Octopath Traveler: Unlocking the Best Secondary Jobs for Your Party

Octopath Traveler is a beloved RPG developed by Square Enix, first released in 2018 and later expanded to various platforms. Set in the vibrant world of Orsterra, the game follows the distinct journeys of eight diverse adventurers, each with their own story, background, and unique perspectives. The core of the game’s strategic combat lies in its job system, where each character begins with a specific role – Cleric, Scholar, Merchant, Warrior, Apothecary, Dancer, Thief, or Hunter – each granting unique skills and weapon proficiencies. However, the true depth of Octopath Traveler‘s combat and character customization is revealed when players gain the ability to assign Octopath Traveler Best Second Jobs to their party members, dramatically expanding their capabilities and allowing for powerful synergies. Mastering this system is key to overcoming the game’s many challenging foes and bosses.

The ability to equip secondary jobs allows for a multitude of strategic combinations, transforming how each character performs in battle. While the sheer number of possibilities can seem overwhelming, especially when considering the advanced secret jobs, understanding which secondary jobs complement a character’s base strengths is crucial for optimizing your party. Whether you aim to maximize damage, enhance support capabilities, or add versatility, selecting the right second job for each of the eight travelers can significantly impact your success in Orsterra. Just as strategically picking your team’s composition can make a difference, understanding how characters might fare in the sequel by exploring topics like octopath traveler 2 best characters can give insight into evolving character roles.

Choosing Secondary Jobs for Each Character

Assigning the optimal secondary job to each of Octopath Traveler‘s initial eight characters is essential for unlocking their full potential. These combinations leverage their base stats and innate abilities to create powerful, versatile party members.

Olberic Eisenberg – The Warrior/Apothecary

Olberic is a formidable warrior renowned for his strength and defensive capabilities. Starting as a Warrior, he excels at physical damage and tanking hits using swords and polearms.
Adding the Apothecary secondary job significantly enhances Olberic’s survivability and utility.
Octopath Traveler character Olberic Eisenberg in combat stanceThis combination provides:

• Adds the use of Axes: Expanding his physical damage options and ability to break enemy defenses.
• Gains access to healing abilities: Allowing him to act as a self-sustaining tank or provide emergency support.
• Increased HP: Further solidifying his role as a durable frontline fighter.
• Stat boosts: Provides valuable boosts to HP, Critical, Attack, and Defense, aligning perfectly with his Warrior role.

Cyrus Albright – The Scholar/Merchant

Cyrus is a brilliant but somewhat oblivious scholar, specializing in elemental magic and enemy analysis as a Scholar. His primary role is to exploit elemental weaknesses with Fire, Ice, and Lightning spells.
Pairing Cyrus with the Merchant secondary job optimizes his magical offensive capabilities and provides utility.
Octopath Traveler character Cyrus Albright casting a spellThis combination offers:

• Boosts to Elemental Attack and SP: Directly enhancing his primary damage output and allowing for more spell casting.
• The Rest skill: Enables Cyrus to restore his own HP and SP, crucial for a magic-heavy character during prolonged battles.
• Access to Wind Magic: While less critical than his base elements, adds another damage type option.

Tressa Colzione – The Merchant/Thief

Tressa is a cheerful and shrewd merchant, skilled with bows and polearms and possessing innate Wind magic and the ability to collect money or items during battle. Her Merchant job allows for unique utility.
The Thief secondary job makes Tressa a highly versatile support and damage dealer, leveraging debuffs and added weapon types.

Key benefits include:

• More weapons: daggers and swords: Significantly increasing her physical break options.
• Debuff skills: Adding valuable utility by lowering enemy stats, complementing her support capabilities.
• Stealing: Allows her to acquire items from enemies during battle, adding resource generation.

Ophilia Clement – The Cleric/Dancer

Ophilia is a devout and compassionate cleric dedicated to healing and guiding her party using Light magic and staves. Her primary focus is on keeping the team alive.
Assigning the Dancer secondary job enhances Ophilia’s support role, allowing her to buff allies in addition to healing them.

This pairing provides:

• Gains access to buffs: Enables her to increase party members’ physical attack, elemental attack, speed, and critical rate.
• Can use daggers: Adds a physical weapon option if needed.
• Dark Magic access: Offers another elemental damage type.

Primrose Azelhart – The Dancer/Scholar

Primrose is an elegant yet vengeful dancer, using daggers and Dark magic, alongside buffs and the ability to allure NPCs. Her base job focuses on support and utility.
Giving Primrose the Scholar secondary job transforms her into a potent elemental magic attacker, complementing her existing Dark magic.

Benefits of this combination:

• Elemental skills: Grants access to Fire, Ice, and Lightning magic, making her capable of hitting a wide range of elemental weaknesses alongside her innate Dark magic.
• Enhanced magic damage potential: Leverages her already decent elemental attack stat.

Alfyn Greengrass – The Apothecary/Cleric

Alfyn is a kind and naive apothecary who uses axes and healing/damaging concoctions crafted from collected ingredients. His unique Concoct ability makes him a versatile support.
Adding the Cleric secondary job solidifies Alfyn’s role as a primary healer and support character.

This combination provides:

• Becomes an out-and-out healer: Access to potent healing spells complements his Concoct abilities.
• Access to Staves and some Light Magic: Adds offensive magic and another weapon type.
• Increased Elemental Defense and SP: Helps him sustain his magical healing output.

Therion – The Thief/Hunter

Therion is a lone wolf thief, skilled with swords and daggers, Fire magic, and debuffing/stealing from enemies. His Thief job makes him agile and utility-focused.
The Hunter secondary job enhances Therion’s physical damage and debuffing capabilities while adding new weapon options.

Key benefits include:

• More weapons: Axes and Bows: Expanding his physical breaking potential significantly.
• Debuffs: Adds skills like Leghold Trap, further enhancing his ability to control enemy turns and debilitate them.
• Physical Attack Boosts: Complements his strong base physical attack stat.

H’aanit – The Hunter/Warrior

H’aanit is a skilled huntress and tracker who uses bows and axes, Lightning magic, and the ability to capture and summon beasts. Her base job is physically oriented with unique utility.
The Warrior secondary job maximizes H’aanit’s physical damage output, making her one of the game’s premier physical attackers.

This pairing provides:

• Can use Swords and Polearms: Adding more physical weapon options.
• Boosts Physical Attack: Stacks with her already high physical attack, leading to massive damage numbers.
• Access to Warrior skills: Provides powerful physical attack abilities like Cross Strike and Thousand Spears. Players looking for character rankings across the series might find insights in resources comparing octopath traveler 2 characters ranked.

Exploring Secret Jobs

Beyond the eight standard secondary jobs available at shrines throughout Orsterra, Octopath Traveler features four powerful secret jobs. These jobs are unlocked by defeating incredibly challenging superbosses found in hidden locations. While difficult to obtain, they represent some of the game’s Octopath Traveler Best Second Jobs, offering unparalleled power and unique abilities.

Warmaster

• Best Suited For: Olberic or H’aanit
  The Warmaster is the ultimate physical damage job, granting mastery over all weapon types and powerful multi-hit physical skills. It’s ideal for characters with high base physical attack. Olberic and H’aanit are prime candidates due to their innate physical prowess, allowing them to leverage the job’s full potential. Characters like Alfyn and Therion can also utilize this job effectively due to their decent physical stats, showcasing how different base kits can adapt to powerful advanced roles.

Runelord

• Best Suited For: Primrose or Tressa
  The Runelord is an exceptional support and offensive job, focusing on applying elemental properties to weapons and using the powerful Transfer Rune skill to spread buffs or abilities to the entire party. This job excels on characters who can efficiently use SP or have unique abilities to spread. Tressa is perhaps the most famous candidate due to the synergy with her Rest (SP/HP restore) and Share BP skills, which Transfer Rune can apply to the whole party. Primrose also benefits greatly, being able to spread her powerful dancer buffs.

Starseer

• Best Suited For: Alfyn or Therion
  Often considered the most specialized of the secret jobs, the Starseer provides powerful support buffs and unique elemental attacks based on divine constellations. While perhaps less universally impactful than Warmaster or Sorcerer, it remains a strong option for enhancing party performance. Characters with a mix of support and offensive capability, or those who can uniquely benefit from the Starseer’s buffs (like SP regeneration), can make good use of it. Alfyn and Therion are suggested due to their versatile base kits.

Sorcerer

• Best Suited For: Ophilia or Cyrus
  The Sorcerer is the undisputed master of elemental magic, granting access to powerful spells across all six standard elements (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, Dark). This job is a must-have for maximizing magical damage output. Characters with high base elemental attack stats are the clear choices. Ophilia and Cyrus, already adept with Light and multiple elements respectively, become incredibly potent elemental powerhouses when equipped with the Sorcerer job. With the right setup, a Sorcerer can devastatingly exploit enemy weaknesses.

Conclusion

Mastering the job system in Octopath Traveler, particularly the strategic assignment of secondary jobs and the pursuit of the powerful secret jobs, is fundamental to success. Each base character can be transformed by the right secondary role, unlocking new weapons, skills, and tactical possibilities. Whether you stick to the standard eight jobs or venture forth to challenge the superbosses for the advanced ones, optimizing your party’s job combinations will provide the versatility and power needed to overcome the trials that await in Orsterra and fully experience the depth of Octopath Traveler‘s acclaimed combat system.