I took a break for a couple of weeks after wrapping up the Chapter 2 stories with H'aanit, as this period coincided with the busy conclusion of Civ4 AI Survivor Season Eight. Once that was finished, I was content to pick this solo venture back up again as Octopath Traveler tends to be a relaxing way to unwind. H'aanit had been a very strong character thus far and cleared the various Chapter 2 stories without experiencing any serious difficulties. The plan was to knock out the next series of optional dungeons and side quests in the second ring of towns before undertaking the Chapter 3 stories themselves. I started by sending H'aanit on the dangerous sprint out to the town of Grandport:
This is one of the most remote locations in the whole game, a massive town with more NPCs than anywhere else tucked into the easternmost portion of the map. It's a long walk to reach Grandport from Goldshore and the player will inevitably have to face a series of powerful monster encounters along the way. This was made even worse for H'aanit thanks to having that stupid Forbidden Bow which doubled the random encounter rate, and I knew that there was no chance for H'aanit to reach this destination by running away from the enemies and hoping to get lucky. No, she would have to defeat her opponents along the way and fortunately she had the tools to do exactly that, largely by leaning heavily on Draefendi's Rage to slice through the monsters that kept popping up. Most dangerous was the battle against two Kingfisher birds who could each hit for as much as 1500 damage with their Meteor Strike ability. Thankfully H'aanit had enough evasion to dodge a good portion of their attacks and their weakness to bows meant that a single Draefendi would defeat them both. The other enemies weren't quite as bad and H'aanit was able to fight her way through about ten encounters in a row before reaching the gates of the town safely.
Since these were very strong foes, I was interested in seeing whether H'aanit could Capture some of them for her own use later. It turned out that the odds to succeed on the monster captures were lower than I had been expecting - like, a lot lower. This Reaper Crab had a 9 star rating and even when knocked into the red on health, the odds for a successful capture were still sitting at a mere 1%. I had earlier theorized that H'aanit's Capture mechanic might use the same formula as Therion's Steal chances, however clearly that was not the case as H'aanit's chances to collect the 7, 8, and 9 star enemies were downright dismal. Eventually I used Mercy Strike to knock this giant enemy crab down to 1 HP remaining, at which point the odds rose up to a whopping 5%, and then spent about a dozen rounds trying to use Capture until it finally worked. Investing boot points did raise the odds, but not by a lot, taking 5% up to 10% at max boost. This was enough of a pain in the butt that I tried not to spend too much time doing monster captures with H'aanit, only picking up specific targets that she needed for upcoming bosses.
Anyway, H'aanit did make it to Grandpoint on the first try without suffering even a single game over situation. The seaside town was full of its usual treasure trove of equipment upgrades and side quests to fulfill, including about half a dozen of the stat-boosting nuts available for Purchase. The most important new item for H'aanit was the Ethereal Dancer Garb, which had slighly lower physical and elemental defense than the Dragon's Vest that she had been wearing for some time but added another 166 points of evasion. H'aanit natural ability to dodge meant that she was more suited to stacking evasion as opposed to tanking everything with heavy physical defense like Olberic would do. I also picked up the Protective Necklace accessory with +80 physical/elemental defense and purchased but did not equip the Forbidden Shield, which had huge defensive bonuses along with a penalty of -171 evasion. That would be useful against some upcoming spellcasting opponents (since elemental damage can't be dodged in Octopath Traveler) while being suboptimal for most situations.
I also took the time to Provoke battle every NPC in Grandport; yes, every single one of them. Most of these battles weren't strictly necessary aside from the one Provoke fight needed to complete the Le Mann side quest, and yet they were a lot of fun to do and did occasionally drop useful items. Two different NPCs in Grandport have a chance to drop a Refreshing Jam when defeated in a Challenge/Provoke battle and on this occasion both of them handed over that desired loot, yay! H'aanit also continued to pick up additional experience in this fashion as her level remained higher than a normal solo character of mine for this stage of the gameplay. It was downright hilarious to stroll through the Grandport marketplace as seen above with all of the various merchants laying around on the ground and the sole standing survivor screaming in terror.
After taking everything that she wanted from Grandport, H'aanit traveled next to the isolated frozen town of Northreach to do a similar shakedown of its inhabitants. The biggest prize here was an Empowering Necklace accessory which provided +1000 HP when equipped. Northreach also contained several additional Refreshing Jams and a couple of the Large stat-boosting nuts, which were enough to push H'aanit's health total close to 5000 HP when combined together with that new accessory. Notably I did not make the normal stopover in the Maw of the Ice Dragon optional dungeon along the way. Spellcasters want to head in there to find the Adamantine Hat which has a boost to elemental attack and the strongest elemental defense in the game. H'aanit placed little priority on these stats as she preferred having the Silent Bandana and its 111 points of evasion in almost any situation imaginable.
Speaking of dungeons, I took this opportunity to begin visiting the optional side areas in the second ring. For lack of any better alternative, I started in the Frostlands with the Tomb of the Imperator dungeon and then continued working clockwise around the rest of the second ring. The screenshot above was taken from one of the random encounters in there, against a series of Ice Lizardman opponents who were packing the dungeon's corridors. I want to note here that H'aanit's approach to combat was a bit different from the other solo characters I've played in Octopath Traveler. Between the Hunter abilities mostly being pretty weak and her passive abilities being so good, H'aanit spent most of her time using standard auto attacks in combat. In fact, H'aanit is by far the best character in the game when it comes to basic attacks due to that Second Service + Patience support skill combo. She also had an excellent base physical attack which allowed a single axe strike to hit for the pictured 1400 damage (against a monster with its shields broken but still very good damage nonetheless). Thus H'aanit did not rely on hitting with various abilities as nearly every other character had done, she just hacked away with axe and bow to take advantage of her bonus free auto attacks and occasional extra turn of combat. It was simple but highly effective.
About half of these side dungeons had bosses at the end while the others were simply empty. The Tomb of the Imperator had the Behemoth at its conclusion, an enemy who can hit very hard with its Extreme Charge ability and then likes to heal up any damage taken with its Hydration move. The Behemoth lacked a weakness to bows or axes which caused me to bring this Cliff Birdian from outside Quarrycrest who hit three times with a dagger. The Summoned Beast hit three shields per round and rapidly cut through the Behemoth's protections, then H'aanit attacked with Draefendi's Rage for 9999 damage and that was that for the miniboss. Longtime readers of these reports will know that the dagger damage type happens to be exceptionally useful against several of the Chapter 4 bosses so I intend to Capture several more of these bird things for later use. One other minor tidbit: it's actually possible to Capture the Behemoth as a 10 star monster (which grants a massive party-wide heal when used as a Summoned Beast) but the odds were so low that it wasn't worth making the attempt.
Several additional side dungeons followed as H'aanit worked her way around the world map. The Hollow Throne had some annoying elemental monsters that hit for heavy damage, with H'aanit again being unable to dodge their light and thunder blasts, which forced her to break out the occasional Draefendi to clear the board of enemies. The Throne Guardian at the end of the short dungeon was significantly easier, as it spent much of the battle using Overclock on itself or outright defending for the round. It took some time to chew through the big creature's 30,000 health (especially since it had no weakness to bows or axes) but there was little danger here. The Tomb of Kings in the Highlands didn't have a boss and happens to be an extremely easy dungeon to clear, then Farshore outside of Saintsbridge was only marginally tougher and lacked its own boss. The Derelict Mine did have a boss in the form of Manymaws but the big ugly creature was weak to axes and H'aanit landed a bunch of Second Serving attacks to chop through its shields. She knocked out the defenses, hit with Draefendi's Rage one time, and the boss went down immediately. Not much to write home about.
I could have stopped there but decided that I'd test out H'aanit against two of the more difficult side quests that were still available. The first of these was the Shadow Over the Sands side story which leads to the optional boss fight against the Giant Python in Quicksand Cave. This whole minidungeon is teeming with snakes and even the random encounters were on the tough side for H'aanit, with her having to fall back on Draefendi to wipe out the enemies. The boss at the end consists of the Giant Python and its Snake Charmer companion; the gimmick is that the player wants to eliminate the snake first even though it's the harder of the pair because the serpent will go into a berserk rampage if the human drops first.
H'aanit's biggest advantage here was her elusiveness which allowed her to dodge a little more than half of the incoming attacks from the Giant Python. This allowed me to waste fewer rounds healing and spend more time hitting the snake with axe blows to cut through its shields, with the random Patience bonus turns only helping that much more. I found that H'aanit was able to stay safe while relying on Medium Healing Grapes for health restoration rather than having to chug through Refreshing Jams, what a relief. Offensively, the pattern was axe attacks to break shields followed by Draefendi's Rage for max damage once the shields were down. Unfortunately the fifth Draefendi actually killed the Snake Charmer while the Giant Python was still alive, which led to several dangerous turns of healing and one Refreshing Jam consumed before H'aanit could land two more Draefendis for the victory. She pulled it off successfully on the first attempt even if things did get a bit tricky at the end.
The prize for winning was the Transcendent Bow of Shadows, probably the item with the coolest name in Octopath Traveler. This item had slightly higher physical attack as compared with the Forbidden Bow, and most importantly, did not have that boosted random encounter rate - hooray! I was really getting tired of that mechanic by this point and I have to admit that I might not have fought the Giant Python this early if it hadn't allowed me to get rid of that annoying weapon.
The other side quest that H'aanit undertook was known as Scourge of the Seas and took her to the Captain's Bane dungeon. This is another side area that doesn't have too much of interest aside from fighting against the Leviathan boss at the end. The Leviathan is apparently a giant octopus in the world of Octopath Traveler and it's always encountered along with two urchin minions. I had to equip a Conscious Stone and an Antidote Stone to prevent H'aanit from being stunned/poisoned in this battle, leaving her with only 4000 HP and less margin for error. Once again, I was pleased to discover how most of the monster attacks simply missed H'aanit with her heavy evasion build. She was far from invulnerable but I'd say that something like 60-70% of the attacks missed H'aanit and all of the threats were physical in this battle such that they could potentially be dodged. This again let me spend more rounds attacking and fewer round needing to pause and heal.
The offensive choice here was Draefendi's Rage, of course, as it was both H'aanit's strongest ability and something that hit all three opponents simultaneously. The urchins will lock out the weaknesses of the Leviathan while they are alive but I made no move to hit them with H'aanit's auto attacks, knowing that they would get stomped into the ground whenever she used Draefendi. Indeed, the first Draefendi knocked them into the red on health followed by the second one eliminating them both. That allowed H'aanit to start using her arrow shots on the Leviathan itself, and this was a rare place where I had her break out Rain of Arrows to get some more shield breaks followed by yet another Draefendi for 9999 damage once the shields were gone. The Levithan brought back its urchin minions twice but they come back at half health and both times the next Draefendi wiped them from the board again. This ended up being a straightforward battle that H'aanit made it through with nothing more than half a dozen Medium Healing Grapes consumed. Too bad that this quest only had the mostly-useless Leviathan Shield as a reward instead of something better!
That was certainly enough side quests for the moment and it was time to begin the main Chapter 3 stories. I began by sending H'aanit back to Victor's Hollow to take care of Tressa's rather easy Chapter 3 story. The hardest part of this area tends to be the random encounters in the Forgotten Grotto dungeon, as there are several common battles against skeletons who can inflict terror status combined together with Lightning Elementals that shock the party with heavy electrical damage. H'aanit simply hit everything with Draefendi whenever those fights popped up to avoid the potential of a wipeout. The Venomtooth Tiger boss gets shut down hard by equipping an Antidote Stone to block its Peerless Poison ability, something that I've done with every other solo character and certainly continued doing here. H'aanit proved to be quite skilled at dodging the big cat's physical attacks and took advantage of extra hits from Second Serving to cut through its shields with her bow. I quickly realized that she could knock out those shields even faster by using Rain of Arrows which would eliminate 3-5 shields without spending any boost points. Then hit with Draefendi's Rage when the shields were down, rinse and repeat. In short, it was a very easy boss fight for H'aanit and a nice easing into the Chapter 3 opponents.
I picked Primrose's Chapter 3 story next which meant a trip through the Obsidian Manse dungeon. Most of the monsters in here lacked a weakness to either bows or axes which caused the fights to drag out a bit since I wasn't going to waste Summoned Beasts on random encounters. There was a frequent battle against Dire Ash Ravens combined with Icky Slugs who could inflict blindness, terror, and also debuff H'aanit's physical and elemental attack. Even though the actual danger level was low, these fights were a real pain between not being able to break shields and having to stagger through those status conditions. After a little bit, I had H'aanit equip a Bright Stone to block the blindness status condition and that helped speed things up. She didn't care as much about terror status because H'aanit was rarely doing anything other than auto attacking and Second Serving could kick in even when she couldn't use boost points.
That Bright Stone was of course needed against Albus as well in order to block his one-shot kill move that hits anyone in blindness status. Albus was another boss with a weakness to bows which meant a prime opportunity to break out Rain of Arrows again for cutting through his shields. Albus himself is kind of a joke with the Bright Stone equipped as he missed a lot of his attacks and couldn't do much of anything to H'aanit on his own. The one somewhat dangerous moment in the fight came when he dropped below half health and summoned his two Obsidian Officer minions while also blocking all of his weaknesses. This was a perfect moment to respond with Draefendi's Rage, since it hit all enemies simultaneously, and two castings of the Hunter Divine skill were more than enough to remove the two minions. Albus can't summon them back a second time and he fell shortly thereafter.
Then I popped down to Saintsbridge for Alfyn's Chapter 3 story which sent H'aanit off through the Rivira Woods in search of another missing child. (Is it just me, or is there a lot of overlap between this story and Ophilia's Chapter 2 story that takes place in the same town?) The enemies in this dungeon liked to inflict silence and sleeping statuses, and while H'aanit didn't care about being silenced because she was hacking at everything with her axe, it was worth the time to equip a Wakeful Stone accessory and block the chance of falling asleep. Miguel was the boss at the end of the woods and I knew from past characters that the trick to beating him was loading up on as much physical defense as possible. Miguel will debuff the player's physical defense and hits with a lot of multi-attacks at the same time, but if the player can reach a high enough defensive total, these hits will all deal minimal damage. Unfortunately H'aanit has innately poor physical defense and so I shifted her equipment around to try and cover this weakness: the Forbidden Shield, Adventurer's Hat, Dragon Vest, and a Protective Necklace combined to get her up to 752 physical defense at the cost of losing virtually all her evasion. How would that work in practice?
This defensive setup turned out to be OK in practice, not great and not terrible. H'aanit's physical attack and physical defense were both immediately debuffed at the start of the battle and would remain in that condition for the remainder of the encounter. This caused Miguel's spears to hit for about 250 damage apiece and he launches first 5 and then later 7 of them at once. This was serious damage but fortunately not enough to be lethal, which I strongly suspect it would have been if I'd tried to use H'aanit's normal defensive setup based on evasion. Miguel also likes to shift his weaknesses around, initially having a bows weakness and then going to one with only spear / dagger / fire / light options after recovering from his first shield break. I made sure to have some Captured monsters to get through that setup and then fortunately his next two patterns both had axe weaknesses before looping back to the bow weakness again. This was a long fight and H'aanit went through about two dozen Medium Healing Grapes but the damage from Miguel wasn't quite high enough to force the use of a Refreshing Jam. It might have been without the occasional extra Patience rounds but those extra actions allowed H'aanit to get in some additional healing here and there to stay safe. I was glad when this boss fight was over; it was a good sign of how H'aanit struggled when she couldn't rely on her evasion for protection.
I was still tearing through one story sequence after another with H'aanit and picked Cyrus for the following Chapter 3 quest. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of spellcasters as random enemies in Yvon's Cellar and their Dark Soulstone abilities couldn't be dodged due to being forms of elemental damage. There wasn't much H'aanit could do other than charge up the boost meter and wipe them out with Draefendi since it didn't make sense to run a heavy elemental defense gear setup which was ill-suited to H'aanit's character build. Against Yvon himself, H'aanit once again relied on Draefendi's Rage to eliminate the two starting Research Fellow minions. Then she could start working on Yvon's shields:
The evil headmaster is only weak to daggers, staffs, and several different types of elemental damage that H'aanit didn't have. I had checked this ahead of time and brought the same Cliff Birdian used earlier since it came with a triple dagger attack that popped three shields at a time. This bird creature was very good at eliminating the shields on Yvon and then H'aanit could lay on the predictable Draefendi for 9999 damage. Now here was the problem: because H'aanit could only access the abilities of the Hunter class, she couldn't do more than 9999 damage at a time even though Draefendi would have been dealing more like 15,000 damage if it weren't for the damage cap. Yvon had 63k health to work through and that was starting to take some time since H'aanit couldn't hit five digits on her Divine skill. Yvon also kept increasing the number of shields after each successful break: first 3 shields, then 6, then 9, and then finally 12. It took four uses of the Cliff Birdian to break through the 12 shields and even though I had H'aanit bring two of the things in her backpack, she was starting to run low on their charges by the end of this battle. Yvon didn't put up much of a fight since H'aanit was able to dodge most of his attacks but this was starting to become a real issue and would likely cause more serious problems against the Chapter 4 bosses.
I continued onwards to Olberic's Chapter 3 story in the deserts outside Wellspring. This is another one of the easiest Chapter 3 stories as it generally consists of fighting a whole bunch of Lizardmen who don't do anything particularly dangerous. I did discover one odd tidbit while H'aanit battled her way across the deserts: all of the Lizardmen were listed as "Untameable" and couldn't be defeated via Capture. I still think it's wild that this mechanic even exists in the gameplay at all, singling out a tiny number of the game's enemies who can't be captured because they aren't considered "beasts". It actually raised some real ethical questions too: everything else listed as "Untameable" is some kind of human enemy. Was this implying that the Lizardmen were humans as well? And if so, how could it possibly be justified to break into their den and kill everything in sight? Maybe the Octopath Traveler developers should have thought about this a little bit further - were we the baddies? 
Anyway, the Lizardman Chief was the boss of this particular story and he functions a lot like Yvon in the sense that they both only get a single action per round, never going up to two or three. This makes the big lizard a pretty easy opponent and in fact H'aanit was actually getting more actions than he was due to having Patience appear every few rounds. The battle starts with two Sand Lizardking minions present, and the Chief will summon them back if they are defeated, but they always died to a single Draefendi and H'aanit wiped them out easily each time. I found that H'aanit also dodged most of the Chief's attacks and things were going so well that I decided to try and win the boss fight without using a single recovery item: no Healing Grapes, no Inspiriting Plums, nothing. This was the only reason why the battle was even remotely close as H'aanit was barely getting scratched as she worked through the 50k health on the Lizardman Chief. He finally started landing some blows towards then end of the fight and it did get tense for a little bit, then H'aanit landed a final Draefendi on 191 HP / 14 SP to secure the victory, whew! She was completely out of resources and that last attack did the trick. Zero items used to win a solo boss fight, hah!
Afterwards, I had to defeat Erhardt with a Level 7 Olberic who only had one ability unlocked (Cross Strike) so that was a fun little battle. Fortunately I had plenty of defensive equipment to slap on Olberic and I'd earlier Purchased the Forbidden Sword which was enough to limp him through the story-forced Challenge fight with a whole lot of Medium Healing Grapes consumed. That was the weakest Olberic I've ever had at this stage of the gameplay and thankfully there are no mandatory Challenges in Olberic's Chapter 4 story. It felt weird having him be so pathetic - even in my solo games, Olberic is still pretty strong because he picks up XP from the many optional quest-based Challenges against NPCs. Not this time though, H'aanit was the one terrorizing the townsfolk and reaping all that experience.
I made the decision to embark on H'aanit's own Chapter 3 story next since I found myself with an open block of time to watch the whole thing. Once again, it had been years since I actually watched this story as opposed to skipping through it. H'aanit travels to the frozen town of Stillsnow in search of a seer named Susanna, trying to find some way of curing Z'aanta's petrification. Upon talking with the local inhabitants, she discovers the location of Susanna immediately, only to find that the woman has a guard named Alaic who refuses to speak and turns everyone away from seeing the seer. This is the forced implementation of another Provoke fight which I always hate doing with other solo characters because Linde is pathetically weak when H'aanit is only Level 1 (I usually break various soulstones to get through this encounter). It was a real pleasure to have an overleveled solo game H'aanit on hand for this playthrough, who immediately dumpstered Alaic and knocked out his butt on the cold ground. Yes, having a Level 62 H'aanit as opposed to a Level 1 H'aanit made things a lot easier!
This victory brings Susanna out of her house for a chat with H'aanit. Susanna reveals that she's not actually a sage at all, only someone who pays attention to detail and gives out good advice. She also recognized H'aanit by sight despite having never met our main character because Susanna was a mentor figure for Z'aanta back in the day; in fact, Susanna even claims H'aanit as an adoptive granddaughter of sorts due to this shared connection. That turns out to be the theme of this chapter: found family, as H'aanit lost her parents as a child but has a growing adopted family between Z'aanta and Susanna and even Alaic once he finally wakes up.
Returning to the plot, Susanna explains that she doesn't have anything that would cure Z'aanta's petrification status. There's only one way to save him: the beast Redeye must be slain which will then lift the curse on H'aanit's teacher. But running off to fight Redeye would be a suicide mission as the creature would only turn H'aanit to stone as well, which prompts Susanna to recommend that H'aanit travel into the nearby Whitewood where she can find a rare Herb-of-Grace plant which will protect against Redeye's attack. This is how we get our standard dungeon associated with this story sequence, as Alaic helps escort H'aanit to the woods and very awkwardly indicates that he's smitten with her. (H'aanit is completely clueless as she's focused on the current hunt.) The Whitewood itself is a short dungeon with one of the most linear paths of any area in Octopath Traveler; it's literally a single winding path with treasure chests on little side routes that all dead end. Basically the player can't possibly get lost here though I will admit that the frozen forest makes for a pretty sight.
H'aanit finds the Herb-of-Grace in a clearing at the end of the path... along with a huge Dragon that happens to be guarding them. This prompts H'aanit to have a flashback scene of her time spent with Z'aanta when she was a youth, remembering how Z'aanta would tell all sorts of wild tales about creatures that he had hunted. Little girl H'aanit tells Z'aanta that he's making up these stories and her master explains that whether or not they are true, it's the TELLING of the stories that actually matters. Then we flash back to the present where H'aanit speaks the line captured above, that she's going to save Z'aanta and then tell him this story about the Dragon over and over again until he's sick of it. I really like this part of the writing as it emphasizes the way that people use stories and tall tales to connect with one another across generations, while also emphasizing how H'aanit is moving out of her master's shadow and becoming a hero in her own right. Now she will be the one telling stories of her hunts instead of listening to the past deeds of her teacher. It's genuinely well done and better than most of the other storytelling in this game.
There was still a Dragon to fight, of course, and H'aanit was well prepared to deal with this battle that I had known was coming ahead of time. The biggest thing that lowers the difficulty of this boss is equipping an Inferno Amulet, an accessory that reduces fire damage by 99%, and which dropped this particular Dragonfire attack from dealing 1300 damage down to 13 damage. The Inferno Amulet completely nullified a third of the Dragon's actions which left it doing nothing but making basic attacks and Rendering Claw swipes, both of which H'aanit had above 50% odds to dodge. Occasionally the Dragon would hit on a long sequence of successful hits which forced H'aanit to eat more Healing Grapes but usually it would have enough misses that there wasn't much danger. Offensively, the Dragon kept swapping its weaknesses around but always seemed to have either bows or axes unlocked for H'aanit to exploit. You know the drill by now: auto attacks with Second Serving to break the shields, then Draefendi's Rage for the 9999 hit when shields were broken. This wasn't too bad in practice since I had the correct setup in place.
H'aanit is exhilarated after defeating the Dragon and can't believe that she managed to kill such a legendary creature. (The achievement was a bit more hollow for me since I had already killed this same Dragon with all seven other characters in their own solo games, heh.) H'aanit returns back to Susanna and Alaic who create a potion from the Herb-of-Grace and send her off to Marsalim where Redeye has most recently been spotted. What's interesting to me is that this isn't an abstract part of the story; no, the player literally gets handed 10 Herb-of-Grace potions that appear in their inventory. You would think that these would be needed against Redeye, but nope, Redeye never uses a petrification attack even though my Bestiary Spreadsheet has a note reading: "Evil Eye: inflicts petrification on a single ally, does not appear ever to use this?!" I'm wondering if this was originally intended to be part of the gameplay and was taken out at the last minute because some players lost or sold the Herb-of-Grace potions and then were unable to complete the game afterwards. This is one of the strangest parts of Octopath Traveler and it causes this whole story sequence to make no sense, although I'm really glad that it worked out this way because otherwise the solo games I run would have been impossible to finish.
All that remained now were the two most difficult Chapter 3 stories, the ones belonging to Therion and Ophilia. I thought that H'aanit's versatility might make these bosses easier than they had been for some of my previous solo characters but the proof would be in the pudding. I undertook Therion's story sequence first and hoped that the dice rolls wouldn't be too bad on the pair of 3% Steals that the thief had to pull off. (The first one landed quickly followed by the second one taking about 50 attempts - pretty average luck here.) None of the monsters in the Black Market dungeon put up much of a fight for H'aanit which allowed me to focus on the upcoming boss fight against Gareth. I didn't think that H'aanit would have too many issues with this guy, since even if Gareth stole her items away she could simply break his shields with her auto attacks and get them back again. His two minions would be defeated via Draefendi's Rage and that would suffice to check off another obstacle on H'aanit's list.
Unfortunately things didn't go that smoothly in practice. Gareth's two Master Thief minions fell to a pair of Draefendi attacks, sure enough, but what I hadn't counted on was Gareth's health and SP stealing abilities. Gareth's Steal Life attack was annoying enough but the real killer was the pictured Steal Magic which dealt 1000 damage and also removed half of H'aanit max SP. I hadn't been thinking about these abilities for whatever reason and I was caught off guard here; H'aanit also seemed to be much less effective at dodging Gareth's attacks as compared to other bosses because most of his strikes were successfully hitting. With H'aanit being drained of both health and spirit points, I found myself forced to use a Refreshing Jam to avoid certain death, and then after breaking Gareth once and hitting him with Draefendi's Rage, he locked out his axes weakness - urp! 
And no, he did not have a weakness to bows to exploit. I could have brought some kind of monster to hit with ice or wind damage but I hadn't thought that far ahead. The saving grace here was the fact that Gareth has low health for a Chapter 3 boss, only 38k HP in total, and H'aanit was able to defeat him with only three casts of Draefendi. I did win on the first attempt but it was a sloppy effort that cost two Refreshing Jams, far from my best effort.
By way of contrast, the two bosses at the end of Ophilia's Chapter 3 story were much easier to defeat. This can be an exceptionally tough challenge for low-offense or single-target character builds because the player has to face two opponents, the Mystery Man and the Shady Figure, who heal themselves for 800 HP every round. They must be defeated together or else the sole survivor will buff themselves up and become much deadlier, not something that you want to see in a solo game. The good news was that H'aanit was perfectly suited for dealing with this situation: she had more than enough damage to overcome that 800 health regeneration and she could hit both opponents at the same time with Draefendi's Rage. I took the time to retrieve the Adamantine Hat from the Maw of the Ice Dragon dungeon ahead of time, then equipped that along with the Forbidden Shield and Robe of the Flame armor to boost H'aanit's elemental defense all the way up to 953 points. This is one of the very rare boss fights in Octopath Traveler where the damage is all elemental in nature and H'aanit was able to cut down many of the incoming spells to double digit damage. Getting hit for 34 damage at a time wasn't too scary, though sometimes the Mystery Man would attack with Arcane Blade for about 1000 damage and that was something worth treating with care.
My goal all along was to keep hitting this pair with repeated Draefendis and arrange matters so that they would both perish simultaneously. It was highly reassuring when the first Draefendi inflicted 6600 damage to each of the bosses, as this was easily enough to outpace the HP regen from the Shady Figure even when considering the occasional rounds that H'aanit would have to spend healing. I made sure to spend a few rounds auto attacking the Shady Figure since it has about 4000 more health than the Mystery Man, evening out the damage they had both taken. H'aanit kept using Healing Grapes, Inspiriting Plums, and casts of Draefendi's Rage until the Mystery Man keeled over. That left only the Shady Figure alive, which was exactly what I'd been trying to avoid, but one more attack finished off the enemy before it could use any of its buffs. This was a much better boss fight and couldn't have gone much more smoothly.
That was the end of the Chapter 3 stories for H'aanit, which were mostly straightforward aside from that minor hiccup against Gareth. There was only one more set remaining as H'aanit would be moving into the concluding Chapter 4 stories before finishing off this solo venture. Things had been pretty easy thus far, would H'aanit be able to keep that streak going all the way to the end of the game? Time to find out.
