Welcome to the Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent beginners guide! In this tutorial, we will go into detail the 8 potential 5 star starter units you can roll for and decide who you want to start with in the gacha game. During the closed beta of the game, we were given those 8 choices to choose as the starter.
You can check out our wiki here for character details.
Although you don’t really need a specific unit to complete the game, it does help to pick a favourite one out of the 8 and roll with it. Here are the 8 units and brief summary of what they do.
Starter Overview (For Re-rolling Perhaps)
Viola (Thief)
- Strong debuffer with fire affinity
- Attack/magic down
- Defense/magic defense down
- Increase debuff duration
- Dagger skills that help with reducing shield points
Lynette (Dancer)
- Strong buffer with fire affinity
- Team attack/magic/speed up
- High buff up time
- Good shield breaker with multi hits
Millard (Cleric)
- Strong healer with light affinity
- Team defense/magic up
- Regen heal
- Light defense up
- SP restore
- Not a good shield breaker
Gilderoy (Merchant)
- Tank with lightning affinity
- AoE taunt with defense/magic defense up
- Counter physical attacks
- Self regen at low health
Theo (Apothecary)
- Good healer with lightning affinity
- Regen heal for the team with wind defense up
- Decent axe attacker
- Provide immunity against status effects
- Not a good shield breaker
Sophia (Scholar)
- Selfish but strong DPS attacker with ice affinity
- Strong shield breaker
- AoE attacker
- Inflicts ice and magic defense down
- Bonus ice damage
Fior (Warrior)
- Self sufficient selfish solo attacker with dark affinity
- Improved sword damage
- Self attack/defense buff
- Decent single target and AoE attacks
- Defense down debuff
Scarecrow (Bow Attacker)
- Selfish solo attacker with wind affinity
- Attack, Crit rate and Critical hit damage up
- Does more damage when enemy is in break mode
- Bleed debuff
- Wind AoE attacks
- Self healing
Since this game has no items, it is recommended to pick Milliard or Theo as the starter, but you can pick whoever you like.
Here is the document to the character list:
Now that you have a good idea who to start with, we can go over the basics of the game and important things you should know. The story revolves around 3 paths you can choose: Fame, Wealth and Glory. You can pick which one to go with and finish those after you are done with the one you picked.
There is no hurry to finish it or any type of FOMO effects you often see in other gacha games. The game’s gacha is pretty straightforward. The main story on average will take the casual player 30-50 hours of gameplay time, depending on how much grinding you do.
Keep in mind that JP version, the starter roll can be 4 or 5 star unit while the closed beta English version gave a guaranteed 5 star. Whether or not we will get the closed beta version is unknown.
Gacha System
So this is a gacha game, but it doesn’t have some of the key characteristics of the popular turn based ones like Epic 7, Arknights, where they limit your play time by gating stamina. You can literally play as long as you want. Also, it is not pay to win, since you can beat the game without ever having to pay.
However, the gacha units will definitely make your life easier. There are 3.5 rarities in the game.
- 3★(R)
- 4★(SR)
- 4.5★(A 5 star unit can come as a 4 star, but you will need holy marks to upgrade them to 5 star, hence 4.5)
- 5★ (SSR)
3 and 4 star units are also useful, so do not discount them just because of their rarity. The pull rates are as follows:
- 2% – 5★
- 2% – 4.5★
- 18% – 4★
- 40% – 3.5★
- 38% – 3★
- 200 guaranteed pity pull on the banner unit
Each 10 pulls will cost 300 rubies. Sometimes, there will be step-up banners that can give discounts (as low as 150 rubies each) that guarantee a 5★ after X amount of steps are completed. That is usually 5 steps, for a total of 1200 rubies.
These step up banners did not appear until a few months after the JP launch, so I would assume that it will be the same for global. So it would be wise to save up rubies until then.
Resources for F2P Players
Here is a quick rundown on how many rubies you can get as F2P.
- 600 rubies from dailies and weeklies
- First time clear rewards
- Achievements
- Random freebies
If you don’t pull for 1 year straight, you can amass about 20,000 rubies, which is about 3.3 pity pulls. So at the very least, you can definitely pity at least three 5★ gacha units of your choice. Not too shabby.
Gameplay and Mechanics
The cool thing is you can recruit many 5 star units from the original Octopath Travelers. This includes Ophilia, Eliza and Cyrus. In the JP version, you can acquire all 8 playable original units. They are non limited.
Their skills/kits are all based on their classes from the original Octopath as well with some slight tweaks to fit the battle system in the game.
Battle System
There will be 2 new weapon types in the game and they are tomes and fan. Each character will have a specific weapon type they use and one magic element. The following classes will have these weapons:
- Warrior – Swords
- Merchant – Spears
- Thief – Daggers
- Apothecary – Axes
- Hunter – Bows
- Cleric – Staves
- Scholar – Tomes
- Dancer – Fans
Each class also have notable characteristics that comes with it. For example:
- Thieves have a special ability call shield cracking, which allows them to lower enemy shield points even if they are not the weak to their attack type
- Merchants are usually tanky, have debuffs that direct attacks to them such as taunt. They also have high health and low speed.
All units will have different kits unlike the original Octopath. This makes it more fun as you get to form new teams and utilize different skill and abilities to beat your enemies.
Since you can form up to 8 party members. 4 in the front and 4 in the back.
- Front row units can perform actions
- Back row are usually safe unless they are debuffed
- Back row units also heal a % of their Hp/Sp every turn
- Units can swap between front and back between each other
In terms of strategy, swapping rows will be required to make sure your units don’t run out of Hp or Sp. In an 8 man party, you will gain twice as much Bp every turn, allowing you boost more actions. Multi hit skills is also a thing here, which also makes enemies have way higher shield points.
The break damage mechanics is also different. In this game, you will need to hit the enemy with their weakness in order to do bonus damage while their shield is down.
As for weapons, they are easy to understand just by looking at the attack stats. Weapon types also have different stat distributions. For defensive gear, there are 3 types. One for physical defense, one for magical defense and the other one is hybrid.
Since there are no in battle items, healing becomes very important. This makes healers and regen units a great starter pick, such as Millard (Cleric) and Theo (Apothecary). Regen is especially good, since they can keep your team healthy at all times. Healers that can cast regen can take turns after casting it, allowing them to buff allies, attack or use other skills. It is very efficient.
Any unit that dies in battle will be out of the fight until it ends. This also means revive units are also at a premium. However, if you play your cards right, your units should be able to survive tough encounters.
The Super Bosses
This is the arena champions, where you can fight the toughest enemies and they will join you as the free 5★ units as mentioned earlier. They are also very good once they join you, so do not worry and think that you will be getting sloppy units just because they are free.
One of the characters is Tikiland, who is a sword user but uses wind magic as a foe or as an ally. Also, the event is not time limited, so you can take your time to figure out a strategy to beat them.
References
Here are some videos that go into detail of the game. Please do check them out and subscribe to their channels for more Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent content.
New Player Guide
Hope this helps and enjoy the game!
