Octopath Traveler - Olberic FAQ

	Octopath Traveler Olberic FAQ

Q: So what is the route for this run?
A: As you might be able to guess from the splits; Get, Tressa, Therion, Alfyn, and then beat up Olberic's story.

Q: Why those characters in particular?
A: There's basically 3 things you need to get a story done in quick time.
1) Evasive Maneuvers - A Support skill for scholar that reduces encounters
2) Merchant(s) - The Hired Help skill is just insanely good for blasting through at low levels, does far more damage than anything else
3) Money - To actually use Hired Help
In the case of this run, Cyrus is skipped in favour of picking up the Scholar shrine for that skill. Tressa obv gets the second. Therion is there also because Armour Corrosive to reduce defense helps a bunch too, and picking up purple chests for extra cash also helps a lot. Alfyn rounds out the party, his use of concoctions helps on a few fights, most especially on Werner.

Q: Could you not use less than 4 characters?
A: Yeah, you could. But it'd be slower. The fights would be so much longer and slower, that it wouldn't save time.

Q: Do you get any jobs for the characters?
A: Scholar, Merchant, and Hunter. Scholar goes to Olberic for most of the run. Merchant goes to Alfyn (though spends a small amount of time on Olberic), and Hunter is given to Therion.

Q: Why are you resetting the game/going in and out of an encounter
A: This resets the encounter count. Basically the way encounters work (this may not be true at all, but it's how I understand it) is that there's a counter that starts at some given number (say 80 or something) and every step you take, counts down, and if it hits zero you'd get an encounter. But exiting a map, whether it be by entering a new area or resetting, or stupidly by triggering an optional boss but not starting the fight, resets the count, so another encounter won't show up for a long while.

Q: So encounters can be completely controlled?
A: Nah, the number chosen is still random, so it might be 60, might be 80. Having evasive maneuvers reduces the amount you get drastically, but there are plenty of places in the run where sometimes you'll get an encounter, and sometimes you won't.

Q: What's WR?
A: https://www.speedrun.com/octopath | See: Splits.

Q: Why are you using English Voices?
A: Turns out English is actually faster for Olberic. His Japanese entry lines before a fight starts (especially before bosses), are really slow, but his English ones are faster. For some other characters JP is faster, but for Olby, Eng wins out.

Q: Planning on doing other categories?
A: This is the last solo character I'm going to do, which is my 4th one. Not interested in doing the other four. Maybe I'll route Galdera afterwards, but idk yet. Would not be tomorrow or anything even if I did, we'll see.

Q: Goal time? Sub 1 again?
A: Hell no! Olberic is by far the longest character, sub 1 just isn't on the table. My goal is just a nice clean deathless run, would be around the 1:10 mark.

Q: Why is Olberic so much longer?
A: Simply put, he has more fights. Much more than anyone else. His chapter 1 has 4 forced fights before the boss, his chapter 2 has forced challenges and then 4 bosses, his chapter 2 has 2 forced fights and 4 (!) bosses, and then his chapter 4 has a forced challenge before the boss as well.
So not only are you spending way more time in fights, you have to get more money and shit to actually be able to win the fights quickly. Riverford is also way outta the way. So yeah, far longer than anyone else.

Q: Hardest fight in this run?
A: With these strats, Archibold, the 3rd boss in chapter 2. He can just ruin everything, and he's also the only boss you *have* to get armour/nuts for, to make at least one, and ideally 2, people survive past turn 1.