Best Characters and Party Setup in Octopath Traveler
Octopath Traveler features eight main characters that you can mix and match into your party however you want, with the exception of your main protagonist, who is locked in until you finish their story. As a result, there are tons of party combinations that you can work with, and it’s definitely worth noting that there’s no definitive or ‘best’ party combination at the moment. However, there are a few characters and classes that would be considered high priority for your party in Octopath Traveler. Here are the best characters and party setup in Octopath Traveler.
From our experience, these were the best characters to use:
- Ophilia
- Cyrus
- Primrose
- H’aanit
- Therion
After playing Octopath Traveler to completion, we found that some of the more invaluable characters in the game ended up being Ophilia, Cyrus, Primrose, H’aanit, and Therion. For our party setup, we liked having Ophilia, Cryus, and Primrose be our mainstays, and we’d swap out H’aanit and Therion whenever the situation called for it. Ophilia and Cyrus, in particular, are very useful for late game encounters because of how strong magic can be. Both characters have the highest elemental defense and elemental attack stats in Octopath Traveler, which makes them the best mages and healers. We opted to put the Cleric secondary class on Cyrus, and the Merchant class on Ophilia, and this gave us access to all the elements. With Primrose in our party, we also had dark magic, so this would allow us to cover all elements when facing enemies.
In addition to that, we found that having Primrose as a Thief/Apothecary, H’aanit as a Warrior, and Therion as an Apothecary/Hunter also allowed us to have access to all the weapon types. Primrose would be able to provide emergency heals as an Apothecary when needed, and she could also use the Dancer’s Peacock Strut to boost Ophilia and Cyrus’ magic attacks even further. Both Primrose and H’aanit/Therion would also have enough weapon types to break shields when needed. We also found that having the Thief class in some battles was useful, as we could use Shackle Foe to decrease an enemy’s physical attack.
As for support skills, Second Serving and Patience are vital for H’aanit and Therion, as this gives our melee attackers more opportunities to break an opponent’s shield. Towards the end of Octopath Traveler, we also opted to put Saving Grace on all of our active party members to improve their survivability, and also enable Cyrus and Ophilia to have more opportunities to dish out elemental damage. Both Cyrus and Ophilia should also have either Second Wind or SP Saver as their support skills so that they don’t have to worry about running out of SP. And, if needed, you can put Therion into your party or have Primrose take the Thief class to supply them with more SP, depending on the situation.
Near the end of Octopath Traveler, after acquiring the advanced classes, we opted to have H’aanit as our Runelord, Primrose as Warmaster, and Ophilia as Sorcerer. You can’t go wrong with swapping jobs between H’aanit and Primrose, though we felt Warmaster would benefit Primrose more since she only starts with one weapon type. Sorcerer gives Ophilia access to every single element, along with triple-hit spells. We opted to keep Cyrus as a Cleric since we valued healing over the buffs offered by the Starseer class.
The remaining three characters were also serviceable, but we found that our setup was able to carry us through a lot of late game encounters. Tressa, while useful in the early game encounters with Collect and Hired Help, is an all-rounder and unless you use a lot of Nuts or give her much better weapons, we didn’t think she was really worth using as a mage or physical attacker. Olberic could also be a good choice as a physical attacker or tank with the Hunter class, but with Saving Grace on all four characters, there was never really much of a need to have a tank in the party. Not to mention the fact that H’aanit has better physical damage, and she can capture beasts to give her more versatility in battle.
Alfyn is a great choice for any party setup, and if you really like him, you can easily fit him into your composition as well. Alfyn seemed to work best with the Warrior or Thief classes as he could absorb a lot of damage, dish out a lot of damage, and also help with SP management. His Concoct talent can also be useful for removing status ailments on your whole party, though we found this to be a lot more situational.
At the end of the day, your party composition is going to come down to personal preference, but our chosen five characters are a pretty good start if you’re not sure how to proceed. That’s pretty much all you need to know about the best characters and party setup in Octopath Traveler.
Be sure to check our wiki for more information on Octopath Traveler.
