Game Breaker / Octopath Traveler

After a certain point, part of the challenge of Octopath Traveler comes in deciding how to break the game. If you're going for the True Final Boss, you will definitely need several of these all at once. This is to be expected since some of the developers are from Bravely Default.

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Octopath Traveler I

• The Dancer's Bewildering Grace skill is Awesome, but Impractical due to being luck-based, but it has the potential to be this when it isn't causing large amounts of self-inflicted pain. The most notable of its many effects are its chance to multiply the experience earned from battle. When boosted, multiple effects activate, meaning that there is a small chance that you can even receive several multipliers. The rarest of all outcomes is a 100x multiplier (0.2% chance for either JP or EXP at maximum Boost), and if you're lucky enough to get this when facing a Cait enemy, your party is set for the remainder of the game.
• The Hunter's Leghold Trap skill makes it so the targeted enemy acts only at the end of the turn. This includes bosses. With enough careful planning, even throwing one Brace onto the enemy can set up a loop where the party can constantly Break them, heal up and be spared most of the foe's depredations — though, keep in mind, any foe returning from Break will still get the first move on that turn, even if a Leghold Trap is already applied to them.
• The Hunter job also has a support skill called Patience. Patience gives the traveler who equips it a 25% chance to get a free turn at the end of the turn order. On just one traveler, this is very useful, but if every traveler has this, you've got a strong chance to repeatedly get bonus turns for multiple party members. In a game where action economy and breaking enemy barriers is essential, this can turn a difficult fight into a cakewalk.
• Dagger weapons, in general, are much more widely available to Steal/Purchase than other weapon types, have a wider variety of secondary bonuses than other weapons, and are the only weapon type that can hit twice for essentially free via the Thief's HP Thief and Steal SP skills. Of particular note is the Soul Knife, available for stealing in a number of Chapter 2 towns, which offers an Elemental Attack bonus comparable to a Staff. While there isn't any one thing that Daggers are unbeatable at, they do everything very well.
• The Runelord job consists of almost nothing but broken skills. Its Elemental Runes, which add Elemental damage to basic attacks, can deal tens of thousands of damage with a normal attack if used by a character and weapon with high Elemental Attack. This can be combined with Second Serving (50% chance to attack again after a basic attack), Eye for an Eye (50% chance to counter physical attacks), and Incidental Attack (50% chance to attack after offensive status attack) for even more damage. Even the damage output of these skills is outclassed, however, by the utility of Transfer Rune, which works very much like Sealticge's Seduction below, allowing the user to apply any self-targeting skills to the entire party. Tressa can fully heal the party's HP and SP at no cost with Rest, or combined with a BP engine she can grant the party total immunity to physical attacks with Sidestep. Olberic is the second-best choice, but still a very respectable second, able to buff the entire party's physical attack or defense all in one go.
• The Thief job in general is suited up with enough to make their Fragile Speedster flaw all but negligible. The high speed it comes with ensures that the hero will be going early in the turn, which allows them to easily pull off a HP or SP Thief. Both of these hit the foe twice for high damage without the use of an extra boost point, and it either heals up whatever damage they've taken in the last turn or recharges what SP was consumed to pull the attack off, essentially making it two free hits. Add this in with the fact that Share SP allows the other heroes in the party to go over their maximum SP cap and that the Thief comes with physical attack and defense impairment moves, you basically have a fast, self-sustaining character that can make sure your other heroes never run out of magic. It gets even more powerful if you combine the Thief's skills with passives from the Hunter and Warrior jobs, since SP Thief can completely mitigate the expensive but powerful multi-attacks that the Warrior and Hunter can dish out.
• The Sorcerer Job isn't particularly flashy, given that all it has is one debuff (which lowers Elemental Defense) and then six spells which attack everyone on the board for a specific element. These spells also require a lot of SP to cast — 36, in a game where you can hit Lv.50 and still have less than 100 SP at maximum. So why is this job powerful? Simple: Each spell hits three times without consuming BP. If you stumble upon an enemy comp that has a lot of varied elemental weaknesses, its strengths are somewhat defrayed, but that actually doesn't happen all that often, so under most circumstances the Sorcerer just Breaks enemies left and right, and can save its BP to take advantage of the resulting Damage-Increasing Debuff. And, if it wasn't powerful enough, the Optional Boss that unlocks the Sorcerer job is quite vulnerable to a Cheese Strategy that can be accomplished as early as Chapter 3.^note Step 3 of the strategy is to have both Sealticge's Seduction and Aelfric's Auspices; this requires some Forced Level-Grinding, but you're doing this anyway because both skills are also on this page. Step 4, Break the boss before it can act, because if not he'll cast a spell on your team which prevents you from assigning buffs; this is a Luck-Based Mission and may require some restarts. Step 5, cast both Divine Skills on your Cleric, as well as feeding them some BP, and then have the Cleric cast Reflective Veil to put a minimum of 4 layers Reflect on every character of your party. Step 6, Repeat Step 5 as needed. Step 7, Profit: the boss will attack you with his spells, which bounce back on him and does about 12% of his total HP every time he casts it — more if he happens to attack his own Break weaknesses on accident. If you can survive 16 turns, he kills himself; all you have to do is put the appropriate buffs on, feed BP to the appropriate characters, and Break him if he doesn't do it to himself. Steps 1 and 2, which are "Make it to the Secret Level, which you're probably underleveled for," and "Make it through the Secret Level, which you're probably underleveled for," are arguably the hardest parts of the entire process.
• Alfyn's unique talent, Concoct, allows him to craft unique healing and attacking items on the fly by combining two ingredients: one determines the effect; the other determines the type of effect (allied healing / buffing or enemy damage), the number of targets (one or all) and the intensity of the effect (small or large). Energizing Pomegranates are rare, but Essence of Pomegranate is a common enemy drop, and Concocting it with Purifying Dust that can be bought in stores allows Alfyn to boost the entire party's BP by 2 with a single action. The resulting BP engine can fuel countless other strategies, with only a few minutes of farming required to restock on the ingredients with a Thief equipped with Snatch. To wit:
  • Noxroot can either be purchased from a few shops, or farmed from several enemies in the Flatlands and Riverlands.
  • Sleepweed can be farmed from several enemies in the Coastlands and Cliftlands.
  • Addlewort can be farmed from several enemies in the Flatlands, Riverlands and Cliftlands.
  • Essence of Grape can either be purchased from a few shops, or farmed from several enemies in the Highlands and Woodlands.
  • Essence of Plum can be farmed from several enemies in the Frostlands and Sunlands.
  • Essence of Pomegranate can be farmed from several enemies in the Highlands and Woodlands, as well as a few from the Frostlands and Sunlands.^note The "Path of Beasts" dungeon near S'warkii is an ideal place, as you can run into groups of up to 4 Majestic Marmots or 4 Howlers.
  • Olive Bloom can be farmed from several of the high-Danger Level enemies (e.g. for the first ring, they are: Frost Bear, Giant Sheep, Rock Tortoise, Highland Goat, Sandworm, Salamander, Great Condor and Giant Boar).
  • Curious Bloom can be farmed from Bats and Black Scissors.
• The Cleric support skill Saving Grace allows the equipping character to be overhealed. This is not quite as good as it sounds; the skill's description implies that the equipping character's max HP functionally becomes 9,999, but what it actually means is that, if the character has taken as little as 1 damage, the next heal spell will still apply its entire value instead of stopping when it hits the max HP cap, creating a buffer of overhead HP. Once a character has been overhealed, they cannot be overhealed a second time unless the buffer has already been lost and the character has taken actual damage. So why is this skill still on here? Because it's still really powerful. With the aid of a Cleric's Heal More or an Apothecary's First Aid, this can give even squishy characters enough of a HP buffer to survive the ultimate attacks of bonus bosses. And if a character does faint, using an Olive of Life (L) on them revives them with 9,999 HP. Combining this with Dohter's Charity and Revitalizing Jam can heal every character to the max.
• Combining Olberic with the Apothecary job trivializes many challenge fights. In addition to giving Olberic access to health and status healing, he can also poison his opponents, making it possible to simply win by endurance.
  • Olberic also benefits greatly from the Apothecary's first Support Skill, Inspiration, which makes normal attacks recover SP based on the damage they deal. It lets his high physical attack make up for his low max SP, and you can equip him with it as early as you can safely get to the Apothecary's job shrine.
• Alfyn can be used to one-shot most of the game's bosses, including the bonus ones. The trick is to equip Alfyn with as many items that boost his speed as one can, and the strongest Axe one has, so he has a high speed. Then get his HP to 1, via Bewildering Grace or letting him die and reviving him. Equip him with the warrior skill that lets him do more damage than the damage cap. Then when combat starts, have Alfyn use "Last Stand", which does damage inversely proportional to Alfyn's HP. For extra punch, equip the Warmaster passive "Fortitude" which also gives a damage bonus the lower one's HP is. So kitted out Alfyn can deal 99,999 damage (the actual damage cap with "Surpassing Power") each turn to the every enemy. For extra fun, set up Olberic with the same build. For mass overkill, include a merchant and cleric as the final two party members, both speed boosted. Make the merchant donate BP to the cleric, and make the cleric use "Aelfric's Auspices", making Alfyn's "Last Stand" trigger twice. If the characters' speed is high enough, that's 299997 dmg to all enemies, before the enemy gets even a turn.
• The Merchant support skill SP Saver, which halves SP consumption for the equipping character. Get ready to have your characters spam their strongest attacks like there's no tomorrow once they have it. Combine it with the Dancer passive Second Wind (replenishes 5% max SP, rounded up) or the Dragon's Scarf (replenishes 6 SP), and they'll never be hurting for SP again.
• Sealticge's Seduction is the Dancer's Divine Skill, and is quite loaded. Its description is written improperly, but the general gist is that any single-target non-weapon skill will affect all targets associated with the skill, exempting other Divine Skills. With this, an Apothecary can heal absurd amounts of HP to the whole party for the low, low cost of 4 SP, you can cripple an enemy party's defenses with a Thief's Armor Corrosive before a Warrior, Apothecary or Hunter smites the whole enemy group with a hit-all weapon attack, nuke whole parties with powerful elemental spells for cheaper than a Scholar, or buff the entire party's elemental defenses in time to mitigate a certain Those Two Bosses' full-party elemental attacks and actually make their Turns Red phases manageable. Reflective Veil isn't horribly broken by itself, but combined with Sealticge's Seduction it can make magic-dependent bosses cakewalks by having their spells damage them (and even their shield points if they're weak to the element used). ^note The Starseer and Sorcerer guardians have no physical attacks, meaning everything they do hurts them, and since you're forced to bring Ophilia along to fight him, this combination takes all the sting out of Mattias as well; his Infernal Flame blocks your healing magic, but that's irrelevant if his worst spells blow his own face in to the tune of 5,000+ damage per cast. Combine this with the Runelord Tressa fun mentioned above for near-invincibility. The possibilities are limitless!
• Aelfric's Auspices is the Cleric's Divine Skill, and lets whichever character the spell is cast on perform any non-Divine Skill twice in one action. This opens the doors to some very powerful combos, including but not limited to: Fire Storm/Blizzard/Lightning Blast hitting all foes four times, Sorcerer elemental spells hitting all foes six times^note Both Scholar and Sorcerer spells can be further empowered with Alephan's Enlightenment, the Scholar's Divine Skill. When combined with Aelfric's Auspices, Scholar/Sorcerer spells essentially deal ×4 damage, at the cost of being focused on a single target. Nevertheless, this combo can wreak bosses once their minions are taken out, and MAX boosted Hired Help!Veteran Soldiers attacking eight times with a Sword for approximately tens of thousands of damage in total. Even better? The second time an Aelfric's Auspices-empowered skill is performed in an action, it doesn't cost any additional SP/BP/money.
• The Scholar's Evasive Maneuvers support skill reduces an area's encounter rate, which allows players to make their way to some of the later-game dungeons to grab some of the Disc-One Nuke weapons inside with a much-reduced worry of getting wiped out by the Beef Gate monster encounters guarding it. For instance, as soon as you finish up Therion's and Cyrus' Chapter 1, nothing is stopping you from heading to places like Refuge Ruins, Forest of Purgation, Marsalim Catacombs, or Everhold Tunnels and looting their purple chests for a Forbidden Blade, Forbidden Dagger, Viper Dagger, and Knowledge Staff. You can even grab some early Red chests in the Everhold Tunnels and Dragonsong Fane to add a Death Cleaver and Crystal Helm to the haul too.
  • Tressa's unique talent, Eye for Money, lets her pick up money, called leaves in this game, from "an unfortunate soul" when changing locations; the amount scales according to the area's Danger Level and number of steps taken. Combined with "Evasive Maneuvers," this unlocks an easy exploit. The player can walk around a bit in high-Danger Level areas, leave, pick up money, come back, and repeat. Of particular note is Undertow Cove, a Danger Level 45 optional dungeon north-east of Rippletide, Tressa's hometown. Complete Tressa and Cyrus' Chapter 1, teach Cyrus two additional Scholar skills to learn "Evasive Maneuvers," and nothing is stopping you from going to Undertow Cove, walking the loop near the entrance, exiting, and repeating the process. You get about L10,000 per minute using this strategy, allowing you to buy powerful weapons/equipment/items much earlier than intended.
• Starting with Tressa in general is a gamebreaker when it comes to the economy. Between her Eye For Money trait, the Grows On Trees support skill, and Collect, she will be constantly raking in extra cash to buy even the most expensive equipment - particularly if you're able to reliably Collect from bosses. And because she's your starting Traveler, she will always be present to be making this money. This gets even wilder with the Thief support skill Snatch, which doubles the money acquired from Collect. This combination can easily triple or quadruple the amount of money made from each fight, and let you buy endgame gear from Chapter 4 towns much earlier if you can safely reach them.
• The game is built around an "Attack Its Weak Point" system where breaking an enemy will stun it for one turn and cause it to take additional damage. The obvious Min-Maxing question is how to make a single character able to hit all six weaknesses — six weapons, and six elements — at once. The Warmaster job allows a character to equip all six weapons, and the Sorcerer (covered above) covers all six elements... But both are Subjobs, so a character cannot equip both at once. Instead, we need to find a character who natively has access to all six of something. That character is Alfyn, who can use Concoct to attack — not with a lot of damage, but attack nonetheless, and more importantly remove Shield Points — in all six elements. Make Alfyn a Warmaster and he becomes the only character able to hit all twelve weaknesses at all times.
• Dohter's Charity is the Apothecary's Divine Skill, and with the appropriate knowledge on where certain items can be farmed, is an incredible supportive skill late-game. It is especially helpful for a character with Apothecary as a secondary job and therefore without access to Alfyn's Concoct. While active, if the targeted character uses an item that would affect a single ally or foe, its effect will apply to all allies/foes. Notable items include Olive of Life (L), Energizing Pomegranate (L), Refreshing Jam and Revitalizing Jam. To wit:
  • Olive of Life (L) revives an incapacitated ally and restores 9,999 HP. It is designed to be used in combination with the Cleric support skill Saving Grace. It can be farmed by fighting Devil Deers in the Forest of Rubeh with a Thief equipping the support skill Snatch. Remnants Mk.II, found in the Eastern Marsalim Sands, are a good substitute before doing Alfyn's Chapter 4, which is required to gain access to the Forest of Rubeh.
  • Energizing Pomegranate (L) restores 4 BP to an ally. It can be farmed by Challenging/Provoking Mont d'Or, a Strength 8 NPC in Victors Hollow who has an 80% chance of dropping one after being defeated. (Energizing Pomegranate (M) restores 2 BP to an ally, but comes more readily and is easier to farm. You can easily pick them up by fighting Forest Ratkings III on the East Duskbarrow Trail, or Cliff Birdkings III at South Orewell Pass, with a Thief equipping Snatch.)
  • Refreshing Jam fully restores an ally's HP and SP. It can be farmed in the basement of Lorn Cathedral—unlocked during Therion's Chapter 4—by fighting Brigand Leaders III and Accursed Armors with a Thief equipping Snatch. Another good farming spot is all four Advanced Job Shrines, by fighting Animated Armors with a Thief equipping Snatch.
  • Revitalizing Jam fully restores an ally's HP, SP and BP. A good farming spot is by fighting Revenants on Grimsand Road (just before the Ruins)—unlocked during H'aanit's Chapter 4—with a Thief equipping Snatch.
• Winnehild's Battle Cry is the Warmaster's Divine Skill, and attacks all foes six times, one for each weapon, with an automatic ×1.5 damage multiplier for each attack. With the appropriate gear, this one skill can single-handedly nuke many Broken late-game bosses, turning them into a complete joke. For additional chaos, lower bosses' physical defense via Armor Corrosive, or increase the Warmaster's Physical Attack via Lion Dance or, even better, Physical Prowess. Furthermore, if you farm BP-boosting items (see above for further info), you can constantly supply your Warmaster with BP to spam Winnehild's Battle Cry over and over until your foe goes down. Better still, equip the Warmaster with the Battle-Tested Blade, whose unique effect is to boost all of the user's physical attacks, not just those that involve the sword itself.
• When fully boosted, Vorpal Claw—the Capture skill for the Devourer of Dreams^Who?The boss of the Everhold Tunnels. After defeating it, it has a 3% chance of being found as a random encounter there, where H'aanit can Capture it—has a 100% chance to OHKO all enemies, excluding NPCs and bosses. Notably, this makes the battles against Mánagarmr and the Omniscient Eye much easier than intended, as H'aanit can easily steamroll the minions they summon.

Octopath Traveler II

• Some of the EX Skills can get rather ridiculous. To wit:
  • Castti is a beast on her own given her massive strength and her high HP qualifying her as a Mighty Glacier, but when she gets Drastic Measures she becomes, far and away, the heaviest hitter in the cast. For every affliction the enemy is suffering from — up to and including simple debuffs to stats — Drastic Measures deals more damage. The 'balancing' factor is that this cures the enemy of their afflictions, but the damage done is so obscene that Castti can easily empty half of a boss' health bar, if not more, in a single strike, almost certainly ending the fight before the now-missing afflictions even matter. This naturally makes Castti the first pick for a Warrior sub-job so she can get Deal More Damage, because Drastic Measures will naturally smash through the damage cap. It gets better, too—Castti just so happens to be the game's best debuffer, since she has an easy method of applying poison, can apply another debuff that causes poison damage to break away at the shield gauge, and has a bag full of medicine she can use to saddle her foes with even more ailments to abuse Drastic Measures with. Though ostensibly a healer character, Castti is basically built from the ground up to be a dedicated boss slayer.
    • Her second EX Skill, Remedy, further demonstrates her capacity. Remedy gives random augments to party members, however, that also includes divine augments too. Setting up Castti with Sealticge's Seduction (All augments the one who has this augment gets will be passed on to all party members), then using Seal of Eternity (Arcanist) to permanently lock it in place means until it is dispelled by an enemy ability, you can stack buffs like nobody's business, enjoy seeing the positive status augments flashing in and out as the status can't display them all at once.
  • Windy Refrain, Agnea's EX Skill, isn't just a moderately powerful screen nuke, it also places the heroes' turns before the enemy's turns the next turn. This is cheap, easy to set up, and pays massive dividends given the opportunity this gives players to stack break after break on both normal encounters and bosses. It is very easy to force bosses to never get a turn outside of their recovery actions ever again simply by combining Windy Refrain's utility and Drastic Measures' damage.
  • Throné's EX Skill, Veil of Darkness, declaws random encounters entirely. Setting up enemies to miss with their physical attacks means that the player has all the time in the world to break those enemies, making it all too easy to divide and conquer one's way through encounters. It even works to a limited extent against bosses, though the fact bosses eventually get multiple turns means this only goes so far with them.
  • Agnea's Song of Hope EX Skill, which you obtain during her final battle with Dolcinaea, allows her to extend the duration of all buffs affecting the entire party by 1-4 turns (though buffs provided by Divine Skills are not affected by this). While it has a fairly hefty 32 SP cost, this allows Agnea to keep the party's buffs up almost permanently as long as her SP holds out. Couple this with Dance of Immunity from the Conjurer class and you can also prevent the enemy from removing said buffs with enfeebling effects. With Song of Hope and someone using Dohter's Charity with food items obtained via Ochette's Capture ability, you can have just about every buff in the game going on your entire party and only have to devote some of Agnea's turns to refreshing their duration.
  • Ochette's Provoke Beasts EX Skill, makes breaking enemies a breeze provided she has the right monsters with her. For 48 SP, she'll summon a monster at least three times (six at full boost). And having monsters that can hit every enemy twice can really make dealing with hordes of enemies a breeze. It's very helpful for breaking through against Galdera, and it can really push through bosses more easily. To top it off, a very easily exploitable Good Bad Bug allows a full-BP Provoke Beasts to call 10-star monsters when its intended inability to do so is the explicitly intended balancing factor on the move.^note Enter the Provoke Beasts menu with at least 3 BP, fully charge BP, press the button to go to your Latent Power menu, then exit said menu and enter the menu for the regular Provoke skill; it will look normal, but allow you to enter the command for provoking 6 times. This allows Ochette to do things like fully restore your entire party's HP, SP, and BP all in one go with five Battle-Worn Sharks while also hitting the entire enemy party five times, massively buff your entire party in practically any combination of stats you want (in most cases, while also attacking the enemy up to six times), or just attack 18 times in a row in a single turn.
• For money routing in the early and mid game, look no further than Partitio and Canalbrine. As part of a Scent of Commerce quest available in Winterbloom, there's a violinist Partitio needs to hire. She's available at any point in the game, and someone starting with Castti will inevitably see her on the way out of town at night. She has a special quality to her; if you hire her (and her services are exceedingly cheap) she can use a Merchant Talent called Puppy-Dog Eyes. Puppy-Dog Eyes causes the player to get additional funds equal to fifteen to thirty percent of the total cost of whatever item they sell. This is certain to turn a massively lucrative profit, and will make the player filthy rich in the long run so long as Partitio keeps the violinist in his services. Investing in the violinist early will pay massive dividends later on when equipment gets ludicrously expensive, especially if Agnea, Osvald, and Throné are working their magic to get free goods off citizens to sell off.
  • As an alternative, there is a woman in New Delsta outside the tavern, as well as a man in Oresrush near the entrance to the Abandoned Silver Mine, who is also cheap to hire and has a Merchant Talent called Smooth Talker. Smooth Talker gives a fixed 25% increase on all items sold. There are also other followers who allow you to get up to a 30% refund on things you purchase (in particular, one who is found at the Merchant Guild in Western Crackridge Wilds who gives a flat 30% refund), including the ship in Tropu'hopu, though you do need to have the required leaves to purchase it up front. Still, getting reimbursed 20% to 30% on expensive purchases is definitely worth the cost of hiring. Sadly, this reimbursement effect does not work when you pay 80 billion leaves to Roque in Partitio's final chapter.
• The Battle-Worn Shark, once you have captured one, completely trivializes random encounters. It deals up to 9999 damage to all enemies, enough to one-shot most Mooks, and replenishes your entire party's HP, SP and BP. With the right combination of skills, this can be used to end battles as early as the first turn, making it ideal for farming and for making dungeons much more manageable.
• A Step Ahead, a passive from the Inventor job which gives every character that has it equipped a free turn at the start of battle. What can you do with a free turn? LOTS. At the very least, a full domination of a random encounter — Break all foes, take no damage, do it all in one round, and get all the G, EXP and JP bonuses associated therewith — becomes easy, because "A Step Ahead" turns don't count towards the round count. But if you're planning to be more defensive, you have time to give everyone max BP with Castti's concoctions, set up all your buffs, and so on. The possibilities are endless and the benefits tend to snowball so badly that your foes will never get to recover from your head start. The kicker is that the Inventor job can be acquired right outside of New Delsta (Throné's starting town) and this passive unlocks for everybody as soon as you gather the parts for two inventions.
• By far the most broken and well-known combo in the late game is Castti / Ochette / Hikari Armsmaster with Alpione's Amulet, Finisher Claws / Fang of Ferocity, and the piece that brings it all together, the Lionheart Axe. When the Armsmaster's ability 'Lionheart Axe: On The Hunt' is combined with Castti, Ochette, or Hikari at 1 HP while wearing Alpione's Amulet, the game basically becomes impossible to lose. It is entirely possible, with Castti, Ochette, and Hikari's massive Physical Attack and Critical, to deal two instances of 99,999 damage to a foe with one attack. If Castti, Ochette, or Hikari are preferable in other roles, pretty much any other character can take up the mantle of Armsmaster simply by trading out the Finisher Claws with the Fang of Ferocity. Combined with Sealticge's Seduction and Aelfric's Blessing, any character can, easily, deal over 320,000 damage in a single round to all enemies. This notably takes the hardest fight in the game against Galdera and makes it trivial.
• While it's not as blatantly overpowered as some of the above, the Merchant's final Support skill, Full Power, completely undermines the entire Latent Power system. What does it do? "At the beginning of the battle, this character fills their Limit Break gauge. Have Fun!" Limit Breaks aren't that powerful in this game — you still need to get to about Lv.50 before "Deal More Damage" is even necessary — but having them available for use all the time changes how you approach battles. It's particularly disgusting on Castti, since her Latent Power, "Every Drop Counts," lets her Concoct without consuming items, and on Temenos, whose "Judgment" allows him to break enemies without regard for their weaknesses. Temenos in particular gets his entire "Coerce" ability smoothed out by "Full Power," as all he needs to do is use his Latent Power to Break the enemy... and then move on to the next victim with a refilled Limit Break. (Add on the Apothecary's "Vigorous Victor" passive, which restores 30% of his max HP and SP on victory, to supercharge things.)
• The Merchant no longer gets SP Saver, but it does get Boost-Start: "Start the battle with an extra BP." This alone makes Divine Skills and other 3-BP abilities much more accessible. When combined with "A Step Ahead," which essentially gives you an extra Turn 0 at the beginning of the battle, you can — for all intents and purposes — open with Divine Skills.
• Remember the Patience skill from the first game? Using the Cleric's and Arcanist's Divine Skills in tandem makes for an even stronger version in exchange for a longer setup. This game changed the Cleric's Divine Skill, Aelfric's Auspices, to Aelfric's Blessing, which grants the target a bonus action at the end of the turn for three turns. The Arcanist's Divine Skill, Seal of Eternity, makes any turn-based buff permanent, including buffs granted by other Divine Skills. Using Aelfric's Blessing, then immediately following it with Seal of Eternity means the target will get a free turn, every turn, for the rest of the battle. If the player is patient enough, this can be done to the entire party. Some bosses try to get around this tactic using instant death skills, since dying cancels all buffs and requires the process to be started from scratch... except the Arcanist also has a passive skill called Lasting Memory, which allows the user to retain all status effects even if they are knocked out. It requires too much preparation to be used in random battles, but against bosses? Once the set up is complete even Vide and Galdera will struggle.
• The Dancer class, on its own, doesn't provide much utility beyond one of the only dagger Herd-Hitting Attack abilities in the game, "Dagger Dance", and Agnea's EX Skills; but her Latent Power, All Together Now, is a one-shot version of Sealticge's Seduction, and can be combined with a lot of other classes and abilities to make Agnea a veritable Swiss-Army Weapon. For instance, there's the Inventor class, the all-new secret job. It's really slow, in the sense that you have to take turns to reload its abilities, but has some incredible single-target abilities: Springy Boots, "Cause a single ally to act first for 5 (+ BP) turns"; Critical Scope, "Guarantee Critical Hits against a single enemy for 4 (+ BP) turns"; Arkar's Coil, "Restore 40% (+20% per BP) of a single ally's HP and SP and give them 1 (+ BP) BP." All of these can be used with All Together Now. And if you're skeptical about using Aggie's Latent Power all the time, there's always the Inventor's Tin Horn, which refills the Latent Power gauge. While many internet guides will recommend you attach the Inventor to someone who makes better use of turn economy to rebuild the inventions (Throné) or can generate extra BP (Partitio), they don't provide the same amount of convenience Agnea does.
• Arcanist Partitio is this game's answer to Runelord Tressa. Arcanist has the Seal of Diffusion skill, which works exactly like Transfer Rune. Partitio, like Tressa, have Rest and Sidestep by default, letting him heal the entire party for free or granting full party physical immunity. Add in Partitio's Latent Power to fully refill his BP, and he can keep this up easily to trivialize any physical-based bosses. It's only not as broken as Runelord Tressa because Arcanist lacks the very damaging runes skills.
• The Foreign Assassin upgrade for the Merchant's Hired Help ability hits extremely hard multiple times and restores HP and SP. Setting up multiple Merchants to spam fully-boosted Foreign Assassins takes relatively little investment, is simple to execute, and can trivialize every Boss Battle in the game.
• This is a full-on combo, so it takes some doing, but a certain Hikari build will just ruin anyone's day. First, go to Stormhail and Challenge a Sacred Guard to learn Boost from Beyond: it gives your allies 1 (+BP) BP, but kills Hikari. Then, equip the Merchant's Hang Tough passive: "If you are above 1/3rd HP, attacks which would kill you instead reduce you to 1 HP." (Also equip "Deal More Damage" to break the damage limit.) Then, go to Montwise and learn Last Gasp, which is the Sword version of Alfyn's "Last Stand" (which is up in the first game's Game Breaker list) and does increased damage the more HP Hikari has lost. Finally, after completing Ochette's story arc, do the Side Quest "Alpione's Next Chapter" in Gravell: Talk to her, leave the town, find a dude standing there who needs a Hunter, Inquire him, talk to Alpione again. Now equip your reward: Alpione's Amulet, which increases your max HP and also increases your attack damage according to how much HP you have lost. Hikari is now ready to one-shot Vide.

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