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.