The deep and flexible combat system is one of Octopath Traveler 2's biggest selling points. It allows you to experiment with different job combinations, strategize using each character's unique skills and Latent Powers, and mastery of the Boost system lets you pull off some tremendously impressive feats of devastation.

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The game is very good at easing you into this battle system, but the later stages will get quite tough if you don't take the time to work out some decent strategies or learn the ins and outs well enough. Here, we provide some tried-and-tested tips for getting to grips with the combat system.

Learn The Order Of Weakness Icons

Unless you're a heavy user of the Scholar's Analyze ability, finding out what an enemy is weak to can be something of a chore, requiring some trial and error. However, once you've revealed one or two, you can use a simple trick to narrow down the full range of weaknesses possessed by the enemy in question.

The weaknesses in the game, whether to a weapon or an element, are always arranged in the exact same order. That order is as follows:

• Swords
• Spears
• Daggers
• Axes
• Bows
• Staves
• Fire
• Ice
• Lightning
• Wind
• Light
• Darkness

This means that whenever you identify a weakness, you can narrow down the other weaknesses the enemy has based on the position of the revealed weakness in its weakness box. For example, if you reveal the first weakness, on the far left of the box, and it's Staves, then you know that the rest of the enemy's weaknesses must all be elemental in nature.

This trick takes a lot of the guesswork out of finding weaknesses.

Once you've reached Gravell, which is at the northern tip of the western continent, you'll be able to unlock the Armsmaster job. This job has the Sixfold Strike attack, which deals a strike of every single weapon type - this is perfect for identifying weapon weaknesses in one turn. After that turn, you simply have to root out any elemental weaknesses.

Elemental Barrage Makes Mugging Easy

One of the more convenient and exploitable Path Actions in the game is Osvald's Mugging. This allows you to acquire the entire inventory of an NPC in one fell swoop, as long as you can beat them in a battle. This means you can get very powerful pieces of equipment before you can get Throné or Agnea to a high-enough level to get them normally, or raise the funds to purchase them with Partitio (and some items cannot be purchased, anyway).

The potential issue that you may identify is that Osvald can be quite fragile at times, and relies on being able to exploit elemental weaknesses unless he's built for a more physically oriented sub-job. This is where Elemental Barrage comes in - most NPCs in the game are weak to at least one of the three elements that Elemental Barrage makes use of, so it's a great way to root them out efficiently. In addition, once an enemy is Broken, a boosted Elemental Barrage will deal a very large amount of damage without the need for setting up an elemental boost or Advanced Magic/Alephan's Wisdom.

Simply pump Osvald's elemental attack stat as high as it can go and then use Elemental Barrage to your heart's content. With high stats, it's a great tool for taking on even enemies who don't have weaknesses to Fire, Lightning, or Ice.

Elemental Boosts Rule The Roost

Some pieces of equipment in this game will raise the damage that a character deals when using certain elements. This boost is not insignificant and can seriously boost your damage, letting you break the damage cap quite easily when the conditions are right.

Having the item equipped is all you need for the boost to be applied - if Osvald has a Dagger equipped that boosts his Fire damage, for example, his spells will still be boosted even when the elemental attack he's using is from a Staff.

The table below lists every piece of equipment that boosts an element.

Enhance Your Equipment

The range of equipment in Octopath Traveler 2 is vast - there seems to be a piece of equipment to satisfy any want or need. Some of them come with downsides to compensate for their power, and some of them are just plain useful. There are two ways to make some of the best pieces of equipment even more useful.

The first is the Blessing in Disguise. This is an accessory that you can pick up either from the Seat of the Water Sprite, an optional dungeon in the Crestlands or from the Lost Isle, which is only accessible after purchasing Partitio's boat and defeating the whirlpool monster to the east of Toto'haha Island.

The effect of the Blessing in Disguise is to completely reverse any negative modifiers that your equipment has. When paired with the right equipment, this can be incredibly useful. A prime example is the Cursed Set of armor, all of which have fantastic defensive stats but plummet another stat into the ground - with the Blessing in Disguise, the Cursed Set now provides the best stat boosts in the entire game, turning a whole spread of -66 into +66.

The second method is Upgraded Accessories, which is a Support Skill learned by the Inventor class. To unlock this, you'll need to have completed three of Arkar's inventions. This skill will raise the stats granted by the user's accessories by half, giving them far better stat gains. This is best used on characters who use their accessories simply to boost their stats, usually the offensive stats. The best accessories, such as the Eye of Calamity and the Librarian's Amulet, have huge stat boosts associated with them, so using them with Upgraded Accessories is a no-brainer.

Make A Meal Of Your Foes

One of the more underrated unique abilities in the game is Ochette's ability to Capture monsters and then prepare them, turning them into meals. At the beginning of the game, the meals aren't too impressive - Jerky and its varieties only heal a bit of HP and sometimes SP, and they're not as good as Healing Grapes.

Stronger monsters, however, get turned into far better meals. They can grant great status effects and stat buffs, deal with rare status ailments, and even replicate the effects of rare Energizing Pomegranates and Empowering Lychees.

When you have Ochette in your party, make liberal use of the Capture ability, keep her auto-capture option turned on, and use her to finish enemies off when you can. Not only will this let you experiment with lots of different and interesting monsters in battle, but you'll quickly amass a great repertoire of meals that you'll always be able to find a use for.

If you combine this with the Apothecary's Divine Skill, Dohter's Charity, you'll be able to spread the effects of a meal to the entire party at once. If you get some particularly useful meals, such as those that provide offensive buffs, this is a great way to use them.

NEXT: Octopath Traveler 2: Every Job, Ranked