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.