Boss isn't at the end. Go north when you first walk into the forest

Well, technically her puppies did. That combination of only weapon weaknesses with no multi-hit skill, high HP and high atk is just lethal. Once she gave birth to two at once I was fucked. Didn't even get her down to yellow.

Exactly how my first encounter went.

Scholar is a waste most turns but you still need it for when breaks are available, but you need a Scholar who can use weapons. Thief Cyrus or more likely Scholar Therion (so I can run Thief Ophilia too for debuffs) seems like the best option for multi-hit daggers on the pups, but they are my worst party members by far atm. Hunter of some kind seems like a requirement for leghold trap, maybe Olberic. Alfyn there for breaks / damage. Gotta get Therion up to speed before I can test this.

Make absolutely sure you go into the battle with saving grace on everyone. This is key. Also make sure to use your boost to break this bastard before his first turn or else he will put a lock on your ability to buff yourself for 5 turns. This should be easy enough by using a single boost physical from one person and a double cast spell from Alfyn as his initial breakpoint is only 4.

You want to use Haanit to keep leghold trap applied. That's her purpose entirely. If you apply it with boost you'll get a bunch of turns on the sorcerer with it, which frees you to stockpile boost and possible get off the warrior divine a time or 2 before needing to reapply leghold. Feel free to also use her to occasionally pop an item if you need to.

Therion is there to assist with breaking via boost and to use SP/BP items on the others as needed. You can also use hired help if you have the spare money and want to.

Alfyn is going to be used for 2 purposes. His first is the most important. You want to get his BP up as soon as possible and use the Apothecary divine on him, then the next turn use concoct to mix a purifying seed and essence of grape. This is going to give everyone 9,999 health and buy you the time you need to set up the rest of the strategy since this guy will get 2 triple cast spells in per turn. After you do this, alfyn is there to break the sorcerer and cast max boost double spells when he is broken. Obviously you can reapply the health buff with him if you get back below max health, but if you play this right, you'll never need to.

Primrose is the most important person here with the dancer/cleric set up. If you get the sorcerer broken before his first turn, you're golden. Otherwise you will have to use her to heal and stall until his buff lock on your characters wears out. What you want to do is feed her a big pomegranate and use the dancer divine on her. Then the next turn you want to boost reflective veil. This is going to give everyone reflect. Keep stacking this up to higher counts (9 is the max). Keep casting it while you rebuild bp for the dancer divine again. When it is down to 2-3 stacks and you have the required bp, recast dancer divine and start restacking veil. As long as you keep doing this cycle you will never get hit by the sorcerer. Each spell it casts on you will reflect onto it 12 times, so when it uses a spell it's weak to at the time, it will also be breaking itself. After a few minutes, the sorcerer will commit glorious suicide.

In the first area of Grandport there is a guy guarding a house. Challenge/Provoke him and get his ass out of the way, then go inside to find another NPC. Have Alfyn or Cyrus scrutinize the person, though they need to be level 50 or higher. The NPC will give you thieving tips and tricks and make your loot run MUCH easier. There are soooo many NPCs with soooo many good items to be had there.

Aflyn's Ch4 is the most low stakes so far, his 2 and 3 were amazing but he never really had a strong arc and it shows here. I did laugh at the absolute convenience of being in the exact town he needed to be in to get the incredibly rare ingredient. The big reveal at the end saved it from being an absolute mess, though if I hadn't played Tressa first the reveal would have meant absolutely nothing. Pretty cool way to tie him in and Alfyn is perhaps my favourite character, shame he has such a weak finale.

Therese
Revello
Ali
Vanessa
Eliza
Lianna
Erhardt
Ravus


Ravus is a bit of a stretch but technically Lady Ravus is important, even though she goes by Cordelia. The main debunker here though is Vanessa, who is of absolutely no importance whatsoever and would actually be Ogen. Octopath Traoeler?

Olberic
Ophilia
H'aanit
Cyrus
Primrose
Tressa
Therion
Alfyn

Thief Ophilia Lv 71
Warrior Alfyn Lv 67
Merchant H'aanit Lv 64
Scholar Therion Lv 55

Was a REALLY long fight but there was only really one spot near the end where I was in any danger, kept him / her debuffed with Leghold Trap, Shackle Foe and less importantly Armour Corrosive and most of my damage came from Brand's Thunder. Everyone had Saving Grace, Therion and H'annit had Patience equipped which was a real clutch ability. Using the Hired Help mercenary for a defence buff either mitigates damage or wasted one of it's turns because it will do an AOE low damage dispel instead of the high damage attack debuff. The only real danger comes from the little wolves, Theif needs to break them ASAP, staggered ideally so you only have to deal with one per turn and then when you have the boost Brand's Thunder the fuckers. When three came up I debuffed two and just threw everything I had at one of them to get it out of there before they could pile on me. Really tough fight, not much room for any mistakes. Pretty cool. Had more trouble with Devourer though I think.

So I guess it's that and then time to enter the Gate