Sunday, September 30, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 19

I did a little work on the spreadsheet since I got access to a whopping one extra weapon in Wellspring now that Alfyn can use Inquire on everyone there, and then while pondering how best to add a sheet for his concoctions, I had to resist my inner DBA instinct to relate the hell out of the data (in a spreadsheet, running through a heavy and sluggish layer of JavaScript, mind you).  I think I'm going to bite the bullet and manually enter all the effects, even though I could do stuff like "Oh, Noxroot deals with poison!  Make the sheet automatically recognize that it cures poison on allies and inflicts it on enemies!  And by the way, it also deals fire damage to enemies!  And if you use it on a single enemy, the fire hits twice!".  Just reading that and thinking about how you would lay that out to all neatly and automatically figure itself out is a nightmare that anyone can realize regardless of technical level.  Remembering that the best way to complete a game is to actually play it, I put down the Google Sheet and picked up my Switch.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, Alfyn and Therion.  They're both in the party so they can both get experience, so let's jump straight into Alfyn's Chapter 3, shall we?

Alfyn arrives in Saintsbridge and witnesses another apothecary examine a wounded man and then refuse to treat him.  Alfyn doesn't understand why he refused treatment, and the response of "some people aren't worth saving" doesn't really help, because in Alfyn's mind, everyone is worth saving.  Alfyn tends to the man, whose name is Miguel, and finds out he's a thief during the process.  He promises Miguel that they'll raise a glass together at the local tavern once he recovers, but only if he agrees to stop the whole thievery thing.  Oh Alfyn, so naïve.

Checking out the local tavern himself, Alfyn notices a child passed out on the floor and a mother crying for help.  Alfyn tries to figure out why the kid's passed out, but the other apothecary shows up and does it better, and reveals his name to be Ogen.  Apparently it was the snow peas his mom no doubt had him eat.  Anyway, Alfyn goes back to check up on Miguel and ends up staying there the night.  Once he wakes up, Miguel's gone, and of course, immediately back to being up to no good.  Specifically, Miguel is now holding the kid from the tavern at knifepoint in an attempt to get money from his mother.  Upon seeing Alfyn, he grabs the kid and runs off into the nearby woods.

Alfyn follows, fight ensues.  Every time Miguel recovers from being broken, his weaknesses change, but the standard rhythm of breaking his guard and then unloading Divine skills and other high damage attacks did the job.  Alfyn tends to the kid, who got stabbed by Miguel, and takes him back to town.

As Alfyn is leaving town, he runs across Ogen, and they get to talking.  The stage of apothecary-ness that Alfyn is in is apparently a pretty common early apothecary thing, you know, the whole "I wanna help everyone regardless of anything" phase.  Ogen tells his back story, which explains how he progressed on from the naïve stage that Alfyn is in, to the more realistic "I choose who I treat" stage.  After some compliments about Alfyn's tonics, the two part ways.  Alfyn randomly decides to head to Orewell next.

Therion's Chapter 3 is in Wellspring.  Since I ended last session with Olberic's Chapter 3, which also took place there, I could've done Therion's first, but decided to get a change of scenery instead.

Therion speaks to the shadiest looking NPC he can find in hopes of finding the black market in Wellspring, and soon enough he's got his lead: go to the tavern and order something that isn't on the menu.  The real black market is in a nearby cave, and it's run by the tavern keeper.  There's a guarded building with some merchants in it in town, which I mistook for the black market since the merchants inside talk about it.  Anyway, now that he's found the black market, Therion needs a way in.  Given the choice between walking all the way back to town to hit up the tavern keeper again, or simply stealing a mask from an NPC five feet away from me, I chose the latter.

Therion is close to getting the emerald dragonstone when it gets stolen by some other thieves.  Therion chases after them and has a reunion with his old buddy, Darius.  They aren't on such good terms anymore, so guards had to be fought, and Darius had to be pursued.  Darius just out of his grasp, Therion ends up fighting his main guard, a guy by the name of Gareth.  Gareth has a couple minions who heal him a lot, and he keeps changing stances, which changes which of his weaknesses are available to be hit, but once his guard is broken it's all the same anyway, so a healthy beating from Draefendi's Rage and Aeber's Reckoning saw him defeated.

Darius is headed to Northreach, so Therion is naturally following him there.  Darius' group basically controls the town, and they now have both the emerald dragonstone and the gold dragonstone.  I really want to refer to them as the dragonballs, but there's only four of them.  Anyway, shit's gonna go down when Therion gets there, you know, whenever I actually do his Chapter 4.

For now, I'm in that "between chapters" state, and I have a plan.  Run around doing inquiry and thievery, level up Alfyn some more so I can do more inquiry (I'll impose a reasonable limit on it, probably the level 50 milestone since I just passed the level 45 one, although I have yet to encounter someone who requires higher than level 60 and it's tempting to go for that).  I also want to give those four extra shrines a try now that I have better equipment and so forth.  There are also various NPCs guarding various buildings that I haven't defeated yet due to their high star ratings, I'm probably more than strong enough now for either H'aanit or Olberic to beat them senseless in relatively short order.  There's a fair amount to be done, so hopefully I can get a decent portion of it done before delving into Chapter 4.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 18

After a few days of making sure I wasn't falling too far behind on YouTube, I decided it was time to do Chapter 3 for Cyrus and Olberic.  But first, a little equipment shuffling and party maintenance.  I decided to put Alfyn in the party this session, to let him level up a bit.  Both Cyrus and Alfyn needed a bit of attention, because Alfyn had no accessories, and neither had a secondary job as I tend to remove secondaries from people when I take them out of the party.  Not wanting to go all in on equipment knowing full well that I don't even have access to all the equipment from the third town in each region, I just shuffled the good stuff around.

Cyrus arrives in Stonegard looking for the tome From the Far Reaches of Hell.  He starts his search at the local book bindery, and ends up talking to the person who did the translation.  His name is Dominic, he's not too proud of having translated it, but he was in a bind and really needed the money.  Cyrus had been noticing someone following him for a while, and finally confronts them.  The person turns out to be Lucia, the assistant to the Royal Academy of Atlasdam's Headmaster, Yvon.  She says Yvon is up to no good and that she can't stand by while he does it, and tells Cyrus that Yvon grew up in Stonegard.  Being the naturally curious scholar he is, Cyrus wanted to visit the house.  However, as soon as he enters, Lucia attacks him.

Cyrus wakes up in a dark room whose only exit is straight up, being taunted by Headmaster Yvon.  Lucia is right there with him.  Yvon leaves Cyrus down there to starve after Cyrus refuses to join him, and after a little bit of looking around trying to find an exit, someone else opens the hatch and lowers a rope.  Surprise, it's the student who wanted the "personal lessons", Therese!  However, Yvon shows up and takes her hostage, so Cyrus naturally decides to go save her and stop Yvon in the process.  Also, Lucia is completely gone.

The enemies in this area spam status effects and were rather annoying to fight.  I didn't really have the best weapon spread in the world, and it didn't help that both Cyrus and Alfyn were a bit over 20 levels behind H'aanit and Ophilia.  Alfyn was basically on Donate BP duty with the Merchant secondary I gave him, since his damage is kinda crap.  A lot of things were weak to Bow, this led to me spamming Arrowstorm, and using Draefendi's Rage with reckless abandon.  Whatever, it worked.

Cyrus finally reaches Yvon's chamber, suitably placed in his basement at the furthest point from the stairs down from the ground floor.  He pulls out a blood crystal not unlike the ones Cyrus found in Quarrycrest, uses it to transform into a demon version of himself, and thus the battle is on.

Unlike previous battles of this nature, there was no "can't use these weaknesses until you kill the minions first" mechanic.  He gained more hits on his guard every time he recovered from being broken, but also gained another weakness.  At one point, he "lost control of himself" and got a permanent critical hit buff.  I just kept hitting him with Draefendi's Rage and Amputate, and he died before too long.  In typical "I get to get my last words in before I actually die" fashion, he spouted something about immortality and a promise having been broken.

Therese passes out shortly after being rescued, so Cyrus takes her back to the inn.  Once she comes to, they have a bit of a conversation, wherein Cyrus finds out that Yvon was plotting to kill Cyrus, and then head to Duskbarrow.  Given that From the Far Reaches of Hell is still yet to be located, Cyrus decides that answers will be had in Duskbarrow.

Fast travelled over to Wellspring, did a bit of inquiry now that Alfyn is above level 40, and unlocked more stuff at the general store.  Yay.  Wellspring also happens to be where Olberic's Chapter 3 takes place, so I swapped him in, set his secondary as Merchant, and changed Alfyn over to Scholar so he could use some JP to learn Analyze.

Olberic asks around about Erhardt and finds that he's highly respected here, for defending the town from lizardmen.  Just as he's getting to business with the captain of the guard, the lizardmen attack, and Olberic joins in on the defense.  After fending off the attack, Olberic decides to push deeper into their cave, where Erhardt has already been, fighting lizardmen alone.  Erhardt is surprised to see Olberic, to say the least.  They fight off some more lizardmen, and then the lizardmen chiefs attack, so they split up and each take one of them.

It was an interesting fight, the chief didn't attack as long as its minions were alive, so I identified weaknesses and wore down the leader's guard for a bit before taking them out.  The chief itself died shortly thereafter.  What, does the combination of Draefendi's Rage and Brand's Thunder hurt or something?  Oopsie!

Anyway, Erhardt and Olberic have themselves a good discussion about everything that's happened, and it doesn't really seem like Olberic actually wants to kill Erhardt.  He does challenge him, though, which was fun.  Erhardt had a bunch of weaknesses, but the only one I could exploit was Polearm, so I basically just poked his guard down, beat him around a bit with Brand's Thunder, cleaned up HP/SP/status as necessary, and repeated ad nauseam.  If you're reading this and haven't yet done this fight, equip the accessory that prevents Blind.  It'll help.

Olberic gets the name and location of the guy who plotted the downfall of Hornburg, a man by the name of Werner, who went to Riverford.  As per usual, that's Olberic's next destination.

After I finished that, I went around, wrapped up some side quests, beat the guard in front of the Wellspring black market, did some inquiry with Alfyn, and had Therion steal some things.  There's still quite the number of side quests that I have no idea how to continue them, so every time I get a few more key items, I go around and try a few that I think they'll work for, usually to find out that I was wrong.  Whatever, lol.

Up next, Alfyn and Therion.  I'm still waiting to see if all the stories meet up in one "gotta save the world" sort of thing.  I've seen a mysterious hooded figure following people around, notably Tressa at the end of her Chapter 3, and this hooded figure looked a lot like the one that ended up being Lucia.  There's also one among the Saviors mentioned in Ophilia's story, and if I remember correctly, the Saviors have also been brought up in Primrose's story.  They're definitely up to no good regardless, so they'll inevitably get the smackdown.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 17

Between last session and this one, a quick Twitter interaction led me to test what stat the healing spells are linked to.  As it turns out, it's Elem. Def., so Ophilia now has armor that boosts that.  My heals are back up to being useful again.  With that done, I fast travelled to Victors Hollow and started Tressa's Chapter 3.

Upon arrival, she starts looking for something that she can sell at the Merchants' Fair in Grandport.  A map at a local merchant catches her eye, that the merchant seems willing to let go of for cheap, but she makes the mistake of letting the merchant know it actually has some value, so just like that, price jacked up to unreasonable levels.  She also comes across Leon, the pirate-turned-merchant she encountered earlier in her journey.  As it turns out, the map belonged to a pirate friend of his, named Baltazar.  Tressa decides to get the one and only thing that the merchant was willing to trade for the map, a stupidly huge shield.  Having successfully traded an incredibly valuable shield for a treasure map, she takes it to Leon.  Back story ensues, but basically he ends up telling her to keep the map and to find the treasure herself.

So she goes and does precisely that.  Guarding the treasure is a beast with venomous claws, so to battle we go.  Because of my equipment, I'm going to stop rating battle difficulty until it catches up to me again.  However, this beast didn't seem to have a big attack to be wary of, it was just the standard "increases its guard when it recovers from being broken" mechanic.  With the beast dealt with, Tressa claims the treasure, a stone called Eldrite that is apparently the only one of its kind in the entire world.  Also in the chest is a letter from Baltazar to Leon, so Tressa takes that back to Leon.

More back story ensues, and in the end, Leon leaves Tressa with the Eldrite.  She now has something to sell at the Merchants' Fair, so her next destination is none other than Grandport itself.

Shifting gears a bit to a much darker story, I fast travelled over to Noblecourt to start Primrose's Chapter 3.  As you may recall, she'd just killed one of the three men responsible for the death of her father, and has returned home to Noblecourt seeking the truth.  Will she be able to handle the truth?

Upon arrival, there's a commotion in the main square as someone's apparently dying in public.  Primrose notes that nothing about that event or the way the city handled it would have happened if her father was still around.  Shortly thereafter she starts getting recognized by people who last saw her when she was a child, including a gardener from her house way back when who also used to write poetry and comfort her periodically.  She also meets the former Captain of the city watch, who tells her that a group called "The Obsidians" basically runs everything in town, and takes her to the entrance to their lair.  Another of the men she needs to kill in order to avenge her father happens to be in charge of things there, so it seems fairly straightforward.  Run in, exchange pleasantries, casual fight to the death.  You know.  The usual.

Instead of having his two minions who prevent his weaknesses from being exploited straight away, the Right-Hand Man summons them a few turns into the fight.  I had to deal with him being two lousy hits away from being broken while I figured out the minions' weaknesses and took them out.  He was annoyingly applying Blind a bit too often for my liking, but with Ophilia spreading the Rehabilitate around, I offed the minions and went back to work.  A few turns later, and he too was down for the count.  Fittingly, Primrose dealt the killing blow.

After the fight, the gardener she met earlier suddenly appears in an oh shit moment, because surprise he's the last person she needs to kill.  Except that he stabs her.  You know, for good measure.  Unfortunately for him, he didn't stab her good enough, and she recovers after a few days.  The ex-city watch guy tells her that he went to Everhold, so that's where Primrose is headed next.

Up next, Cyrus and Olberic.  Side note: I really wish that out-of-party characters would get a percentage of XP, just like in Chrono Trigger.  I wouldn't have all my out-of-party people being 20-30 levels behind like they are right now if that were the case.  I think the intent was for the player to be shuffling their party around a lot more often...

Octopath Traveler: Session 16

After gathering all the equipment and consumables data into a Google Sheet where I can filter it and sort it and encounter annoying issues with Google Sheets and make workarounds for their stupidity, I put together a shopping list.  Naturally, purchasing everything on said shopping list almost completely drained my money, but selling the old stuff recouped a fair portion of it.  Side note, I really wish there was a series of shields that was a straight upgrade to the Kite Shield.  It's the best shield I've found so far that doesn't have some crappy penalty to evasion.  Also, in buying all the good armor, I had to forgo elemental defense, so we'll see how that comes back to bite me.  Anyway, now that I'm kitted out, it's officially time to start Chapter 3.

H'aanit arrives in Stillsnow, seeking the sage Susanna.  Susanna reveals that she's no oracle and that everything she does is power of deduction and getting others to reveal things, which is how those fake "psychics" work in real life.  Anywho, the good news is that the petrification is one of those spell effects that disappears when its caster dies, so all H'aanit has to do to save her master is kill Redeye.  In order to do that, though, she needs a specific herb called "Herb-of-grace" that has the power to prevent the petrification.  It happens to grow in the nearby woods, by sheer coincidence, so off H'aanit goes.

At the end of the forest, near the patch of Herb-of-grace, there's a dragon.  H'aanit has a flashback about her master's stories and how they get longer with each retelling, and decides this will make for a most excellent story before jumping into battle with it.  This fight uses the whole "can't use some weaknesses yet" thing, but instead of the dragon having two minions like in the other cases, the battle simply plays out like you're slowly weakening its defenses over time, meaning as it recovers from you having broken it, more of its weaknesses become available to use for the next time you break it.  It also strengthens its guard, this time by three instead of two.  Interestingly, it has an ability that sweeps a party member out of battle for a few turns, and it used it on Ophilia, so I had to have Tressa do a bit of healing with Healing Grape Bunches until she came back.  Owing to the equipment I just purchased, no doubt, the battle wasn't so bad.

H'aanit returns to Susanna's place with the Herb-of-grace and tells her the story of the fight while it brews into a potion.  Once that's done, I received ten "Herb-of-grace Potion" consumable items, so it looks like I'll actually have to use them in battle myself.  As H'aanit is leaving Stillsnow, one of the Knights Ardante shows up and informs H'aanit that Eliza has located Redeye, near Marsalim.  That'll be the setting for H'aanit's Chapter 4.

Hopped over to Goldshore to do Ophilia's Chapter 3.  Right off the bat, she has another encounter with the merchant that showed up in her Chapter 1.  I thought there was something suspicious about him then, and nothing about this meeting has changed that feeling.  Anyway, she heads up to the cathedral to do the Kindling, but the bishop there is very clearly hiding something and acting rather suspiciously himself.  Ophilia follows a small child who she sees running out of the cathedral and begins to find out what's going on: some random guy asked the kid to give a letter to the bishop, and upon reading that letter, he was clearly shaken.  Getting straight to the point, Ophilia gets him to dump the goods: it was a ransom note.  His daughter has been kidnapped, and he'll get her back in exchange for the Flame that Ophilia carries.  Standard "tell anyone and she dies" threat as well.  Never being the one to avoid helping people, Ophilia runs off to the cave where the bad guys are hiding.

The fight was kind of interesting.  Some weaknesses couldn't be hit, as per usual.  The two guys were both mages, however one was a healer that kept popping off 800 heals for the both of them every couple of turns.  Naturally, after revealing weaknesses, I focused the healer and took him down, at which point all weaknesses became available to hit.  Shortly thereafter, the other one bit the dust.  I make it sound easy, but my lack of elemental defense at the moment left me in fairly constant need of healing, and Ophilia's lack of elemental attack meant that her heals weren't as potent as usual.  I definitely need to rethink the equipment I bought, but regardless, through the use of BP, I was able to keep everyone alive and take them down.

Bishop's daughter safe and sound, Ophilia performs the Kindling, and speaks of returning to Flamesgrace.  Just then, who should enter the cathedral but Lianna.  Back at the inn, Lianna reveals that her father (Ophilia's adoptive father), the archbishop, has died.  She also drugs Ophilia's drink, and then she and some mysterious hooded figure steal the Flame and head off to Wispermill.  The mysterious hooded guy is promising to be able to bring Lianna's father back to life, and Lianna is clearly in the bargaining stage of grief.  Ophilia somehow heard them openly discussing their plans after having passed out from the drugged drink, so after she comes to, she vows to go to Wispermill and reclaim the Flame, and Lianna as well.

Up next: Chapter 3 for Tressa and Primrose.  I'll re-evaluate equipment after that, since I'll also be shuffling party members around for the rest of Chapter 3.

Edit: Actually, effective immediately, Ophilia's now wearing a Platinum Vest instead of Platinum Armor.  I did a quick test, and found that healing amounts are linked to Elem. Def., which the Platinum Armor doesn't boost.  My healing should be a lot better now.

Friday, September 21, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Data Gathering Session 2

...aaaaaand done.  That felt like it took forever, but I really just needed to establish an optimized workflow.  Once I got things rolling it wasn't really so bad.

However, in the process of trying to set up the spreadsheet to be shared, I learned a lot about the shortcomings of Google Sheets.
  1. Rather than selecting "Publish to the web...", you have to select "Share...".  Why aren't these two options under the same menu selection?
  2. Filters are awesome, but don't get shared along with the spreadsheet.
  3. The green color used in many places to indicate that filters are present still propagates through to the shared spreadsheet, though.
  4. If I have the spreadsheet open, and filter it, it becomes filtered for anyone who's viewing it.  lolwut?
  5. The sorting options in each column's filter menu have to be undone by the standard editing Undo action.  There's no "revert to unsorted state" option.
If you want to use this spreadsheet, you'll have to go to Data → Filter views... and make a new temporary filter view.  Only then will you be able to filter and sort it to find what you're looking for.  This kinda sucks, but there's no other option.

Also, I've enabled comments on the spreadsheet.  Hopefully, if I've missed anything, have a typo somewhere, or some equipment stat anomaly has gotten past the sanity checks I did as I entered information, people can comment and let me know.  Keep in mind that it's not complete yet, as I still need to Inquire/Scrutinize in a few towns to get access to the full inventories of their shops.  I'm also filling in recovery amounts for various consumable items since the game doesn't see fit to tell you what they are, and that process isn't complete yet.

Here's the link to the spreadsheet.  This is a separate, static view of the one I'm working on, without any of the formulas or the sheets that just serve as lookup tables and sets of data for data verification rules.  Lacking all that stuff, it should load a lot faster.  Enjoy!

Octopath Traveler: Data Gathering Session 1

So, I have a slight issue with the way Octopath Traveler handles the player's acquisition of new equipment.  It's basically spread out among a bunch of towns, and they just say "figure out what's best yourself lol".  Unless you're like me, you'll probably have to fast travel around comparing stats and whatnot to find what you need.

I've never been one to pass up an opportunity to make myself a solution.  I've also always had issues with the ways that games present information, usually it's not in a manner that I can easily digest.  If you recall, I made a PHP/MySQL application a while back for the StreetPass game Flower Town, just so I could track my progress and see what I had left in a way that much more completely and concisely told me what I had and hadn't done.

It should come as no surprise that I started work on a spreadsheet of all the equipment available for purchase from shops.  It may come as no surprise that I'm also including consumable items in this spreadsheet.  I've been asking myself "where did I get this thing?  If I knew, I'd go back and get more!", and that's precisely what this spreadsheet will tell me.  Well, not completely.  If I got it from a chest, or boughtstole it from an NPC, it won't be in the spreadsheet.  At least, I'll have a pretty good indicator as to which items I can readily get more of.

This is a fairly time-consuming process, hence my actual game progress has come to a halt.  I even restart the game periodically so the time I spend standing there with one or another shop's menu open won't count towards the gameplay time on my save.  Up until the time of this writing, I've got half of the game's shops documented.  I need to get the other half, and then I need to get Alfyn levelled up more so he can Inquire about things, since one of the things you can get from that is additional stock at shops.

Making this spreadsheet has been an interesting journey of writing formulas, using the hell out of named ranges, and adding in data verification and conditional formatting.  These sheets are designed more like database tables, to be honest.  I'm using VLOOKUPs all over the place.  I have a duplicate equipment protection conditional formatting rule in my equipment sheet that takes so pointlessly long to actually apply its formatting that I might as well not have it.  The performance issue is either due to the fact that it has to compare what I've entered to everything else in the column, or that every row on the sheet is subject to a VLOOKUP from my main equipment sheet with all the pretty formatting, to pull in item stats and whatnot so I didn't have to keep typing them out over and over again, and every time I change a cell the VLOOKUPs are getting re-evaluated even though the sheet they're on isn't even visible.  There's probably a way to optimize it further than I already have.  Do I know what that way is?  No!

In my typical fashion, I'll post a link to this spreadsheet once I'm done making it, so everyone can bask in its glorymake use of it.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 15

Pledging to come back to Shrine of the Archmagus later, I left, and got to Duskbarrow proper.  After noting that Alfyn needs to level up in order to Inquire about all of the NPCs here, I stole what I could with Therion, did some side quest stuff, and fast travelled to Stillsnow.

In Stillsnow, I investigated the trail leading out the back of the city before progressing on to the next uncharted area of the Frostlands, Southern Northreach wilds.  Once there, I noted that there isn't a shrine in this area, and then made the quick trek north to Northreach itself.  Nothing terribly special happened here either, just side quest stuff and more of Alfyn being too low level to use his path action.  Stole what I could, and fast travelled to Noblecourt.

Then Switch update 6.0.0 came out, and with it, Nintendo Switch Online.  I started the free 7-day trial and spent a while playing The Legend of Zelda.  Also, protip, if you have a Japanese eShop account and Nintendo Switch Online active on your US account (as I currently do), you can use the Japanese account to download the Japanese NES application, and run it under your US account.  All the text will still be in Japanese, but hey, if there's ever any region-exclusive releases, you should be covered.

Anyway, back in Octopath Traveler, I headed out of Noblecourt and north to Western Wispermill Flats.  This area does have a shrine, specifically the Shrine of the Starseer.  Remembering my previous experience I just poked my head in to get it on my map, made a note of it for later, and carried on to Wispermill.

I could tell as soon as the Wispermill music started playing that something's going on here.  Attempting to talk to the locals confirms my suspicion, as they only seem capable of grunting at me with varied levels of emotion.  Something's clearly taken their ability to speak.  The only NPC that would actually talk was a side quest NPC, Theracio.  Nothing to steal, only one chest, and Alfyn's too low level to Inquire, so I moved on.  Continuing my own personal quest to explore to the third town of each region, I fast travelled to Goldshore.

I worked my way through West Grandport Coast, noting the lack of a shrine.  Given that Grandport is where a lot of merchants set up shop, Therion had a field day stealing basically everything.  After a bit of fast travelling around and resolving some side quests that I now had the items for, I moved on to Stonegard.

To get to Everhold from Stonegard, one must travel through West Stonegard Pass.  Once in West Everhold Pass, the town is actually the most straightforward place to reach, despite the winding path up the hill.  This time, I explored the town and stole what I could before poking my head into the sub-areas.  Poked my head into the Shrine of the Runeblade while I was in the area.

The Highlands explored sufficiently for now, I fast travelled to Wellspring and made my way to Marsalim.  Did the usual running around and stealing what I could while activating side quests, and then it was on to Saintsbridge.

...Or so I thought.  Upon closer inspection, there doesn't seem to be a way to go south from Saintsbridge.  Noticing a path on the map that runs through the Cliftlands, right along its border with the Riverlands, I decided to fast travel to Quarrycrest and see if that would work.  I saw that it indeed would work, so I skipped right past Orewell to visit Riverford.

Know how I suggested that some serious shit had happened in Wispermill?  Well, that ain't shit compared to Riverford.  The town square looks to be set up to burn people at the stake, and all the residents are on edge.  I did the rounds with Therion and promptly got out of their business.

The journey to Orewell wasn't so bad, and I picked up the Shrine of the Warbringer on my way out of the general Riverford area.  Orewell itself is rather tiny, so there wasn't much to see, and equally as little for Therion to steal.

That concludes my exploration of the world map, outside of areas I'm currently barred from entering because of story reasons, I've been everywhere.  I haven't done everything, but I've made notes of it all so I can refer to them later, perhaps between chapters 3 and 4.  Before I begin chapter 3, though, there's one last thing: equipment upgrades.  Equipment is so far spread out in this game that I'm going to need to make a list of it all in order to make sure I've got everything I want, so that'll take a bit.  We'll see just how long it takes...

Monday, September 17, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 14

Took a couple days' break there to relax and make sure I wasn't falling too far behind on YouTube videos.

This session started off with me going around making a note of the sub-areas in each explorable area and whether or not I'd cleared them, which is something I'd neglected to do up until this point.  I cleared out the Tomb of Kings, but it didn't have a boss in it.  It did, however, have a gravekeeper NPC at the end who told me to bugger off, and I suspect this area might be used in the story or something.  Since that sub-area is along the path that connects Stonegard and Wellspring, I explored that path and got chests.  At this point, I think I've explored everything except for the areas that contain each region's third town, and any other connecting areas between them.

In the process I got a bunch of JP and had Primrose learn Scholar.  Switched her over to it from Hunter, so now I have someone in the party who can use Analyze on bosses and so forth.  Should make things go more smoothly at the beginning of fights with new enemies.  She obviously doesn't have the Study Foe ability that Cyrus has, but Analyze is cheap and she regenerates 10 SP per turn anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

I've basically stopped actively trying to grind JP at this point, it seems to be much more worthwhile to explore and get JP as a byproduct of that than to stay in an area and run in circles.

After a bit of jumping from town to town, buying equipment as necessary so I'd be ready to start Chapter 3, I decided to actually explore one of the areas I had yet to explore: East Duskbarrow Trail.  Enemies there are definitely higher-level, as the fights took a bit longer than I'm used to, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  Then I happened upon a shrine.  A ninth shrine, entitled Shrine of the Archmagus.  This gives off Scholar vibes to me, so... more Scholar stuff, somehow?  Likely another Divine skill?  That means there's probably a second shrine for all the other jobs as well.  Anyway, what sets this one apart from the eight I've been in thus far is that it contains enemies.  Especially at the end, where you get talked to by Dreisang, the Archmagus.  He offers up juicy "lost secrets", but you have to prove yourself worthy first.  Okay, a fight, let's go, right?

Well, first off, he hits like a truck.  He does the "strengthen my guard every time I recover from being broken" thing as well as the "cycle my weaknesses when I recover from being broken" thing.  No problem, I say to myself, I've got a variety of weapons, access to all elements via spells, and Primrose knows Analyze.  Analyze also shows you a foe's HP, but I have this nasty habit of paying more attention to the foe's weaknesses than the HP box that briefly shows up, so I didn't notice Dreisang's HP for a while.  I randomly decided to analyze him while I had him broken, just to see what I had left, and... it was over 131,000 HP.  A hundred and thirty-one thousand.  Yeah no, with my damage being in the hundreds when not boosted, and my largest sources being 5000-7000, there's no way that's happening any time soon.  It was only a small consolation that all my efforts thus far had succeeded in knocking ~40k off of him (if memory serves, his max HP is around 171,000...).  You can't flee the fight, but fortunately, there's a save point just before it, and I'd saved there.  One reload later and I'm free to roam the continent in my next session.

I say "next session", because I need sleep.

SERIOUSLY THOUGH, A HUNDRED AND THIRTY ONE THOUSAND.  I mean, I'd settled into a rhythm and was handling the stuff he was throwing my way relatively easily, so I know I could've done it, but I was just too tired to whittle through that much HP.  Definitely later.

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 13

This session, I went back around grabbing purple chests out of areas where I didn't have Therion in the party the first time, finished up side quests, and took on a couple cave areas; and in the process I fought things and got all the usual ancillary benefits.  This kind of stuff is really hard to elaborate on in the meandering manner required to pad out the length of this post, to be honest.

I finished up a few side quests here and there.  I currently have an aspiring actor following me, looking for another because they both have to be recruited at the same time for some stupid reason, but I may have to part ways and go back to Noblecourt to get him again later.  As it turned out, apparently I'm blind and the moneylender that was a part of a side quest in Atlasdam was standing right next to the NPC that gave me the side quest, and in fact, I'd already used path actions on him.  Beating him up solves the side quest, so yay.  Gave Lorie's diary to the NPC that was looking for her, though I'd already found her gravestone lol.

Fully learned a few more jobs.  H'aanit and Ophilia are now only missing each other's primary jobs as secondaries.  Others are missing a lot more, especially the people I don't use as much.  I'm trying to get Scholar learned on as many people as I can, so I can always have someone in the party with Analyze to assist in figuring out enemy weaknesses.  I have sort of a process for doing it without Analyze, but Analyze would make it go a lot faster.  In developing my process, I logic'd out the order of the weaknesses.  You see, there's up to five weaknesses for any given foe, but they always appear in the same order regardless of any gaps between them.  Knowing this order lets you more easily decide what to try next once you find one that works.  Also, some enemies actually have logical weaknesses, whether to weapons or elements, which always helps because you can just whack them with whatever makes the most sense and it'll probably be a weakness (for example, treants are weak to axes and fire).  Unless you're trying Lightning on a foe that's wearing armor.  I'm so used to armored foes always being weak to Lightning from Bravely Default and Bravely Second that the lack of that here kinda trips me up.

The caves just outside of Wellspring I thought were really easy, up until the boss at the end.  Kinda had to hit the home button and restart the game, the fight was just going nowhere.  Death loops aren't particularly fun, especially when coupled with a foe that puts your entire party to sleep before wiping out half of them.  It's a side quest thing, I'll come back to it in about 20 levels or so and wipe the floor with it, I guess.  Before it got me in the death loop, I'd only managed to figure out that the guy accompanying the giant serpent was weak to staff as his third weakness of five, which meant that weaknesses four and five have to be elements.  I never really got the chance to try anything else, though.

Anyway, if I don't decide to devote next session to more purple chest opening or any side quests/exploration, it'll be time for H'aanit's Chapter 3.  In that regard, I left myself in Stillsnow.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 12

Time for Alfyn's Chapter 2!  I left myself in Stonegard at the end of last session, so the first order of business was getting to Goldshore.

Alfyn arrives in Goldshore noticing that there's a sickness going around, but also that there's an apothecary already in town by the name of Vanessa that's treating it.  He introduces himself, they have a nice chat, everything seems fine, but this Vanessa just has a dark vibe to her that I can't ignore.  Maybe it's just the way she turned Alfyn's request to learn a thing or two about medicine away with some diatribe about "trade secrets", I dunno.

Anyway, as Alfyn peruses the village, he notices that everyone that Vanessa has cured is now suddenly coming down with symptoms of a whooping cough from a far-off land.  Vanessa's intentions are made reasonably clear when he sees her selling a remedy for the cough to nobles at an exorbitant price, and refusing to come down on her price for a commoner, claiming rarity of the primary reagent.  Alfyn goes to treat the commoner's child and discovers what's going on: Vanessa's offering a free cure for the original sickness that involves an ingredient that causes a cough much like that whooping cough as a side effect, and then she's bilking people out of their money for the remedy to the cough.  I can't sympathize too much with the plight of the nobles, but her intentions are clearly not on the honorable side.

Alfyn asks around and finds that the primary reagent for the cough remedy, a glowing moss, happens to be found in a nearby cave, so he heads there to find it, and most likely Vanessa as well.

Said cave is fairly short and to the point, however filled with random encounters it may be.  Sure enough, at the end of the cave, Alfyn sees Vanessa, and she is indeed 100% in it for the profit, like most medical professionals in the real world.  Alfyn makes his presence known, and it's party time.

I must be getting to the point where they want me to know about this mechanic, because it's suddenly popping up everywhere: Vanessa has two sellsword guards, and as long as they're alive, her guard can't be weakned.  Predictably, she spends the fight throwing various concoctions at you, and using others to buff her guards.  Poison is a particularly nasty status effect in this game, left unchecked it will drain a lot of HP, and she throws it out every few turns.  H'aanit with the Patience support ability is especially vulnerable, since she takes poison damage at the end of her regular turn, and then again at the end of her Patience turn.  Anyway, once the status effects had been dealt with, I had also managed to kill her guards, so I broke her guard and hit her in the face with all kinds of Divine skills and the like until she'd been beaten senseless.

Alfyn uses a sleep concoction on her to ensure she'll still be in the cave when the guards come to get her, takes some of the moss for himself, and heads back to town to make the remedy and give it to the commoner that needed it.  Satisfied with his visit to Goldshore and having helped its people, he leaves, declaring the next stop on his journey to be Saintsbridge.

The next stop on my journey, though, is Noblecourt, for Therion's Chapter 2, and thus to wrap up Chapter 2 for everyone.  I don't yet have the ability to fast travel there, but Atlasdam makes for a suitable staging area for the journey, so I fast travelled there instead.

The journey from Atlasdam to Noblecourt was rather uneventful.  Therion immediately overhears people talking about a crazy scholar by the name of Orlick who's locked himself inside his mansion doing research, and decides that's the guy with the ruby dragonstone he's looking for.  As it turns out, not only has he locked himself in there, he has guards to keep people out, and the only way in is the front door, and thus in plain view of the guards.  An alternate approach would be necessary to gain entry.

Consulting the powers of eavesdropping on other people's conversations at the tavern, he hears a couple guys talking about Orlick.  He joins in and offers them a drink if they'll tell him what they know, and he ends up finding the name of Orlick's old research partner, Barham.  Barham happens to live on the south end of town, so he heads there to see what he can find out.  As it turns out, Barham is more than willing to cooperate in Therion's removal of the ruby dragonstone from Orlick's possession, only because the two used to be friends before Orlick's research consumed him.  Therion just has to procure some stuff from local merchants, and he'll get the password to give the guards so he can get into Orlick's mansion.

The stuff Barham had Therion obtain ends up being components he uses to make a key, that Therion needs to get into Orlick's lab.  Therion takes the key, bluffs the guards with a story about an urgent delivery, gives the password, and walks right in the front door.  After wading through random encounters, I finally reached Orlick's lab.  As per usual, Therion's just about to grab the dragonstone when Orlick comes in with the guards from out front.  He's really crazy about that research thing, and given that Therion refuses to back down, the fight begins.

At this point, the "two guards preventing the boss' weaknesses from being exploited" thing is a mainstay of the boss battles, it seems.  Regardless, the same strategy as before worked well, mostly thanks to me being overlevelled, no doubt.  Beat up the guards, weaken the boss, unload Divine skills, win.

Having defeated Orlick, Therion takes the ruby dragonstone and heads back to Bolderfall to turn it in and procure the location of the next one.  As it turns out, the emerald dragonstone is reportedly on the black market in Wellspring, so that's where Therion is off to next.

And with that, Chapter 2 comes to a close.  Throughout Chapter 2, I skipped over a lot of the purple chests that only Therion can open, so I'm going to go back and grab them, as well as finishing up whatever side quests I can, and perhaps getting some exploration in the direction of the third town in each region done before beginning Chapter 3.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 11

Let's jump straight into Cyrus' Chapter 2!

Cyrus visits a scholar friend of his by the name of Odette, who lives in Quarrycrest.  Upon asking her about the missing tome's subject material, he finds out that it's about necromancy.  Then, an ongoing issue of disappearing people gets brought up, and Cyrus investigates.  He finds a (not so) hidden entrance to the sewers next to the inn, and upon investigation, discovers a lair therein.  A nice big red magic circle, a dead person, some gemstones made from human blood, and a jail cell with more people locked up, at least one of whom still appears to be alive.

The inhabitant of this room, named Gideon, comes in at this point and wonders what Cyrus is up to.  Cyrus goes full scholar on him as his way of asking him what this is all about, and naturally Gideon refuses to cough up answers, instead challenging Cyrus.  To battle we go!

Gideon has a neat mechanic in that he will summon skeletons and strengthen his guard, which prevents you from exploiting his weaknesses to lower and break it until you've disposed of them.  Once I finally got my shit in gear and started saving 3 BP on everyone for when I had him broken, he went down rather quickly.

As it turns out, everyone who was in that cell was still alive, just drugged and passed out.  Cyrus finds a book among Gideon's belongings, which at first glance appears to be the tome he's searching for, but upon further inspection is a translated and very abridged copy with some research notes written on parchment stuck between the pages.  His search for the tome continues, as it would seem.

But in order to continue that search, he needs to know who translated the tome.  Odette first notices that the book is very well constructed, which means that there are very few people that could have produced it.  My thoughts instantly went towards the book bindery in Stonegard that I ran into and out of a few times when I was there for H'aanit's Chapter 2.  Cyrus finds reasoning based on the type of paper and the material used for the cover of the tome to postitulate that it was indeed produced in Stonegard.  He sets out for Stonegard, but not before a mysterious hooded man catches wind that he's investigating something and headed that way, so perhaps we'll see more of this guy in Cyrus' Chapter 3.

Cyrus' Chapter 2 had so little combat that he didn't even get to fully learn a secondary job.  While I like the accessible length of these early chapters, I very much hope that they get a bit longer and/or more complex than "enter town, talk to NPCs for a bit, use path actions, journey through explorable area with random encounters to boss room, fight boss, closing dialogue scene".

For now, though, I'm content to go set up for Olberic's Chapter 2.  It takes place in Victors Hollow, so I'll be setting up my party in the closest town, S'warkii.

In S'warkii, I had the most annoying graphical bug happen: there's a line of trees along the south end of the village that the game normally turns transparent so you can see through them, but it was refusing to do so.  This bug persisted all the way through the journey to Victors Hollow.

Anyway, once there, Olberic finds out that Gustav, the guy he wants to talk to, is participating in a tournament in the town's arena.  In order to talk to him, he has to enter the tournament, but there's a slight catch: it's already started and has progressed to just before the quarterfinals.  However, there's a rule around this town, where if you defeat someone who's in the tournament, you can take their spot, so Olberic does that after attracting a little attention in order to lure out one of the participants.

Remember what I JUST said about people's chapters having a rather formulaic layout?  Well, this was the breath of fresh air I was looking for.  Not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR bosses.  First boss was the person he had to defeat to get into the tournament: Victorino, the Buccaneer's Bane.  I was thinking these fights would be way harder than they actually were, because I figured "oh, it's Olberic dueling people so it'll be 1v1", but all the bosses bring friends, and the game gives you your full party to compensate.  Victorino went down fairly smoothly.

Next up was Olberic's quarterfinal match with Joshua of the Frostlands.  From here on, each boss had one or more weaknesses that couldn't be used to lower their guard until their supporting people were taken out.  The neat thing here is that using Alfyn's path action, you could find out each boss' weaknesses before the fight even began.  In my case, since he's not usually in my active party, it meant leaving the arena before each match to run to the tavern and swap him in, and then revisiting the tavern to swap him back out, but the prior knowledge of weaknesses helped a lot.  Also, I swapped in Therion on each of these occasions and stole what I could, continuing my tradition of stealing everything that isn't nailed down.

The semifinal match was with Archibold the Crusher, the winner of these tournaments four times running, and heavily favored to win yet again.  Of course, I had to break his combo.  He attacked with standard Warrior skills like Level Slash and Cross Strike, which was interesting.

The final match was, of course, against the Black Knight Gustav.  Olberic had already spoken to him upon arriving at the arena, and they had an agreement that Gustav would answer Olberic's questions only if Olberic defeated him in the finals.  Well, that happened, and the goods were spilled.  Erhardt is in Wellspring, so Olberic's next destination is there.  However, Gustav tells Olberic about Erhardt's past, which basically involves his village being razed in the war.  Erhardt held a grudge against the King of Hornburg for not doing anything about it, and enlisted with the intent of spying while he planned his vengeance.  Knowing this information, Olberic will likely seek answers from Erhardt before their inevitable duel.

Also, I've been omitting it and focusing on describing the story, but I've been dutifully completing side quests as I get them and find whatever (or whoever) I need to find in order to complete them.  There are a couple that I have absolutely no clue what to do, so I just sorta check in on the relevant NPCs periodically to see if anything I've gotten since the last time I checked in will actually progress their side quest.  Some side quests are basically sending me to other areas that I have yet to venture to, so I'll get to them eventually, possibly between Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.

That's it for this session!  Next up is Alfyn's Chapter 2, which takes place in Goldshore.  If I can continue the whole "two people's chapters in one day" thing, after that will be Therion, and Chapter 2 will be concluded.  I figure between chapters is as good a place as any to do some exploration and a little levelling up and/or JP collection.

Monday, September 10, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 10

Let's see how much of Chapter 2 I can get done today!  First up, Primrose.  I'm doing them in the same order that I recruited the characters, so it's going to be interesting since I recruited Cyrus just after Tressa and both of their Chapter 2s take place in the same city.

In Stillsnow, Primrose decides to dance on the stage in the tavern to try and loosen the townspeople's tongues, but the only things she gets are compliments and ogling.  However, someone from her past who happens to be there recognizes her.  This someone is a woman who served her family, by the name of Arianna.  As it turns out, Arianna is working at a brothel to make ends meet, and the man Primrose seeks is the guy who runs it.  Getting there to dispose of him is a bit tricky, though.  The only way that people can get there is by carriage, and the guy who drives the carriage is very suspicious of Primrose.  She asks around and finds that he owes the tavern keeper a debt, so she leverages that to get on the carriage.

Once there, she goes through a secret passage via a cave, to end up directly in his room.  From that point, things are fairly straightforward.  They introduce themselves, Primrose states her purpose for being there, and the fight happens.  Rufus, the Left-hand Man has two sidekicks that are kind of annoying, but die in relatively short order.  Rufus, however, took two hits of Brand's Thunder to the face, as well as numerous Cross Strikes boosted to varying levels.  He did charge up for a big attack at one point, but I broke his defense before he could use it.  Being nothing more than a worthless sack of HP, though, he went down with no issue.

Primrose finds out that her next step is in Noblecourt, and after some words with Arianna, she sets off for the next leg of her journey.

One thing I noticed a few sessions ago but didn't mention for whatever reason: in the Journal, the lengths of the banners change depending on the amount of each character's story (or sidequests for a given region) you've completed.  It's one of a variety of things in the game that I'll classify as a "nice touch".

Tressa's Chapter 2 is fairly straightforward: she arrives in Quarrycrest, notes that it's a gold mining town, then through interacting with the locals, finds some stones that look beautiful once polished and decides to start selling them.  Of course, this means you have to use her path action to buy them off of the locals first, though thankfully I'd already scoped the area with Alfyn before doing so and found the haggling boost.

Shortly after discovering that the stones polish up quite well, she meets another travelling merchant by the name of Ali who tells her what they are.  Her first sale of them goes without a hitch, but on the second one, Ali decides to be the rival merchant, and he's totally better than Tressa at being a salesperson.  Tressa does her best Edea Lee impression at one point, letting out a good "Mrgrgr...", which was fun for me, being a player who got the reference.

The entire time this has been going on, we've been seeing cutscenes that show us that the whole place is run by a most unsavory man by the name of Morlock, who insists that he owns the land that they're mining on and that everything they dig up is his.  Not surprisingly, he has learned of Tressa and Ali's activities, and declares them to be illegal.  Ali goes on a huge rant about how horrible Morlock is, which ends with him getting pwnt by Morlock's guard Omar, and dragged off.

Tressa decides to save him, so it's on to Morlock's mansion a short walk through a few random encounters away.  You know, for a guy whose coffers are overflowing, his mansion really needs a lot of work.  It's super dark and dusty on the inside.  Surely he's got the money to pay someone to clean it...  Also, it's got the most confusing floor layout ever.  After a while of exploring and beating up the enemies found therein, I reached the final room where the battle actually takes place.

Owing once again to my over-levelled nature, Omar wasn't that difficult.  He did the standard "every time his guard is broken, he strengthens it by two hits" thing, but that seemed to max out at 8 instead of 10 or 11 like in previous cases.  He did charge up a presumably big attack at one point, but by sheer luck I had his guard one hit away from being broken, so he never got to actually use it.  Omar is also accompanied by a couple of sidekicks who were annoying, but died quickly.

Tressa and Ali have another talk after Morlock and Omar run off, and they decide that round two of their MERCHANT BATTLE will be at the Merchant's Fair in Grandport.  But first, they need to procure stuff to sell in order to compete with one another, so the next stop on Tressa's journey is Victors Hollow.  Every ounce of my being wants that to be "Victor's Hollow", but there's no apostrophe in-game.

As previously mentioned, next up will be Cyrus' Chapter 2, which is also in the town of Quarrycrest.  Not having to journey there means I can just hop straight into it next time I pick up my Switch, so it should go by a bit faster.  Maybe I can get three people's Chapter 2s done next session?  We'll see.  I also kinda want to go exploring and discover the third town in each region.  Maybe I'll do that once I'm done with Chapter 2.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 9

This is also two sessions combined into one, as the first session I was just running around fighting things around Wellspring, identifying weaknesses, levelling up Alfyn so he could Inquire about things, getting JP (Southern Wellspring Sands looks better on the surface since you can regularly get JP rewards in the 130 range, but battles take FOREVER due to weird sets of weaknesses, so I still feel like Carrion Caves is better), and debating what to do next.

The only real thing of note is that I finally decided to swap around some support abilities now that people have access to a few jobs' worth of them.  Currently popular is Inspiration, which has the effect "With each successful standard attack, gain SP equal to 1% of the damage you deal.".  When you boost a character's standard attack to get multiple hits, Inspiration applies to each individual hit, so while the amount of SP gained is small, it adds up.  This gives a virtual boost to any given character's max SP since I can just do regular attacks to recover smaller amounts of SP.  I also discovered that the Thief job makes an excellent SP battery with its Steal SP and Share SP abilities.  If you boost Steal SP, you can usually recover close to 100% of what you shared to another character (plus Steal SP's cost of 6 SP), and Inspiration can recover the rest.  There's a big caveat to Steal SP though, that may also apply to HP Thief now that I think about it: if you kill the enemy with Steal SP, you don't get any SP.  It still pops up the SP gain text, but the value is zero.

Also, everything about the Apothecary ability Amputation paints a rather grim view of what amputations must have been like before anesthesia and other modern medical technology.  It's just a really powerful axe swing with a big wind-up...  You get the picture, right?

Between the first bit and the rest of this, I decided to not go as gung-ho on the early-game grinding as I have been.  It was getting exhausting and kind of turning me off from playing the game because of how slowly it goes.  The later areas will surely have better rewards, and this way I actually get to continue the story.  First order of business: find the other four shrines so I can unlock the other four secondary jobs.  Second order of business: Ophilia's Chapter 2.  Also, somewhere in there, make sure I have non-makeshift equipment for people now that their available weapon range is expanding.  I love that the game throws you that bone, but as the description of the makeshift weapons implies, you'll want to replace them with a real weapon before too long.

In the process of running around locating the other four shrines, I noticed that it's kinda easy to get lost in Western Stillsnow Wilds, which is going to make finding all the chests in that area fun.  If not for the icons on the radar I don't think I would've found the sub-area or the shrine, or at least, not without a lot of walking around fighting random battles because the area is large, open, and completely covered in snow.  As in, there are no paths to help you find your way.  Western Noblecourt Flats is almost the same thing, but without the snow.  Nevertheless, I do now have access to all secondary jobs.  Unfortunately, weapons cost money, and the good ones cost a lot, so I kinda had to stop buying the good weapons before I'd replaced all the makeshift equipment.

Anyway, with my party all decked out with secondary jobs that they either mostly know or completely know, it was well and truly way past the time to do Ophilia's Chapter 2.

The first part of her Chapter 2 is as easy as I expected it to be: no enemies, just dialogue as Ophilia performs the Kindling in Saintsbridge Cathedral.  Then, while she's taking a walk around the city, she encounters some kids having an argument.  Long story short, one of the kids recently lost his mother, and highly values her brooch, which another one of the kids "lost" by bumping into him.  In typical "kids being dicks to each other" fashion, blame and insults are thrown at the one who is somehow responsible for "losing" the brooch by bumping into the other.  Seriously, kid, if the thing means that much to you, keep it secure!

Anyway, this sets up Ophilia trying to help the kid locate the brooch.  They're unsuccessful, and Ophilia goes to have a talk with the kid whose mom died.  She eventually convinces him to sort of begrudgingly apologize, but then the kid who's still busy looking for the brooch runs off after a dog who apparently has it in its mouth.  Said kid follows said dog straight into a forest full of monsters.  Combat time!

This area was fairly easy, both in the "it's still early game and the recommended level is 20" sense, and in the "two of my characters are level 50+ and two are high 30s or low 40s" sense, but also thanks to having secondary jobs set on everyone, I have a lot more weapon options available and can hit weaknesses much more often.

I love how this game incentivizes using regular attacks.  In a lot of RPGs, each character's regular attack is kind of lackluster and you only use it when you're low on magic or whatever, but here, you need to use regular attacks in order to break enemies' defenses so you can deal more damage to them.  Also, support abilities that go into effect on hit further incentivize this, i.e. the aforementioned Inspiration.

Anyway, I forget how to spell the boss' name because it was full of weird foreign characters that I don't even know how to pronounce, but it was a direwolf that strengthened its guard by two hits after every time I broke it.  Even though H'aanit starts out only being able to use a bow and an axe, with Warrior as her secondary the sword is the best weapon for her.  I was using the Warrior abilities a lot, namely Cross Strike.  At one point I threw Ophilia's Divine skill on her so a boosted Cross Strike would happen twice instead of once.  Between me being overlevelled, the extra weapons afforded by secondary jobs, and the relatively low recommended level for the area, the boss went down without issue.

In the end, the kid finds the brooch and they go back to being friends again.

I guess now that I have all the secondary jobs available I should go over my party setup, so here goes:

H'aanit has the Warrior secondary and is using Heighten Senses, Inspiration, Second Serving, and Patience.  Ophilia has the Apothecary secondary and is using SP Saver, Inner Strength, Inspiration, and Saving Grace.  Primrose has the Hunter secondary and is using Inspiration, Eye for an Eye, Second Wind, and Second Serving.  Finally, Tressa has the Thief secondary and is using Inspiration, Grows on Trees, Snatch, and SP Saver.

An interesting thing I've noticed is that the weapon you have selected next to the Attack option matters for the Eye for an Eye support ability.  When I noticed this, I had the bow selected when Primrose got hit, and she countered with the bow, which happened to weaken the attacking enemy's guard.  Also, attempting to target a job skill that uses a weapon will select that weapon.  For instance, with H'aanit with a Warrior secondary, having anything other than the sword selected and then targeting enemies with Level Slash will switch her selected weapon to the sword.

I guess one thing that remains for me to figure out: Does having a secondary job give you access to a weapon that the character already had access to from their primary job shaft you out of a weapon slot, or do you get some sort of attack boost for that weapon since both jobs impart knowledge of how to use the weapon?  If I had to guess, I'd say the former.

Anyway, I'm liking this whole "progressing through the game" thing, so up next will be Primrose's Chapter 2.  I think it's going to be "all story, all the time" until recommended levels for things catch up to where my characters are.

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 8

I kinda live-tweeted the first portion of this session, so the first portion of this post will be a summary of that, with a few bits interjected because I didn't tweet everything.

I decided to make for Saintsbridge under cover of night to do Ophilia's Chapter 2, but on the way there I remembered that NPCs and side quests exist.  I found the artist whose last painting is necessary for a side quest elsewhere, and I found a shrine, which was actually the second one I found, but the first one I actually bothered to venture any farther into than the bare minimum to get its icon on the world map.  Turns out the shrines are how you unlock secondary jobs, and I should've continued into the first one I found, on the way to Stonegard.  Anyway, I now have Apothecary available as a secondary job.  H'aanit, Ophilia, and Tressa had a ton of JP sitting around from when I was being an idiot grinding JP for people one at a time, so they immediately learned all of the Apothecary skills.  Primrose was the one I was swapping out for that, so she learned everything but the Divine skill.  Satisfied with having done that, I left Ophilia as an Apothecary secondary (each job can only be set as one character's secondary job).  My thoughts immediately turned to "hey, I should go back to that other shrine...", but continued with "...after I get to Saintsbridge.".

After setting Ophilia's secondary job to Apothecary, she gained the ability to use axes in combat.  I didn't actually have a spare axe to give her, but as it turns out, the game has you covered if that's the case.  The character gains a "Makeshift Axe" weapon that doesn't have any stat boosts, but at the very least enables you to use the weapon in combat until you get to a town and buy something better.  Nice touch, that.  Apothecary as a secondary also doesn't grant access to the Concoct menu, sadly, because that's one of Alfyn's unique abilities.  Still, it allows a character to heal a single target and remove status effects, which mesh quite well with Ophilia being a healer.

Once in Saintsbridge, New Town Syndrome™ took over and I had to swap in Alfyn and Therion so I could run around and speak to, Inquire about, and Steal from every NPC possible.  Inquiring about some NPCs in Saintsbridge needs Alfyn to be level 35, and he was level 32 so I decided to visit the nearby area of Farshore to do some grinding, for both EXP and JP.  I haven't really been paying attention to where the best EXP gains are, but Carrion Caves JP gains are still best JP gains.  Got Therion the first five Apothecary skills before setting out.  Finished up a couple of the easier side quests and decided to go pick up more secondary jobs.

I now have access to Apothecary, Warrior, Merchant, and Dancer as secondary jobs.  I gave H'aanit the Warrior secondary, it just made sense.  She's a hunter, it's only natural that she might want to learn to wield different types of weapons to better help her while hunting.  I gave Ophilia the Apothecary secondary, as its single-target revive and status effect removal mesh well, and she seems to be taking a liking to swinging a giant axe around.  My party as I've been running around doing this has had Alfyn and Therion in place of Primrose and Tressa, Alfyn doesn't have a secondary yet (Dancer doesn't really make sense for his character), and I gave Therion the Merchant secondary.  This way, it's like he's peddling off his ill-gotten goods, which I kinda do anyway since I steal everything that isn't nailed down.

I realized that it makes total sense which secondary jobs are obtained where: it's the same as the starting region for the character with that job as primary.  Also, I finally got around to doing the most basic of math and figured out that it takes 9630 JP to completely learn a job.  I doubt I'll cut it that close, but it's nice to know if I'm going to have to be choosy or if I can just go down the list learning all the skills one by one.

Getting secondary job skills, levelling up Alfyn as a byproduct, and doing Ophilia's Chapter 2... next session?

Octopath Traveler: Session 7

I began this session realizing that I had a silly gap of 126 JP between Olberic and Therion, that I could easily close by having Olberic use Challenge on a few people.  I ended up with them perfectly synchronized, and a good bit of grinding later, they got their Divine skills.

After that, I ran around having Therion steal everything that wasn't nailed down.  Levelling up improves his chances of stealing by a lot, so a good many things that had lower chances now had 100% chances.  I've got quest items for side quests that I don't even have yet.  Anyway, my filching quest took me to Stonegard, where I could also have Alfyn finally use Inquire on the townspeople now that he's levelled up.  Satisfied with having exhausted path actions, I went to the tavern to continue H'aanit's story.

By the way, I love this game's use of taverns for stuff like this.  You can only swap party members around at a tavern, and if you choose not to continue a story when you enter the town it's taking you to, you can go to the tavern to continue it.  It's totally like the other four travellers are hanging out in the tavern, and then you visit it to exchange stories and put together a group to head out and get stuff done.

H'aanit's search for her master, Z'aanta, leads her to a townsperson in Stonegard by the name of Natalia.  Before continuing on his hunt, Z'aanta stayed at her place.  After a quick talk, H'aanit learns that he was headed into The Spectrewood, and sets off on his trail.  Dealing with a rock slide and a weird tree enemy that was blocking the path, she eventually encounters a clearing where there was clearly a battle.  Shortly thereafter, she's beset upon by the Lord of the Forest.

Breaking that narrative style for a moment, this was an interesting boss fight.  It kept summoning additional plants, and part of its attack pattern involved nomming someone down to 1 HP, gaining two extra hits on its guard, and changing its weaknesses around.  It was a difficult fight for me to get into a rhythm, though I did end up with a reliable setup to avoid its powerful lightning attack that hits the entire party: simply weaken its guard to the point where it has one hit left, concentrate on the summoned plants for a bit until it starts charging for the attack, then deal the last hit to break its defense and make it lose the turn on which it would otherwise unleash the attack.  It has a ton of HP, it took a few hits of Draefendi's Rage to the face, and they were hitting for over 6000.  It was also quite annoying with the status effects, so the battle was a careful balance of figuring out which status effects to let run their course and which ones needed to be removed straight away, followed by weakening its guard, figuring out weaknesses, and also remembering to heal people occasionally.

Anyway, the beast Z'aanta was after, Redeye, apparently has the ability to petrify things, and it's done so to Z'aanta.  Fortunately it wasn't the quick form of petrification seen in some works of fiction, but rather the slow version that gave him enough time to write a note asking whoever finds it to consult a specific seer in the town of Stillsnow.

Stillsnow so happens to be where Primrose's Chapter 2 takes place.  I won't be seeing it for a bit, as I currently intend to do everyone's Chapter 2 before partaking anybody's Chapter 3, and I also intend to do the chapters in the order I recruited the characters, for no real reason other than "because I can".  Anyway, next session will at the very least be Ophilia's Chapter 2.  So far, the chapters seem to be designed to be reasonably digestible lengths, so given my play style that mostly involves dicking around and exploring everywhere except where the game is telling me to go, I can probably crank out a chapter in a couple of hours.  We'll see how well this works as I get further into the game.

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 6

I left off last session in the middle of getting Alfyn his last few skills, so I picked right back up where I left off.  I'd been idly wondering if I could properly handle Hoarfrost Grotto now that I've levelled up a bit, and I was curious if its JP rewards would be higher, so after getting his seventh skill, I paid it a visit.  The answers to those questions are yes and no, respectively.  I was rather surprised to see that Carrion Caves has better JP rewards despite its lower recommended level.

At any rate, the boss of Hoarfrost Grotto is none other than the Jötunn that I needed to find for a side quest, so I fought it.  Without Cyrus around to identify weaknesses and provide lots of elemental damage, the beginning of the fight was a bit rocky.  The first thing it does is summon two Snow Elementals, so I had to experiment the old-fashioned way to find all the weaknesses, and then keep my party alive while taking them out.  The tricky bit about Jötunn itself is that every time you break it, the number of hits needed to break it again goes up by two, at least until it gets up to 8.  It didn't go up after that for me.  Alfyn surprisingly doesn't have the ability to boost item usage or his concoctions, so while I was able to use a fire damage concoction to knock two hits off Jötunn's defense every time he had a turn, it deals crap for damage.  Ended up shifting strategy to having Tressa donate all her BP to either H'aanit or Ophilia, so H'aanit could use her Divine skill, Draefendi's Rage, more often; and so that Ophilia could pop off large heals as necessary.  Once the Snow Elementals went down, the fight went a lot more smoothly.  Jötunn ended up taking three hits of Draefendi's Rage to the face before dying.

If you couldn't tell, it's open game on using Fast Travel to move around the "donut" quickly.  Fights between areas have gotten to be more of a chore than anything else, and all the delicious, juicy JP is in higher-level areas anyway.

After beating Jötunn, I decided to remind myself of what the JP rewards were like in The Whistlewood, and perhaps bag myself another Flatlands Froggen VI while I was there.  The JP rewards are decent, but less consistent than Carrion Caves.  Being a rare spawn, Flatlands Froggen VI decided to be a butt and not spawn, but at least I killed a Cait or two.  The sword-wielding mercenaries that Tressa can hire via Hired Help can apparently miss, which they did once, but fortunately I'd surprised the enemies on that fight, so Tressa actually got to go twice before the Cait had a chance to flee, and I got it on her second turn.

Later I did end up getting a Flatlands Froggen VI to spawn, and captured it much more easily this time.  Walked around the world map a bit poking my head into various sub-areas just to get their symbols on the map so I could remember where they were for later, then returned to Carrion Caves to finish getting Alfyn his Divine skill.  Once that was done, I decided to put both Olberic and Therion in the party at the same time to speed up the remaining grinding.  I honestly don't know why I didn't combine Cyrus and Alfyn's grinding in the same manner, it would've sped things up considerably.

This session ended with the combination of my "go to sleep" reminder phone alarm deciding it didn't really feel like going off, and me getting Olberic and Therion their 7th skills each.  Definitely getting their Divine skills next session, and then hopefully I won't have to grind again for a while and can actually focus on the story, where I'm still between Chapter 1 and 2.

By the way, I'm still looking forward to getting the ability to set secondary jobs.  Dunno when that's going to be unlocked.  Also, it feels incredibly weird that I appear to be done with JP after having completed Chapter 1, especially given that my characters are still accumulating JP.  In before everyone has to learn every job skill individually and my grinding is just getting started instead of being almost done.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 5

This session was kind of short, so I combined it with the next day's session.

I ran around doing a lot of side quests now that I've figured out that the Steal/Purchase path actions need to be used for a fair number of them.  I know they've designed it so that some side quests have multiple valid ways to finish them, but I have only knowingly encountered anything like that once or twice.  One was a side quest I didn't even know existed until I inspected a building in Flamesgrace that I had apparently missed and also apparently already had the key items for both of its options, so I didn't really get to properly begin it, but whatever.

After that I ran around a bit getting JP and visiting the "donut" towns to make sure I'd exhausted my possibilities with Alfyn's path action.  In the process, I explored another one of those side areas, the Whistling Cavern in the Sunlands.  Curiously, just like with The Whistlewood, this area had no boss at the end.  These areas give really good JP, so I might have to use them to finish off the whole process of getting everyone's skills.  At any rate, it's more predictable than hoping for the random chance of a Cait joining a battle, and then being fast enough to kill it before it runs.

I then decided to head out from the "donut", to Stonegard, where H'aanit's Chapter 2 takes place.  Interestingly, upon entering the town, I got the option to start that bit of story immediately, or to just enter the town normally.  Being that all I wanted to do was explore and talk to NPCs and stuff, I chose not to continue the story.  It was here that I noticed that some NPCs have level requirements for Alfyn's path action, so my next course of action became levelling people up a bit.  I needed to get skills for people anyway, so it made sense.

My focus shifting to JP grinding, I chose the Untouched Sanctum as my spot and got Primrose and Tressa their Divine skills.  Then on a whim I went back to Carrion Caves to kill the boss, and noticed that the typical JP reward there is about double that of Untouched Sanctum.  I had Cyrus in the party for the Carrion Caves boss anyway, so I got him his Divine skill there.  Up next: The project that is Alfyn.  In addition to getting his skills, I wanted to fill out as much of his Concoct menu as possible so I know the effects of his concoctions for future use.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet found good sources of all of the materials, and filling in the ones that revive party members will require me to let someone die first, but I filled in what I could while running around fighting things.

Also, after I beat the boss of Carrion Caves, it apparently became a rare spawn, and I got to fight it again.  H'aanit can actually capture it, and it's a ten-star monster with a fire attack that hits everything.  I successfully Mercy Strike'd it down to 1 HP with its defense broken, but a max boost Capture only had an 8% chance.  Tried it once, failed, and decided against banging my head repeatedly against the 8% chance.  I would've had to Mercy Strike it ten more times just to try again, on every attempt.  Not saying I won't go back and try that later, but right now I just want to get JP for people.  Also, Tressa was able to use Collect to get over 11,000 money from it.

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 4

I began this session by recruiting Therion.  He's a fairly standard thief with a fairly standard story, except he gets sorta blackmailed into a quest to reclaim expensive stuff for a family of rich fucks in a town that has serious class problems.  His path action is Steal, which works like Tressa's Purchase except that instead of there being a price it's just a percent chance of success (and no money trades hands for obvious reasons).  Certain NPCs have items that say "Not for sale" in Tressa's Purchase menu, I imagine that Therion could simply steal them.

With all eight characters recruited, and Chapter 1 thoroughly complete, I spent some more time in the "donut" doing side quests and running around using path actions on NPCs.  H'aanit and Ophilia now have all their skills; Primrose, Tressa, and Cyrus are missing their eighth skill; and I still have a fair amount of work to go for Olberic, Alfyn, and Therion.  By the way, each character's eighth skill is called a "Divine" skill.  Not only do you have to learn their other seven skills before you can learn it, but using it requires a full BP meter in battle.

Something that's kind of curious is that almost every explorable area has a small side area contained within it.  I already kind of encountered this with The Whistlewood back in session 2, but I've been trying them ever since.  I completed up until the boss in the Cliftlands area, Carrion Caves, and probably could have beaten the boss, but it prompts you to make sure you're ready and I didn't think I was lol.  In my first ever usage of fast travel, I NOPE'd out of the Frostlands area, Hoarfrost Grotto, because I was in too deep and having to revive people way too often (Ophilia's Reflective Veil came in super handy, and for what it's worth I still haven't party wiped).  I actually fully completed the Riverlands area, Twin Falls.  The Flatlands Froggen VI that I caught in The Whistlewood helped on the boss tremendously since the boss was weak to spears and its attack is actually three attacks with a spear.  These areas' entrances are sometimes hidden or off the beaten path, so I really should duck in and back out of each one as I find it so it'll get labelled on the world map, but I haven't been doing that for whatever reason.

Cyrus is working overtime identifying enemy weaknesses for me.  Hopefully I'll finish the "donut" areas next session.  I think I have a few of the rarer enemies around Sunshade and Cobbleston left to get fully identified.

Speaking of rare enemies, I've finally beaten more than one Cait, and not as a fluke anymore.  Between levelling up and getting better equipment, I think my characters' respective Accuracy stats have improved by just enough for it to matter.

When you unlock a character's 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th skill, you get support abilities, and at this point I have a fair number of them.  Primrose has a nice one that restores some SP every turn.  I'm not quite sure how it calculates how much to restore, but it keeps going up as I level up.  It's restoring 7 SP right now, and it'll be interesting to see just how much it will restore when it hits the inevitable cap.  Ophilia has a support ability that allows her to be healed above her maximum HP (there seems to be a cap, which can be calculated by the simple formula cap = MaxHP * 1.11 and rounding to the nearest integer), which comes in handy in basically every boss battle ever.  Tressa has one that halves all of her SP costs.  Whenever I get the ability to set secondary jobs, which I know is a thing because of promo material showing the costume changes based on job combination, it's going to be interesting to play around with support ability combinations.

Session 5 will probably be a lot of me running around finishing up Chapter 1 side quests and swapping party members around to get all the skills and support abilities (and grinding out Alfyn's concoction list so I don't have to guess results based on vague item descriptions).  I might be ready for Chapter 2 main quest stuff in Session 6, who knows.

Saturday, September 1, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Session 3

Recruited Olberic straight away, he's probably the least interesting character to me.  Typical story of war and betrayal, seeking revenge.  His path action is Challenge, which is basically the same as H'aanit's Provoke.

Immediately left to continue around the "donut" to Sunshade, where I questioned the locals with Cyrus and did some side quests.  Slowly beginning to figure those out.  Hopefully before too long I'll have the vast majority of the "donut" towns' side quests done.

Pressed on from Sunshade to Clearbrook and recruited Alfyn.  Being an apothecary, his story involves a life of mixing medicinal remedies for people.  His reason for wanting to travel the world is similar to Tressa's in that it's more out of curiosity than anything else.  In battle, he can mix ingredients together to make various concoctions.  If you remember the Salve-Maker from Bravely Default or the Patissier from Bravely Second, it's basically the same deal.  His path action is Inquire, which works like Cyrus' Scrutinize, but without the failure chance.  As much as the reputation thing seems interesting and all, I think I'll stick with the thing that lets me avoid it entirely.

Ventured from there up to Bolderfall where Therion the thief awaits, but that'll be in session 4.  Yeah, this session was a bit shorter than the previous two.  I spent most of it playing Chapter 1 for Olberic and Alfyn after having recruited them, and given that I'm not delving too far into the stories (play the game yourself!), there isn't really much to talk about.  I'm thinking I may have more to talk about for a given session once I have all the characters and just have to explore and do side quests before taking on main quests.

Friday, August 31, 2018

Octopath Traveler: Initial Thoughts

Let's get down to business, shall we?  I'll get one thing out of the way right now: I'm playing on version 1.0.2, which is the latest update as of this writing (I just checked to make sure).

Things I like

All the big things that might make or break the experience are fine.  The graphics are amazing, the music fits quite well and adds a lot of atmosphere, exploring the world and getting into fights is fun, the controls work, and there aren't any gameplay mechanics I've encountered yet that don't function as they should.

When you hold B to run in an explorable area, the radar turns red and your encounter rate goes up.  It's kind of a gamble, but also useful.  When you're right next to town and out of Healing Grapes or something, you may just want to hold B and hope you don't get an encounter to get into town faster.  At the same time, if you want to level up a bit, holding B and running around makes that go faster.  It works well, and the running encounter rate isn't oppressively high.

Mashing B while moving causes your characters to look like they're hovering.  In addition, the top half of their sprites fidget a bit, and you constantly hear the footstep noise.  I have no clue why this amuses me so much.

Things I think could be improved

Note: These are all "quality of life" improvements, or basically things that could easily be changed in that don't affect any kind of game balance, but simply make the player's life easier.  Some are gameplay mechanic-related, though, and I may find them solved by something later on in the game that I don't yet know exists, so keep that in mind.

In battle, your party's HP/SP/BP meters are on the right side of the screen.  This is fine, but as a player of a lot of other JRPGs, I'm so used to having that info along the bottom of the screen that it's taking me a bit to adjust.  It could do with some better contrast as well, as in some battles the gauges and text are hard to see.  This is less of an issue when the Switch is in portable mode and I have it right in front of my face, but when I have it docked and it's on the TV a much farther distance away, it gets a bit difficult.  This could be solved with a slightly transparent black background behind all characters' information, and applying a white border to the HP/SP bars so they stand out a bit more.

When you're using an ability that targets a party member, the game could highlight that member's stats on the right side of the screen to make it easier to see who's being targeted.  It already does this with their picture in the turn order, and it puts a selection cursor next to the targeted character(s); but I still find myself confused as to who's being targeted from time to time and this is a relatively minor change that would help tremendously.

Similarly, targeting enemies doesn't quite work the way I would like it to.  Pressing left and right works beautifully and exposes what's going on: it's using the turn order to decide which enemy to target next.  Using left and right in combination with up and down to try to move the cursor around the enemies, however, gets confusing quickly since the cursor doesn't move where you would expect it to go.  As a player who looks at the enemies on the left side of the screen to see where the selection cursor is, I would like the option to make directional inputs move the cursor relative to that, as opposed to sequentially through the turn order.

I know they increased the text size based on feedback from the original demo, but some text is still way too small.  HP/SP values and enemy names in battle are the prime offenders.  It's difficult to read the menu items from across a room with the system docked, they could either be made bigger, or simply apply boldface.  The vulnerability icons could also do with being a bit bigger.  This is not an issue in portable mode, just when the system is docked.

Navigating the UI is a little awkward for me.  I'm so used to Bravely Second letting me use directional inputs for entering and exiting menus in addition to scrolling through them that I keep trying it here and it just doesn't work.  I would love to have the option to make right be "Confirm" and left be "Cancel", just like in Bravely Second.  Also, a quick button for accessing the world map would be nice.

When using Tressa's Purchase ability, sometimes you can buy equipment from people.  It would be incredibly useful if the game popped up your party on the right side of the screen, similar to when you're shopping at the armorer, so you can see how an item you're looking at would affect your characters' stats.  Currently the only way to do this is to remember (or jot down) the stat boosts, then exit the Purchase menu, go into your Equipment, and compare manually.

In that regard, there are a lot of towns with a lot of armorers that have different inventories, and finding the best equipment I can afford at any given time gets confusing quickly.  I know it's an open world game and having a lot of equipment options that are spread out across that world is to be expected, but there's an in-universe way to solve it.  Your characters could keep a mental note of what they've seen and offer up bits of feedback like "I think I've seen a better one elsewhere..." or "this is the best I've seen yet!".  This leaves room for gameplay mechanics to improve that feedback.  Information or trade-savvy characters like Tressa or Cyrus being in the party could improve this feedback further, to include the name of the city, or even the specific NPC if it's an item that Tressa would have to use Purchase to buy.

Through my extensive use of Cyrus' Scrutinize path action, I've found out various bits of information that aren't hidden items, inn discounts, etc.; but have interesting names assigned to them, and I don't see where I can go in the menu to review what I've discovered.

Things I don't like

I keep seeing the recommended level for areas of the game going up as I level up.  RPGs that scale enemy level according to player level give off significantly less sense of accomplishment to the player.  There's no reason to do it, either.  The player absolutely should be able to level up and then go back to an early area and one-shot everything.  It provides useful feedback to the player, that maybe they should be fighting things elsewhere, and in doing so, progress to other parts of the game.  When you always feel the intended level of challenge regardless of your level, it destroys any sense of accomplishment granted by levelling up, gaining new abilities, and buying new equipment.  Guild Wars 2 did this same thing, and it's one of the reasons I don't play that game anymore.

The saving grace to the above situation is that currently it isn't scaling up very much.  Still, it would be better if it didn't do it at all.

Overall

The game is incredibly worth the price of admission to me.