Octopath Traveler - Merchant Skill Guide

Octopath Traveler is fairly simple by RPG standards. However, when you factor in the game's job system there's quite a lot of choice on offer when it comes to deciding on how to develop your characters.

In this series of guides, I'll be covering how each of the game's eight characters and their jobs functions. I'll be highlighting some of the best skills to take advantage of and how best to use complimentary jobs and skills to maximise each character's effectiveness.

In all RPGs such as these, going back to Final Fantasy V, there's a wealth of options to consider and I by no means intend these to be the definitive "best" builds of any of the characters. Instead, think of them as a point in the right direction in how best to use each of your party members. These sample builds assume you have unlocked all eight basic classes but don’t factor in the four additional jobs that can be acquired later in the game.

As always, if you think I've overlooked a particular strategy, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Path Action - Purchase: Purchase items from townspeople.

Talent - Eye for Money: Collect money left by fallen adventurers, merchants, and other NPCs.

Stat Bonuses:

• Max HP +8%

• Physical Attack +3%

• Physical Defense +3%

• Max SP +8%

• Elemental Attack +3%

• Elemental Defense +3%

Weapons: Bows, Polearms

Active Skills

• Collect (2 SP) - Collect money from a single foe.

• Tradewinds (7 SP) - Deal heavy wind damage to a single foe.

• Rest (0 SP) - Restore one's own HP and SP, and cure status ailments.

• Trade Tempest (10 SP) - Deal wind damage to all foes.

• Donate BP (3 SP) - Grant 1 BP to an ally.

• Sidestep (10 SP) - Dodge a single physical attack with a 100% success rate.

• Hired Help (0 SP) - Pay money to summon hired help to the battlefield.

• Bifelgan's Bounty (30 SP; Divine Skill) - Unleash a non-elemental attack on a single foe and receive money equivalent to the damage dealt

Passive Skills

• Endless Items - When a character with this skill uses an item, there is a 25% chance the item will not be consumed.

• Grows on Trees - Gain additional money after battles. (Equipping this skill with multiple characters will have no added effect.)

• Hang Tough - When the user is not near death, all attacks that would reduce the user's HP below zero will instead leave the user with 1 HP.

• SP Saver - Halves SP consumption for the equipping character.

Tressa is the true generalist in Octopath Traveler's gang of eight. She has a little bit of everything: wields two different weapon types, has access to wind magic and receive stat bonuses to attack, defence and her maximum HP and MP. Even her passives are great. SP Saver is a must-have for every magic-based class in the game, and even Tressa can make decent use of it thanks to her wind magic and decent elemental attack.

As with Alfyn, the difficulty with an all-rounder is working out where to take them: do you keep them good at everything, or do you use their versatility to have them slip into any role that you require?

The skills you want to prioritise here are Tradewinds and Trade Tempest so that you have access to wind magic. After that, you want to snag Rest, a terrific self-healing ability that also cures status effects. After that the quality of the Merchant skills drops off quite a bit, Sidestep is decent, and Hired Help is fun but is almost certainly going to be too taxing on your money reserves to be used frequently.

Tressa doesn't have any particular weaknesses, which is what you'd expect for a jack-of-all-trades. She has decent coverage, has reasonable damage output and that's before you even decide on a second job for her. I'd go as far as to say that Tressa, and the Merchant class as a whole, is one of the strongest basic classes in the entire game.

Secondary Job – Apothecary

Passive Skills

- Summon Strength

- Elemental Augmentation

- Inspiration

- Endless Items

Staying true to Tressa's generalist approach, this build allows Tressa to stay good at pretty much everything, and so can be slotted into pretty much any party composition without a hitch.

The two classes support each other well in terms of coverage, with the Apothecary job adding axes and ice magic to the decent options that the Merchant job already has.

Summon Strength and Elemental Augmentation are obvious inclusions but are even more important for a character like Tressa who isn't going to be benefitting from the more significant stat bonuses of, say, the Warrior or Scholar. Inspiration is included as a way to regain SP without items and works well with fact that Tressa will have decent physical damage output, unlike regular magic-users.

Endless Items isn't quite as good here as it is on Alfyn since he's the only character with access to the Concoct ability. However, it works very well with the Dohter's Charity skill, bolstering Tressa's support capabilities should the need arise.