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.