliable source of attack debuff. - Replenish Health / Prayer for Rain - Regen has been removed from player's toolkit as well. But this isn't that relevant to begin with so it's fine. - Dance of Immunity - Debuff immunity has been removed from player's toolkit. Given that Drastic Measure is gone, this isn't that relevant any more. - Seal of Immortality - One time Hold Out has also been removed, which is probably fine. - Most of the things removed are pretty standard, apart from the attack debuff. Octopath not having M.Atk debuff was already weird for me, since this is a RPG game. But perhaps there are passives that can solve this issue.
Unfortunately not, with base jobs only basically being the premise of the mod, a lot of things have been built around that. If you want a mod that allows subjobs and has some reasonably similar changes, there is the precursor to this mod, I think it was called Skill Overhaul or something, though it's obviously far less comprehensive.
Chapter Experience: - Partitio now is insanely powerful at collecting money, and the entire chapter 1 has become that much more fun as every enemy I see has turned into a bags of gold. Making Bifelgan an early game tool absolutely makes the experience way more exciting. That and now buying the chapter 1 Aegis shield is now actually realistic. - The chapter is a lot easier than other ones because Giff's squad can get easily destroyed by our lovely tavern assistant's roundhouse kicks. Giff was even taken out before his goons.
Skills: - 1. [Tax Drive]: Guaranteed [Collect], but now gets a decently powerful lance attack as a bonus. This skill was not as impressive in chapter one, but that's understandable given early game enemies give almost nothing from collect. Meanwhile... - 2. [Arrow of Fortune].: Now gives Money = damage dealt. It's like an early game Bifelgan, which makes this INSANELY fun to use. - 3. [Ember]: Same as other elemental attacks. - 4. [Generate BP]: I don't think this move needed a buff, but it's nice non-the-less. Side note, description should specify that it can't target the user, something like "Grant 1 BP to another ally, and 1 BP to yourself.' - 5. [Size Up] - RIP [Hired Help]. Good Riddance [Hired Help] . That being said, [Size Up] is kind of on the weaker side. But honestly, Merchant is already strong enough as it is.
Latent Power - Love it.
Support Skill [Chain Skill: Merchant]: (BUG 1.0.10) Evasion given by Lance doesn't stack with Side Step. Bow doesn't give Crit stack / apply target focus.
Personal Opinion: - I love [Arrow of Fortune]. - I love [Arrow of Fortune]. - I love [Arrow of Fortune]. - All in all, love the changes. Now I can mentally feel my perception of "enemies" turning into money bags when I add Partitio into my team. And a merchant class in a game being able to do that to the player is definitely good design. Removing Hired Help is also great, really hated that skill for being insanely powerful and costing too much money. Though the replacement is a bit on the weaker side. And the fact that I still haven't seen a single Atk/M. Atk debuff skill is kind of worrying.
Chapter Experience: - Early game was hell. Troubler made the first couple encounters insanely hard despite me bringing [Vengeful Blade] into the fight. But it's still possible. Had to farm 2 windstones, and maintain a good amount of grape. At least the chapter has a good place for auto save. - Otherwise, Hikari is insanely powerful this chapter thanks to [Vengeful Blade] and access to [Doze].
Skills: - 1. [Enervating Slash]: I think everyone agrees that base game [Enervating Slash] is the most difficult to make use of skill in warrior's kit. Since the only time it's viable is when all buffs on warrior is running out. So I love turning that useless skill into something that can and will see a lot of uses. - 2. [Crescent Thunder]: Skill looks awesome when used. AoE Sword/Lightning is nice, and the attack seems pretty decent for AoE breaking. - 3. [Double-Thrust]: This skill is decent, but I think it will get over shadowed by learned polearm skills, such as [Aggressive Thrust]. - 4. [Abide]: Love the fact that it now increases HP! And honestly, this really fit into the skills' flavor. Warriors having access to healing themselves just make sense on so many level. - 5. [Incite]: Now makes the user defend themselves. Great change honestly, since it's a straight upgrade of the defend button. This and the buff to [Vengeful Blade] honestly make them a lot more viable than before and I love it. Not to mention [Defend] was already a good option. - 6. [Vengeful Blade]: Now also makes the user defend themselves. [Vengeful Blade] is the most broken in chapter 1, but almost never see use later. So the buff made this basically a better [Defend], so it will definitely see use now.
Latent Power - [Tenretsuzan]: Now deals basically no damage but breaks shield and give another turn. Good change honestly. It's finally better than [Hienka]. Though, it's unfortunate that we have lost the early game out for Octopuff/Cait. - [Hienka]: the skill is now a 3 hit attack for damage. And it certain is good at that. (BUG) Note that this skill deals 2 sword and 1 dark attack, but it will break 3 shield against enemies who are only weak to dark but not sword. This skill functions normally otherwise (break 2 shield against sword weak enemy, and 3 against sword/dark weak enemy)
Support Skill [Chain Skill: Warrior]: Pretty powerful honestly. Sword / Lance are both good. Sword gives 6~7 shield break considering the counter (which becomes [Vengeful Blade]), and lance gives 5~6 and give 1 [Side Step]. Sadly, the latter seems to function similarly to the pre-change Staff chain skill, so it might not stack with [Side Step].
Personal Opinion: - Love the changes to Hikari. The changes made to the old skills are all really in flavor and made sense. I can see myself using [Vengeful Blade] and [Incite] in the future, and honestly really excited for it. The new lance skill are pretty fun, but [Double-Thrust] is a bit on the bland side. - The changes to the hidden power is pretty good. [Tenretsuzan] getting an unique effect is great, finally setting it apart from Hienka. And Hienka getting nerfed is totally deserved. [Sougetsusan] sadly now has a buddy in [Crescent Thunder] so it's even less unique now, oof. - Most learned skill has lost most of their damage due to Hikari losing access to those weapons. But honestly most weapon learned skills aren't that useful anyway so it shouldn't matter that much.
Chapter Experience: - Chapter is way too short again. Castti is also one of the stronger travelers early game as she is half invincible herself. However, the changes to her elemental concoctions are really nice. The buff is noticeable and I hope this can become a viable method of dealing damage late game. - The bosses were also a lot more frail than I remembered, but it's not that big of a deal. Perhaps it's due to the increased stat, which made the bosses hit a lot less hard than they should. - Love the concoct change making it viable as a form of magical damage. Really liked it.
Skills: - 1. [Replenish Health] - Single target regen were turned into AoE healing to mirror Cleric's AoE healing. - 2. [Icicle] - Same as other elemental attacks. - 3. [Desperate Measures] - [Drastic Measure] has been demoted to a regular skill and nerfed quite a bit. It's basically as strong as [Drastic Measure] when it's used against enemy with a single debuff, so about as strong as [Surprise Attack]. (BUG) It also doesn't seem to drain HP and only gives Cassti 2 turns of P.Def down.
Concoct - (Pomegrante Leaf):1 BP => dispel 2 debuff on ally - (Mighty Leaf):Atk up 2 turn = > give ally 2 [Physical Crit] Token - (Whimsical Leaf):Turn order manip = > give ally 2 [Magical Crit] Token - (Dual Leaf):HP/MP Regen => raises ally Physical Defense - (Sticky Flower):Speed Evasion debuff => enemy M.Def down 2 turn - (Fumbling Flower):Crit debuff => enemy 1 turn poison - (Enfeebling Flower):Status extension => enemy P.Def down 2 turn - (Dual Flower):Confuses / blinds => enemy 2 turn blind - There are a couple big nerfs. She lost turn order boost and status extension, which were some of the most powerful tools she had access to. But, she gained the ability to support magical damage. But most importantly, this change made picking between Medicinal or Hazardous an actual choice. So I think this is a good change. BP generation should be gone anyway, and Castti really shouldn't have ability to manipulate turn order in the first place.
Support Skill [Chain Skill: Apothecary]: Axe seems to be the best chain skill at the moment, and it definitely is really good. But not as powerful as Ochette since the latter has access to NPC summons for extra proc.
Personal Opinion that don't need to be rememebered: - Most of Cassti's kit were nerfed to made her into a more reasonable support than the Swiss Army Knife that she was. Personally, I think the concoct changes were perfect. Side note, RIP [Take Aim]. Making player to actually consider picking which side to use is what concoct should have been and the fact that the elemental flowers now do decent damage is a huge plus. Shame Shadow's Hold doesn't have tool tips that describs the skills ability ratio and invocation value. - The skill nerfs were a bit strange. Because those were just straight up nerfs. Cassti doesn't need [Replenish Health] as she already had this option in the form of concoct. And [Drastic Measure] has become about half as strong as it was while gaining downsides, but it was broken so nerfing it make sense. - That being said, Cassti is extremely hard to balance as she has a total of 24 options to choose from, and of course not all of them are going to be hits. But even if they aren't viable, I still wish the options were different from one another. Like making [Replenish Health] an AoE HP/MP regen, or make [Sweeping Cleave] steal from hit targets. All non-human wild encounter enemies only carry fruits and leafs. So something like a [Harvesting Cleave] would have fit the flavor and isn't that out of place.
I think I'll revisit Desperate Measures, and fix the bug of course! Maybe it could stand to do more damage given the downsides. It would be nice to be able to make it cost all but 1hp and deal damage scaled higher if more HP was lost, but it would involve writing a new sequence file which is... way beyond my scope, pages of code for quite a small payoff as nice as it would be.
I like the "Harvest Materials" idea for sweeping cleave, it would be a neat addition to have another character who can acquire items as well!
Finished Ochette Chapter 1: [1.0.9 / Bug] Providence seem to still be able to used multiple times during the same battle
Chapter Experience: - Ended way too quickly. Ochette is one of the more powerful travelers and her chapter 1 allows her to get relatively strong armors for free with our favorite King Iguana. And later she can Hire Mr. Resting for basically invincibility against the boss for free. - There's honestly not much to talk about. In Troubler, the cave was pretty dangerous as most enemy do 1/3 of your maxHP per hit, but you can actually teleport back to the village and hire Mr. Resting early ( who leaves after finding the girl so you need more jerky to get him back ). - Now that I think about it, Temenos Boss 1 is Extremely overtuned. Maybe it's because of Troubler. Felvarg had 8k HP, but Roi felt like he had 2k.
Skills: 1. [Blinding Arrow]: Seems to have decent damage output and a reliable source of blind. So definitely a good change considering it was Mercy Strike. Also hunter blinding their prey is a good touch. 2. [Cleaving Blow]: Giving player access to stun is interesting. Forgot to test this against Roi. But this should be a very useful skill for controling enemies. 3. [Thunderbird]: Same as other single target elemental attack. 4. [Leghold Trap]: And now the poison access. Considering the lack of weapon variety, giving each character more tools to break shield is definitely a safe choice. And giving Ochette a good amount of access to status effects is pretty nice flavor. 5. [Take Aim]: Note that this is a [per hit] buff. Meaning using multihit skills will instantly consume almost all of your [Take Aim] charges. Other than that, this skill is pretty good. That being said, [Take Aim] not giving 3 charges for [Draefendi’s Bow] is ... a bit sad. 6. [Draefendi’s Bow]: God I hope this is buffed. I don't understand why SE hated this skill so much... Why does Aeber do so much despite also being an AoE, and yet...
Latent Power - [Beastly Claws / Fangs]: Claw and Fangs now act like an Axe attack. This means they now damage shield if enemy is weak to axes, but no longer use Bow stat should the equipped bow be stronger than the equipped axe. This feels like a flavor change, and consider the theme of most of the changes, this is perfectly fine. - (Bug) [Beastly Fangs] doesn't have the Axe Icon, and does not damage shield if enemy is weak to Axe. - [Beastly Howl]: This change is nice, it instantly set up for physical teams. Howl was already almost never used in the base game but I can see this actually has some really nice uses.
Support Skill [Chain Skill: Hunter]: Axe is really nice, as it gives an immediate extra turn after 5 hits. Meaning it's insane for shield breaking. Bow is also 5 hits, which gives 1 charge of [Take Aim]. This is pretty good honestly, aside from the issue that: (Bug) The [Take Aim] charge gained from Achilles Strike (Bow) is then immediately used on itself. So the buff was probably applied too early, resulting in either the wind or bow attack consuming the [Take Aim] charge instead.
Personal Opinion: - Giving the hunter ability to control they prey with various statuses is definitely the right flavor and choice. Really like the rework. Shame that I didn't get a chance to test out the stun status against Roi. The fact that Ochette now joins Castti as another status abusing character is pretty cute too. - Assuming no major changes were done to her kit, Ochette seems to be on the stronger side of the travelers. Really like most of the changes done to her and her summons seems to continue to be really good at shield breaking. Surely nothing bad happened to Provoke Beasts, right?
32 comments
It's not easily compatible with difficulty mods, but I do have a "troubler" file that I custom-made for somebody if you want to try that. It will be very difficult.
DPS Rating: ✦✦✧✧✧
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
3 Most Used Skill: Generate BP, Sidestep, Arrow of Fortune
3 Least Used Skill: Ember, Negotiate Schedule, Rest
Summary: Much more powerful than base game version due to his insane BP gain. Damage output wise, probably the 2nd weakest among the travelers. Never the less, his tool kit remains insanely overpowered and I really love using him for
robbing wild animalsmerchandising. That and he's insanely broken when paired with Osvald, if he doesn't get oneshot.* Ember sees almost no use at all sadly because it's the last skill I picked. And Partitio is busy giving other people BP.
Agnea (Rousing Rondo)
DPS Rating: ✦✧✧✧✧
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧
3 Most Used Skill: Peacock Strut, Lion Dance, Dagger Dance
3 Least Used Skill: Ruinous Kick, Moonstep, Quickstep
Summary: Definitely very good for support, and really good at a keeping the party's latent high. Really good at giving BP and is the only character that can give the party Attack up. So she's generally really useful. That being said, her damage is almost non-existent, but that's only because I'm not using her path action on the more broken summons, which can EASILY break the early mid game.
* Ruinous Kick were used once so far. Sadly shield breaking attack that's accuracy reliant is not very good in Troubler.
* Moonstep as a DPS skill despite being cool, doesn't exactly fix Agnea's damage problem. The only time it can truly show itself would have been if you got to Nameless Village or Gravell early and got yourself an early Strength 6/7 Bewildering Ballad Summon. But at that point... Just get Merciless Blade....
Temenos
DPS Rating: ✦✦✧✧✧
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧
3 Most Used Skill: Heal Wounds, Judgment, Sacred Shield
3 Least Used Skill: Penance, Revive, Holy Light
Summary: How the god has fallen. Temenos is definitely severely weaker than its first patch version. That being said, he's still very useful when he's fielded simply because he's a healer. Most of the tools he has is still very powerful, but now he's definitely positioned to be a support/healer now. Unlike the all purpose tool he was. PS: Still trying to see if I can make permanent invulnerability work.
* Post nerf Penance damage is too low and breaks only 1 shield. So it went from being used 100% of the time to seeing no use at all.
Hikari
DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
3 Most Used Skill: Hienka, Enervating Slash, Ultimate Stance
3 Least Used Skill: Crescent Thunder, Tenretsuzan, Aggressive Slash
Summary: Hikari is really good at providing general support. He's also the only character with innate Atk/M.Atk debuff against enemies (Heckle/Ill Intent FTW). Hikari's damage output with Latent power is INSANELY high due to Hienka, even though he doesn't have access to early late-game-sword. This combined with his innate
Sealticge’s SeductionUltimate Stance, Hikari is insane at causing death and destruction. Here, I want to specifically point out the buff for Incite. The buff is perfect because I now find myself using this skill more and more often.* Crescent Thunder sees almost no use after Ultimate Stance. Damage output is a bit too low unfortunately.
* Tenretsuzan unfortunately didn't see that much use. Because Hikari is the crescendo your shield breaking is building for, wasting Hienka for shield breaking is pure insanity.
Support Skills:
* Most support skills are really good, and fits around the time where you get them. Some is a bit strong, but not as powerful as I thought they'd be.
My Most Used Support Skills:
1. Vigorous Victor: Every fight in Troubler is a boss fight. So 50% HP MP recovery? Sign me in!.
2. Ensnare: Feels very powerful, but considering the fact that it won't trigger if the attacked is dead, it's a lot more balanced than I thought. And despite it being so powerful, it's not powerful enough to keep a boss permanently slowed. So it's surprisingly balanced, albeit still on the stronger side.
3. Chain attack: 1 more hit and the additional shield break turns out to be a lot more useful than I thought. Apart from Priest's chain attack. RIP.
4. Latent Power Plus: Most character's main source of damage comes from latent power in the early game after all.
Ochette
DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
3 Most Used Skill: Beastly Fang/Claw, Cleaving Blow and Leghold Trap
3 Least Used Skill: Take Aim, Beastly Howl, Indomitable Beast
Summary: Decent all around, very good support and decent damage potential. Most damage comes from her latent power, which is fine considering she has an early access to late game axes. Ochette is insane at crowd controlling through Cleaving Blow and summon, and her damage is pretty decent, but is no where near THE damage dealer.
* Take Aim's value is too low to be used instead of crowd controlling and shield breaking.
* Beastly Howl simply can't beat Beastly Fang/Claw because how hard it is to charge Ochette's latent.
Castti
DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ ✦
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
3 Most Used Skill: Healing Touch, Desperate Measure, Elemental Damage Concocts
3 Least Used Skill: Alchemy, Magic Crit Concoct, Rehabilitate
Summary: Insanely powerful as a DPS, Support, and healer. Unlike Ochette, Castti can fully utilize the early late-game Axe through Desperate Measure (which after buff is perhaps too strong) and her INSANELY powerful damage concocts. But all of this is possible because she has a late game weapon.
* Alchemy's has no innate synergy with Castti's toolkits, and is made for a debuff based boss that isn't in the game.
(Side note, used Alchemy on Throne Boss 2. Didn't convert the permanent debuff to a permanent buff. 0/10)
* Magic Crit Concoct is bugged and turns off damage concoct.
Throne
DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ ✦
3 Most Used Skill: SP Thief, Steal, Veil of Darkness
3 Least Used Skill: Shackles of Ruin, Armor Corrosive, Swift Step
Summary: Throne in the early mid game is EXTREMELY powerful, mostly due to the power of Veil of Darkness. She also has access to early late game dagger, so her damage is pretty high. Like Ochette, at the moment she isn't very good at utilizing it. But, unlike the base game, it's very easy to make Throne spam Veil of Darkness since now she has an easy SP recovery method.
* These skills saw less use because Throne was busy dealing damage, and it make sense that these single target skills made for boss fights see less uses.
Osvald
DPS Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧
Support Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧
3 Most Used Skill: Icewind, Stroke of Genius, Seal of Diffusion
3 Least Used Skill: Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Elemental Barrage
Summary: Despite not having access to late game weapons, Osvald still manages to output a very good amount of damage in the early mid game. All in all, while he is still teammate reliant on how powerful his support can be, it's honestly pretty fun thinking about how to utilize his toolkit in a team.
* The elemental AoE were used less often because Ice potency up accessory.
* Elemental Barrage is mostly for shield break. As a damage tool it's weaker because its low invocation value and Troubler's higher enemy defense stat.
Need to sleep so, no fancy fonts this time.
Chapter Experience:
- Dourdour is definitely one of the strongest powerful chapter 1 bosses. And unlike other travelers, Agnea has almost no way of cheesing around it. Gus isn't that powerful of a temporary NPC, and there's not a lot of powerful summons for Agnea to recruit (though I'm not sure a "fully heal the danced target" NPC should even be considered weak). On top of that, wild encounters in troubler are very strong and demands careful play just to survive them.
- Not to mention Dourdour will summon 2 enemies after taking enough damage, and even those summoned enemies is extremely deadly... is what I would say if the power of NUT isn't on our side. The nuts are insanely powerful against early game bosses.
Skills:
- 1. [Lion Dance]: This change is nice. While most characters doesn't benefit from having both P.Atk and M.Atk up at the same time, this helps Agnea freeing up a skill slot.
- 2. [Peacock Strut]: Peacock now doubling BP regen is pretty nice. This skill was too slow for base Octopath, so having it on Dancer is honestly really nice. I can see myself using this skill quite a lot in the future.
- 3. [Quickstep]: The buff is really what this skill should have been. Good change.
- 4. [Moonstep]: This now gives 4 random elemental AoE with decent damage output. I think goal is to poke enemy for weakness and AoE finisher? Wonder if this is more powerful than Windy Refrain.
- 5. [Sweeping Gale]: Same as other elemental spell.
Latent Power
- No change.
Passive
- [Chain Skill: Dancer]: good shield breaking tool, makes max boost auto attack into a 6~7 shield break is pretty good.
Personal Opinion:
- Agnea hasn't been changed that much, and most of the tools she had is still with her. She is mostly unchanged apart from the addition of BP generation and sprint boot. Moonstep is pretty interesting, though I'm not sure how good it is damage wise, given it's easier to boost Windy Refrain.
- Now that we have all 8 travelers, let's count the tools the player has completely lost access to:
- Hired Help: GOOD.
- Shackle Foe - P. Atk debuff has been removed from player's toolkit, making Hikari the only reliable source of attack debuff.
- Replenish Health / Prayer for Rain - Regen has been removed from player's toolkit as well. But this isn't that relevant to begin with so it's fine.
- Dance of Immunity - Debuff immunity has been removed from player's toolkit. Given that Drastic Measure is gone, this isn't that relevant any more.
- Seal of Immortality - One time Hold Out has also been removed, which is probably fine.
- Most of the things removed are pretty standard, apart from the attack debuff. Octopath not having M.Atk debuff was already weird for me, since this is a RPG game. But perhaps there are passives that can solve this issue.
Chapter Experience:
- Partitio now is insanely powerful at collecting money, and the entire chapter 1 has become that much more fun as every enemy I see has turned into a bags of gold. Making Bifelgan an early game tool absolutely makes the experience way more exciting. That and now buying the chapter 1 Aegis shield is now actually realistic.
- The chapter is a lot easier than other ones because Giff's squad can get easily destroyed by our lovely tavern assistant's roundhouse kicks. Giff was even taken out before his goons.
Skills:
- 1. [Tax Drive]: Guaranteed [Collect], but now gets a decently powerful lance attack as a bonus. This skill was not as impressive in chapter one, but that's understandable given early game enemies give almost nothing from collect. Meanwhile...
- 2. [Arrow of Fortune].: Now gives Money = damage dealt. It's like an early game Bifelgan, which makes this INSANELY fun to use.
- 3. [Ember]: Same as other elemental attacks.
- 4. [Generate BP]: I don't think this move needed a buff, but it's nice non-the-less. Side note, description should specify that it can't target the user, something like "Grant 1 BP to another ally, and 1 BP to yourself.'
- 5. [Size Up] - RIP [Hired Help]. Good Riddance [Hired Help] . That being said, [Size Up] is kind of on the weaker side. But honestly, Merchant is already strong enough as it is.
Latent Power
- Love it.
Support Skill
[Chain Skill: Merchant]: (BUG 1.0.10) Evasion given by Lance doesn't stack with Side Step. Bow doesn't give Crit stack / apply target focus.
Personal Opinion:
- I love [Arrow of Fortune].
- I love [Arrow of Fortune].
- I love [Arrow of Fortune].
- All in all, love the changes. Now I can mentally feel my perception of "enemies" turning into money bags when I add Partitio into my team. And a merchant class in a game being able to do that to the player is definitely good design. Removing Hired Help is also great, really hated that skill for being insanely powerful and costing too much money. Though the replacement is a bit on the weaker side. And the fact that I still haven't seen a single Atk/M. Atk debuff skill is kind of worrying.
Chapter Experience:
- Early game was hell. Troubler made the first couple encounters insanely hard despite me bringing [Vengeful Blade] into the fight. But it's still possible. Had to farm 2 windstones, and maintain a good amount of grape. At least the chapter has a good place for auto save.
- Otherwise, Hikari is insanely powerful this chapter thanks to [Vengeful Blade] and access to [Doze].
Skills:
- 1. [Enervating Slash]: I think everyone agrees that base game [Enervating Slash] is the most difficult to make use of skill in warrior's kit. Since the only time it's viable is when all buffs on warrior is running out. So I love turning that useless skill into something that can and will see a lot of uses.
- 2. [Crescent Thunder]: Skill looks awesome when used. AoE Sword/Lightning is nice, and the attack seems pretty decent for AoE breaking.
- 3. [Double-Thrust]: This skill is decent, but I think it will get over shadowed by learned polearm skills, such as [Aggressive Thrust].
- 4. [Abide]: Love the fact that it now increases HP! And honestly, this really fit into the skills' flavor. Warriors having access to healing themselves just make sense on so many level.
- 5. [Incite]: Now makes the user defend themselves. Great change honestly, since it's a straight upgrade of the defend button. This and the buff to [Vengeful Blade] honestly make them a lot more viable than before and I love it. Not to mention [Defend] was already a good option.
- 6. [Vengeful Blade]: Now also makes the user defend themselves. [Vengeful Blade] is the most broken in chapter 1, but almost never see use later. So the buff made this basically a better [Defend], so it will definitely see use now.
Latent Power
- [Tenretsuzan]: Now deals basically no damage but breaks shield and give another turn. Good change honestly. It's finally better than [Hienka]. Though, it's unfortunate that we have lost the early game out for Octopuff/Cait.
- [Hienka]: the skill is now a 3 hit attack for damage. And it certain is good at that. (BUG) Note that this skill deals 2 sword and 1 dark attack, but it will break 3 shield against enemies who are only weak to dark but not sword. This skill functions normally otherwise (break 2 shield against sword weak enemy, and 3 against sword/dark weak enemy)
Support Skill
[Chain Skill: Warrior]: Pretty powerful honestly. Sword / Lance are both good. Sword gives 6~7 shield break considering the counter (which becomes [Vengeful Blade]), and lance gives 5~6 and give 1 [Side Step]. Sadly, the latter seems to function similarly to the pre-change Staff chain skill, so it might not stack with [Side Step].
Personal Opinion:
- Love the changes to Hikari. The changes made to the old skills are all really in flavor and made sense. I can see myself using [Vengeful Blade] and [Incite] in the future, and honestly really excited for it. The new lance skill are pretty fun, but [Double-Thrust] is a bit on the bland side.
- The changes to the hidden power is pretty good. [Tenretsuzan] getting an unique effect is great, finally setting it apart from Hienka. And Hienka getting nerfed is totally deserved. [Sougetsusan] sadly now has a buddy in [Crescent Thunder] so it's even less unique now, oof.
- Most learned skill has lost most of their damage due to Hikari losing access to those weapons. But honestly most weapon learned skills aren't that useful anyway so it shouldn't matter that much.
Chapter Experience:
- Chapter is way too short again. Castti is also one of the stronger travelers early game as she is half invincible herself. However, the changes to her elemental concoctions are really nice. The buff is noticeable and I hope this can become a viable method of dealing damage late game.
- The bosses were also a lot more frail than I remembered, but it's not that big of a deal. Perhaps it's due to the increased stat, which made the bosses hit a lot less hard than they should.
- Love the concoct change making it viable as a form of magical damage. Really liked it.
Skills:
- 1. [Replenish Health] - Single target regen were turned into AoE healing to mirror Cleric's AoE healing.
- 2. [Icicle] - Same as other elemental attacks.
- 3. [Desperate Measures] - [Drastic Measure] has been demoted to a regular skill and nerfed quite a bit. It's basically as strong as [Drastic Measure] when it's used against enemy with a single debuff, so about as strong as [Surprise Attack]. (BUG) It also doesn't seem to drain HP and only gives Cassti 2 turns of P.Def down.
Concoct
- (Pomegrante Leaf):1 BP => dispel 2 debuff on ally
- (Mighty Leaf):Atk up 2 turn = > give ally 2 [Physical Crit] Token
- (Whimsical Leaf):Turn order manip = > give ally 2 [Magical Crit] Token
- (Dual Leaf):HP/MP Regen => raises ally Physical Defense
- (Sticky Flower):Speed Evasion debuff => enemy M.Def down 2 turn
- (Fumbling Flower):Crit debuff => enemy 1 turn poison
- (Enfeebling Flower):Status extension => enemy P.Def down 2 turn
- (Dual Flower):Confuses / blinds => enemy 2 turn blind
- There are a couple big nerfs. She lost turn order boost and status extension, which were some of the most powerful tools she had access to. But, she gained the ability to support magical damage. But most importantly, this change made picking between Medicinal or Hazardous an actual choice. So I think this is a good change. BP generation should be gone anyway, and Castti really shouldn't have ability to manipulate turn order in the first place.
Support Skill
[Chain Skill: Apothecary]: Axe seems to be the best chain skill at the moment, and it definitely is really good. But not as powerful as Ochette since the latter has access to NPC summons for extra proc.
Personal Opinion that don't need to be rememebered:
- Most of Cassti's kit were nerfed to made her into a more reasonable support than the Swiss Army Knife that she was. Personally, I think the concoct changes were perfect. Side note, RIP [Take Aim]. Making player to actually consider picking which side to use is what concoct should have been and the fact that the elemental flowers now do decent damage is a huge plus.
Shame Shadow's Hold doesn't have tool tips that describs the skills ability ratio and invocation value.- The skill nerfs were a bit strange. Because those were just straight up nerfs. Cassti doesn't need [Replenish Health] as she already had this option in the form of concoct. And [Drastic Measure] has become about half as strong as it was while gaining downsides, but it was broken so nerfing it make sense.
- That being said, Cassti is extremely hard to balance as she has a total of 24 options to choose from, and of course not all of them are going to be hits. But even if they aren't viable, I still wish the options were different from one another. Like making [Replenish Health] an AoE HP/MP regen, or make [Sweeping Cleave] steal from hit targets. All non-human wild encounter enemies only carry fruits and leafs. So something like a [Harvesting Cleave] would have fit the flavor and isn't that out of place.
I think I'll revisit Desperate Measures, and fix the bug of course! Maybe it could stand to do more damage given the downsides. It would be nice to be able to make it cost all but 1hp and deal damage scaled higher if more HP was lost, but it would involve writing a new sequence file which is... way beyond my scope, pages of code for quite a small payoff as nice as it would be.
I like the "Harvest Materials" idea for sweeping cleave, it would be a neat addition to have another character who can acquire items as well!
Hope
[1.0.9 / Bug] Providence seem to still be able to used multiple times during the same battle
Chapter Experience:
- Ended way too quickly. Ochette is one of the more powerful travelers and her chapter 1 allows her to get relatively strong armors for free with our favorite King Iguana. And later she can Hire Mr. Resting for basically invincibility against the boss for free.
- There's honestly not much to talk about. In Troubler, the cave was pretty dangerous as most enemy do 1/3 of your maxHP per hit, but you can actually teleport back to the village and hire Mr. Resting early ( who leaves after finding the girl so you need more jerky to get him back ).
- Now that I think about it, Temenos Boss 1 is Extremely overtuned. Maybe it's because of Troubler. Felvarg had 8k HP, but Roi felt like he had 2k.
Skills:
1. [Blinding Arrow]: Seems to have decent damage output and a reliable source of blind. So definitely a good change considering it was Mercy Strike. Also hunter blinding their prey is a good touch.
2. [Cleaving Blow]: Giving player access to stun is interesting. Forgot to test this against Roi. But this should be a very useful skill for controling enemies.
3. [Thunderbird]: Same as other single target elemental attack.
4. [Leghold Trap]: And now the poison access. Considering the lack of weapon variety, giving each character more tools to break shield is definitely a safe choice. And giving Ochette a good amount of access to status effects is pretty nice flavor.
5. [Take Aim]: Note that this is a [per hit] buff. Meaning using multihit skills will instantly consume almost all of your [Take Aim] charges. Other than that, this skill is pretty good. That being said, [Take Aim] not giving 3 charges for [Draefendi’s Bow] is ... a bit sad.
6. [Draefendi’s Bow]: God I hope this is buffed. I don't understand why SE hated this skill so much... Why does Aeber do so much despite also being an AoE, and yet...
Latent Power
- [Beastly Claws / Fangs]: Claw and Fangs now act like an Axe attack. This means they now damage shield if enemy is weak to axes, but no longer use Bow stat should the equipped bow be stronger than the equipped axe. This feels like a flavor change, and consider the theme of most of the changes, this is perfectly fine.
- (Bug) [Beastly Fangs] doesn't have the Axe Icon, and does not damage shield if enemy is weak to Axe.
- [Beastly Howl]: This change is nice, it instantly set up for physical teams. Howl was already almost never used in the base game but I can see this actually has some really nice uses.
Support Skill
[Chain Skill: Hunter]: Axe is really nice, as it gives an immediate extra turn after 5 hits. Meaning it's insane for shield breaking. Bow is also 5 hits, which gives 1 charge of [Take Aim]. This is pretty good honestly, aside from the issue that:
(Bug) The [Take Aim] charge gained from Achilles Strike (Bow) is then immediately used on itself. So the buff was probably applied too early, resulting in either the wind or bow attack consuming the [Take Aim] charge instead.
Personal Opinion:
- Giving the hunter ability to control they prey with various statuses is definitely the right flavor and choice. Really like the rework. Shame that I didn't get a chance to test out the stun status against Roi. The fact that Ochette now joins Castti as another status abusing character is pretty cute too.
- Assuming no major changes were done to her kit, Ochette seems to be on the stronger side of the travelers. Really like most of the changes done to her and her summons seems to continue to be really good at shield breaking. Surely nothing bad happened to Provoke Beasts, right?