5 Best Party Setups and Combinations for Octopath Traveler 2

At a glance, Octopath Traveler 2‘s party setups and mechanics can look a little dense. You’re given eight recruitable party members you can pick up in any order (without level scaling, mind you, so you have to keep swapping them in and out so no one falls behind level-wise), eight equippable secondary jobs, and that’s before the secret jobs, latent talents, and unlockable skills. It’s a lot, even if the game doles it out through easy to understand prologue chapters.

Much like many of the things in Octopath Traveler 2, it’s also a lot of fun. Numerous equippable skills, talents, classes, subclasses, and character-specific abilities combine in fun ways to wreck house on a variety of enemies. You can put together an interesting narrative through character selection and choosing how to tackle each challenge. It’s an excellent way of learning mechanics that you see in a number of other JRPGs in a much more digestible form.

If you don’t feel like muddling through on your own or just need some help finding a jumping-off point, there are a number of interesting party setups you can try out. If one of these four (or the fifth one added as a kind of joke) grabs your interest, it might serve as a jumping-off point for you to make your own party setups.

As a disclaimer: we at GamerJournalist are only human, and Octopath Traveler 2 is a very big game, even with us chasing down every secret. Your mileage may vary on these setups, please make adjustments as you see fit. Also, be aware: You cannot remove your starting character from the party until you finish their story. Please choose carefully.

Best Party Setups and Combinations for Octopath Traveler

Team Holy Trinity – Motto: “Healers Adjust”

• Hikari (Job: Warrior, Secondary Job: Thief)
• Throne (Job: Thief, Secondary Job: Inventor, Hunter, Warrior, or Dancer) or Ochette (Job: Hunter, Secondary Job: Inventor, Thief, Warrior, or Dancer)
• Osvald (Job: Scholar, Secondary Job: Merchant)
• Castti (Job: Apothecary, Secondary Job: Cleric) or Temenos (Job: Cleric, Secondary Job: Apothecary)

Strengths

Starting off the list with a simple balanced party, I decided to go with the traditional RPG/MMO setup: Warrior, Rogue/DPS, Healer, and Offensive Caster. There aren’t a lot of fancy tricks or techniques with this setup, but the reason it’s stuck around so long is that it’s dependable.

You can plug whatever characters you like into the formula provided they can fit the specific roles. It lets you experiment with synergies, skills, and load-outs to your heart’s content within the basic principles: You want someone who can be a solid main attack and defense, (Hikari works perfectly with his Learned Skills and focused multi-attacks), someone who can deal widespread damage output and stack multipliers (Throne is the quintessential Rogue/DPS, but Ochette works too), someone who can deal high magic damage and cast combat buffs, (Osvald is the main choice and giving him the Merchant class allows him to learn Sidestep, which can get around his low physical defense, but support classes like Merchant and Dancer sit well alongside Scholar, so Agnea and Partitio are available), and someone on healing (Castti and Temenos are tailor-made for the role, but Agnea might surprise you).

It’s balanced, straightforward, and has a good set of guidelines for beginners. You also don’t need secondary classes (though feel free to experiment), you just need to keep the principles in mind.

Weaknesses

A minor one, but those guardrails and that no-frills approach? It works perfectly, but sometimes you want frills. Frills get you trying weird character combos and doing things you wouldn’t normally expect. This is sort of like the London System in chess: Highly effective, but very basic. There’s a wide range of possible combinations (eight characters, a total of twelve possible secondary jobs, no repeats, I’d give you an exact number if I was better at math) and a big wide world of exploration out there. It works fine when you’re starting out, but find what works for you. Figure out who you want to see do what, find your favorite characters (hint: three of them will probably be Agnea, Partitio, and Ochette, they’re the best), and swap things in and out. You have to stop following the roadmap sometime.

Team Edge – Motto: “It’s Not A Phase”

• Osvald (Job: Scholar, Secondary Job: Merchant)
• Throne (Job: Thief, Secondary Job: Warrior, Inventor)
• Casttia (Job: Apothecary, Secondary Job: Cleric)
• Hikari (Job: Warrior, Secondary Job: Thief)

Strengths

So it turns out that those principles— Warrior, Offensive Caster, Rogue/DPS, and Healer— map directly on to the four darkest stories in Octopath Traveler 2. Osvald is a quintessential Offensive Caster. Throne is a Rogue/DPS. Casttia’s an excellent Healer who can revive and heal party members with the same ability. Hikari’s your Warrior right down to his starting job. It’s also great for narrative, giving you the dark, and operatic story of four doomed souls on a quest for revenge and redemption. When you go for secondary jobs (though your primaries are good), Osvald gets good mileage out of Merchant’s Sidestep and Donate BP skills. Throne and Hikari can take each other’s jobs for maximum output and physical damage. Casttia’s Apothecary/Cleric setup is evergreen. It’s also a setup with a clear narrative throughline, even if it is a tragic and dark one.

Weaknesses

Apart from it being a very dark story and one that front-loads a lot of the overarching narrative, the order in which you recruit your party members is maddeningly specific. You have to go in the order listed above. Osvald first, then he travels south and meets Throne, then they travel across from the New Delsta Anchorage to get Casttia, and then all three of them go south and meet up with Hikari. It takes you in a straight line, but doing things out of sequence, and you’ll end up leaping back and forth across the ocean and wreck the pacing for yourself. It doesn’t seem like much, but let’s be real, you’re playing this for thematic reasons, you want the best possible story.

Team Streetsweeper – Motto: “Stun-lock the Patriarchy”

• Agnea (Job: Dancer, Secondary Job: Merchant or Scholar)
• Throne (Job: Thief, Secondary Job: Anything weapon-focused, Inventor especially)
• Ochette (Job: Hunter, Secondary Job: Warrior or Thief)
• Castti (Job: Apothecary, Secondary Job: Cleric) or Temenos (Job: Cleric, Secondary Job: Apothecary)

Strengths

At a glance, my personal favorite setup might not look as daunting as it is. Dancer is seen as a buff/debuff class, Castti is pure healer, and while the other two party members are versatile, the physical damage and defense far outweighs the magical. What this team is absolutely nasty about is stun-locking, and then finishing off opponents quickly once they break. It’s made to take a lot of player turns very quickly, and significantly less enemy turns.

Throne’s wide weapon variety and the Inventor’s Changeable Catapult AOE can target every enemy with a physical vulnerability simultaneously. Even if you decide to class her into Warrior, her high damage output and mastery of multiple weapons make short work of the field. Agnea’s Ruinous Kick and Dagger Dance abilities tear through enemy shields like tissue paper, with her Latent Talent changing her single-target abilities to AOE. She can also pick up random townsfolk to cover weaknesses and add status effects with her character-specific Dance Session skill.

Ochette deals excessive amounts of physical damage and uses her Beast Lore skill to fill in elemental gaps. She also has a permanent summonable companion that targets a weakness on a random enemy. Castti is a great support, especially with the Cleric’s multi-target heal ability behind her apothecary skills. If you want to invert the setup and have Temenos (and his sweet sweet night combat synergies with Throne) play your healer, the good news is that works, too.

Overall, this is a party that will stun enemies fast, drop them faster, make sure any downed party members get right back up, and move on to the next thing quick.

Weaknesses

Magic.

Team Streetsweeper isn’t a very magic-focused arrangement, which means the Eastern Continent, especially the mountains where the game depends more on magic-users, limits your options immensely. While equipping Castti or Agnea with Scholar is a decent solution, the best way to deal with the blind spot is just to swap Osvald in as needed.

That way, you gain Osvald’s unique Study Foe ability, his focused-damage Latent Talent and the ability to nuke every enemy from orbit if someone isn’t able to crack defenses in a certain area.

Team Spirit Bomb – Motto: “LEND ME YOUR ENERGY”

• Osvald (Job: Scholar, Secondary Job: Merchant)
• Temenos (Job: Cleric, Secondary Job: Apothecary or Warrior)
• Throne (Job: Thief, Secondary Job: Dancer or Scholar) or Ochette (Job: Hunter, Secondary Job: Dancer or Inventor)
• Partitio (Job: Merchant, Secondary Job: Hunter)

Strengths

This particular party setup is built for two things: High magic damage, and stacking BP Donation as many times as possible. Merchant gives Osvald access to some defensive options and the party gets alternating uses of Donation, boosting the output of their spells. Partitio’s Latent Talent of Hoot And Holler stacks up with this, maxing his BP, which you can then pour into Donation on your casters or his own Hunter skills.

End result? Everything explodes all the time.

You also get to use the BP split trick with Throne’s Latent Talent and have her boost her attacks two turns in a row. Using Throne and Temenos for nighttime combat means debuffs on the enemy and huge buffs on your party just for having them on the field, to say nothing of when Temenos’ Latent Talent strips shields with multiple boosted attacks alongside the Dancer’s Ruinous Kick. It’s a powerful offense, and playing around with the BP economy multiplies that output immensely.

Weaknesses

If you’re playing Octopath Traveler 2, a game that sits further towards the “newbie-friendly” end of the spectrum, you aren’t a fan of highly technical party management. This setup is pretty much all that, since you have to spend job points for things like BP Donation and further elemental attacks. Even after the grind is done, you still have to deal with low physical defenses, less physical attack, and astronomical SP drain from skills. It requires very careful skill choice and SP recharge skills are essential unless you hoard Inspiriting Plums like gold.

The name “Spirit Bomb” isn’t just there because of BP donations and a half-clever Dragonball Z reference, either. It takes a while to build up the necessary power even with two PCs casting Donation. You’re also fielding three people with support jobs as their main class. It can work, but this setup doesn’t make it easy.

Team Angry Mob – Motto: “Grab Your Pitchforks and Torches!”

• Temenos (Job: Cleric, Secondary Job: Apothecary)
• Partitio (Job: Merchant, Secondary Job: Hunter)
• Ochette (Job: Hunter, Secondary Job: Inventor)
• Agnea (Job: Dancer, Secondary Job: Scholar)

Strengths

This one’s more of a “just for fun” or “crack” concept, but it’s one heck of a concept. The idea is that all four of these characters can recruit one or more NPCs each to their cause. Temenos uses Guidance, Partitio has Hire, Ochette has Befriend and Capture, and Agnea has Allure. Put them all together, along with the merchant’s equippable Hired Hands skill, and you basically have an equippable set of optional party members and your own army following you around. You even get bonuses for it, since

Even better, this doesn’t require secondary jobs, because these are all tied to path actions or character-specific skills. Ochette with an Inventor AOE on top of her summonable companions is also pretty sharp, giving her even more wide-ranging and versatile attacks. All you have to do is recruit carefully and make judicious use of your path abilities, and you too can rampage across the world with your own private army of commoners and monsters. On a story level, you’re also fielding the four nicest people in the entire cast, so it’s got a “power of friendship” flavor to it.

Weaknesses

The reason this is something of a just-for-fun setup is that those four path actions are heavily resource-dependent. Ochette’s Befriend action requires a steady supply of food items that also heal HP and SP. Partitio’s recruitment abilities all cost money. Allure operates on a percentage of success rather on level or automatic success. You have to level like a fiend (the percentage of success is directly tied to level), play the odds, sacrifice a bunch of valuable resources, or spend a lot of time striking out with the local townsfolk until you get frustrated.

For more on classes and specifications in Octopath Traveler 2, check out our guide on Octopath Traveler 2: Best Starting Characters. For where to find some of those harder to reach subclasses, try our guide on How to Unlock Secret Jobs in Octopath Traveler 2