The Chapter 2 stories had proceeded smoothly for Sorcerer Ophilia and if anything had been easier to complete than the initial Chapter 1 set. She was beginning to resemble the gameplay of Cyrus' Scholar class more and more, a glass-cannon mage setup who was fantastic at dealing damage while not being able to take much of a punch in return. Before heading off to begin the Chapter 3 stories, I took this time to clear out the optional side dungeons in the second ring regions. These can be done in any order, like the rest of Octopath's gameplay, and for no particular reason I began with the Hollow Throne off to the west of Noblecourt:
All of these side dungeons are relatively short and about half of them have optional bosses at the end, including the Throne Guardian at the conlusion of this one. This is not a particularly difficult boss as its big Meteor Storm ability hits the whole party which never holds much threat for a solo character. If anything, it's the monsters in random encounters who are more dangerous in the Hollow Throne, with heavy elemental damage and strong physical attacks present on different opponents scattered throughout the underground area. Ophilia was able to exploit the staffs weakness on the Throne Guardian by employing Elemental Break which ended up getting a lot of use in this fight. The boss kept spamming the Overclock ability which buffs its elemental defense and I was countering with repeated Elemental Breaks to debuff it right back again. This was a pretty big deal in terms of effectiveness for Ophilia's spells: she would deal 4000 damage per tick with nothing in place, 2000 damage with Overclock's defenses present, and 6000 x 3 = 18k damage if Elemental Break had the debuff enacted. Tripling her damage was very much worth the effort to get Elemental Break in place.
I sent Ophilia through the other optional dungeons in clockwise order to keep from forgetting one of them. The Tomb of Kings is a very easy area to complete and (as I've mentioned before) has harder enemies OUTSIDE the dungeon than inside which doesn't make much gameplay sense. It's always worth completing though since there's a side quest associated with it which grants the Royal Crest accessory, +600 HP when equipped, which is slightly better than the Empowering Bracelet and its +500 HP. Farshore is an even smaller dungeon which appears to be an unfinished area, as if something was intended for it and the developers simply ran out of time to implement it. There's a chest inside with 30,000 money and that's about it. The Derelict Mine had the Manymaws boss waiting at the end (always annoying because there's no save point except at the entrance of the cave) which Ophilia was able to roast with a single casting of Ignis Ardere before she could suffer from its Foul Odor collection of status ailments. There was nothing too interesting in any of these places.
The Tomb of the Imperator outside of Stillsnow has a higher difficulty rating and the monsters inside definitely hit harder than in these other optional areas. Ophilia was using the Defend command on the first two turns of every battle, then blasting away with whatever elemental spell was most appropriate on the third turn when her boost meter was full. It worked extremely well at powering through these random encounters quickly (especially helpful given the higher encounter rate with the Forbidden Bow equipped) and Inspiriting Plums were cheap to purchase by this stage of the gameplay. The Tomb of the Imperator has the Behemoth as its boss at the conclusion, a beast that has an extremely powerful Boar Rush attack and will heal itself indefinitely with Hydration. This is a tough class for low-offensive setups as they can get stuck in endless cycles of boss healing. Sorcerer Ophilia was not a low-offensive character, however, and she used her elemental magic to knock the Behemoth down to one shield, then employed Elemental Break to knock off the last shield, followed by Lux Congerere for the killing blow. The Behemoth only has 12k health so this was a literal one-shot spellcast as pictured.
There were still a few more errands to run before diving into the Chapter 3 stories. I wanted to send Ophilia out to Grandport in particular since there are just so many goodies to be found there for a solo character. This necessitates make a dangerous run through the wilds of the outer coastline, however, with the player needing to survive a series of random battles to make it to the town's gates and unlock the fast travel option. I prepared Ophilia for this ordeal by carefully unequipping the Forbidden Bow and loading her up with the best defensive setup I could manage. She didn't need +80 spirit points (SP) for these battles, she needed more physical defense to survive the incoming blows. As the picture above indicates, despite my best efforts Ophilia could still take close to 1500 damage from a single attack when one of these mosters used their big Meteor Strike ability. Also note that this damage was taken through the Defend command, it would have been even worse otherwise!
The odds to successfully retreat from these combats are downright terrible which meant that it was actually safer for Ophilia to try and kill whatever was attacking her. I found to my surprise that even a fully boosted cast of Ventus Saltare was not enough to defeat these Greater Kingfishers with their 6300 HP. The solution was therefore to break out Ophilia's sparsely used Elemental Aid passive support skill for additional damage. It didn't matter if each Sorcerer spell cost a whopping 72 SP, that could be fixed with Inspiriting Plums in between random encounters. I needed everything to die from Ophilia's first spellcast and the extra damage was sufficient to make that happen. This ability made a real difference and it was enough to get Ophilia through four or five battles without dying, finally reaching the bridges leading into Grandport. (How do the other merchants survive to reach the city if the monsters outside are so deadly? I really don't understand how the largest marketplace in the game can exist under these conditions!)
Grandport held all of its usual treasures for a solo game and the 200k money that I'd been saving up for some time quickly disappeared into the hands of its vendors. Top prizes included the Forbidden Shield and the Protective Necklace which together were worth more than 200 additional points of physical and elemental defense. Ophilia scored poorly in the evade stat and she wouldn't be dodging much of anything so long as the Forbidden Shield was equipped, however I did Purchase the Ethereal Dancer Garb as well to have that as an option for future boss situations. In addition, Grandport also holds no less than five stat-boosting nuts of the Medium variety which boosted Ophilia's base numbers further. Towns like Grandport are the reason why Steal/Purchase is by far the best of the various Path Actions; almost all of the best equipment in the game comes from NPCs in this fashion. (Conversely, Inquire/Scrutinize is by far the worst as almost nothing of consequence can be found this way.)
The other town that I wanted to visit in the third ring was Northreach as there were more equipment upgrades to be found there. Ophilia continued employing her Elemental Aid support skill for the additional damage although the walk up the icy mountainside was a lot less dangerous now that she was protected by the gear assembled in Grandport. Along the way, Ophilia popped into the Maw of the Ice Dragon dungeon to pick up the best helmet in the game, the Adamantine Hat. It has strong physical defense, the best elemental defense in the game, and 88 points of elemental attack to make it a must-have for spellcasters. She would basically never take this off afterwards. As for Northreach, the city had an Empowering Necklace accessory for Purchase which granted +1000 HP when equipped along with more of those tasty stat-boosting nuts. This was the total package of equipment afterwards:
I would use this as the default setup for Ophilia as she made her way through the Chapter 3 stories, adjusting as need be for individual opponents and then coming back to these as the standard choices. The Forbidden Bow had the highest physical attack for the rare cases where Ophilia needed to do that while the Wizard's Rod remained the best spellcasting boost with its +300 to elemental attack. I kept the Forbidden Shield equipped despite the evasion penalty since Ophilia was so bad at dodging anyway, and of course the Adamantine Hat was the best choice in that slot. Ophilia had actually maxed out elemental defense already at the 999 cap, something that continues to frustrate me since characters can push beyond that limit so easily. If players can reach 1200 or 1300 in a stat, why are they penalized with this silly 999 restriction? This isn't the original Final Fantasy where there was 32 KB of memory as a limitation, it would be trivial to code these stats with four digits instead of three, argh!
The armor slot was the one that I tended to change the most often, with the Robe of the Flame as default option for its bonus to max SP. It didn't have great physical defense though and the Dragon's Vest was sometimes more useful for boss encounters. I thought that I might get some use out of the Dragonscale and Crystal Armors later on (which are even better at physical defense) because Sorcerer Ophilia had such absurdly high elemental defense naturally. The accessory slots also swapped around items frequently, often to block a particular status effect from a boss or to equip the Dragon's Scarf for 6 SP regeneration each turn when there were weak random encounters. The Empowering Necklace stayed in place more or less permanently, however; the extra 1000 health was simply too important for a solo character to give up.
Fortified with all of these equipment upgrades, I decided to take on one more optional side boss before returning to the main plotline. This was the Giant Python in the Quicksand Caves dungeon, an opponent that I typically leave until after completing the Chapter 3 stories due to its difficulty. I knew that Ophilia had the damage to defeat the big snake while I was very much uncertain as to whether she had the survivability. I made sure to equip the mandatory Wakeful Stone to block the sleep status inflicted by the boss and then dove into the combat. It became clear right away that Ophilia could inflict massive, punishing damage on the Giant Python with the pictured Ventus Saltare hitting for about 6000 x 3 = 18k damage against a broken version of the snake. This proved to be a mistake, however, as Ophilia simply took too much damage in return by going through the trouble of getting Elemental Break in place for the debuff ahead of breaking the boss. In the picture above, she only had 700 HP remaining and immediately died after the Giant Python came out of its shield break - this was not a winning strategy. Furthermore, wind element hit a weakness on the Snake Charmer and killed him too fast, after which the python itself went into a rampage. I needed to use a different elemental spell and keep the Snake Charmer alive until the end of the fight.
Instead, Ophilia did better by ignoring Elemental Break and instead simply hitting the Giant Python with occasional elemental attack spells while spending most turns healing. She was eating a Medium Healing Grape on almost every turn of combat for its 1750 HP recovery and only casting spells when she could hit with max boost and it was safe to do so. The Healing Grapes were almost but not quite sufficient to keep her health topped off, with Ophilia slowly losing net HP over the course of the fight. I had to dip into her stash of Refreshing Jams for the first time, using two of them over the course of the battle to restore all health and SP at critical moments. This worked as planned though and Ophilia was able to defeat the Snake Charmer with the Giant Python on red health, then wipe out the snake on the next round before it could go berserk. In retrospect, it may have been better to bring Elemental Aid for the bonus damage and end the overall battle faster since Ophilia was able to restore SP with those Refreshing Jams. I'd have to remember that as an option for the future.
The reward for winning was a bow upgrade in the form of the awesomely-named Transcendent Bow of Shadows. It had better stats and lacked the high random encounter rate of the Forbidden Bow, very nice! 
Alright, it was finally time to get the Chapter 3 stories underway. Ophilia was already in Wellspring to face the Giant Python and I decided that I'd complete the two story sequences there before moving on to the next town. Olberic has the easier of the pair and thus I went after the various lizardmen that infest this tale first. The associated dungeon is the Lizardmen's Den and it's full of these reptiles, almost all of which were weak against ice element. Ophilia equipped an Antidote Stone to block their frequent poison attacks and slaughtered everything in sight with Glacies Claudere. Their chief is actually not weak against ice element but it certainly wrecked havoc against his minions. The poor things were so weak that Ophilia could actually kill them with Glacies Claudere without boosting the ability! That's incredibly rare in this game and I don't know why the minions only have 3100 HP apiece. As for the Lizardman Chief, he hit quite hard and does have a stunning ability (which Ophilia blocked with a Conscious Stone) however he never gets more than one action per round and that was pretty easy to work around. Tonitrus Canere created a dazzling lightning show that hit the weakness on this boss and downed him without much fuss.
Then in the aftermath of the boss fight, I accidentally talked to Erhardt before moving all of my equipment over to Olberic, causing him to die instantly and forcing me to re-fight the Lizardman Chief a second time. Whoops. 
That was a bit annoying, my fault for not remembering to save the game and swap gear over to Olberic for the forced battle in his story sequence.
The other story sequence in Wellspring belongs to Therion and it's usually one of the trickiest of the Chapter 3 stories due to the boss at the end. Gareth is a mini-Darius who can steal the player's health, spirit points, and most notably their items away which is a real problem for characters that otherwise can't heal themselves. The best solution is often to emphasize offense and blow through Gareth's low 39k health total to avoid an extended fight sequence. That was what I had in mind for Ophilia here as I chose to equip an Elemental Augmentor for +100 elemental attack in her second accessory slot rather than take something defensive. I thought about taking Elemental Aid passive as well but held off since I was worried that it would run her out of spirit points too quickly with Gareth stealing them away. This proved to be the correct choice as Gareth used his Steal Magic ability more than once which drained away 146 SP at a time, yikes!
My goal was simple in this boss fight: break Gareth and hit him with a max boosted spellcast which would take out most of his health, then try to finish off whatever remained as fast as possible before he could kill Ophilia. There was no time to get Elemental Break's debuff in place, Ophilia had to focus on either dealing direct damage or healing on each round of combat. This is further complicated by the fact that Gareth's two minions will snap him out of a shield break if they get the chance which Ophilia had to work around. In any case, Gareth is weak to ice and wind elements which allowed Ophilia to peel off his shields with Glacies Claudere and Ventus Saltare. The turn order lined up in my favor as I was able to break Gareth at the end of one round and then blast him at the start of the next round before the minions could wake up him, with Ignis Ardere hitting their fire weakness and removing them from the battlefield as well as dealing 5400 x 3 = 16k damage to Gareth. The boss goes up to 3 actions per round once his minions are gone so there wasn't much time for Ophilia to act. She drank the pictured Refreshing Jam above, then cast Ventus Saltare, a second Ventus Saltare to land the shield break on the following turn, and a final max boosted Ventus Saltare for the winning blow. Gareth never actually stole her items away because Ophilia defeated him too quickly and I was quite pleased to be past this tough boss with only a single Refreshing Jam expended.
From this point forward, there was no particular order in which Ophilia needed to face the remaining Chapter 3 bosses and I more or less chose the story sequences at random. Primrose happened to be the first choice which eventually led to a fight with Albus at its conclusion. His big gimmick is inflicting instant death after blinding opponents which can be shut down rather easily by equipping a Bright Stone accessory. The big guy was weak against wind and light elements, and this was a simple enough fight that Ophilia could set up the Elemental Break debuff to get the pictured 7100 x 3 = 21k damage printout. The one dangerous moment in the boss battle came when Albus dropped under half health and summoned his two Obsidian Officer minions into the fray; their attacks combined could overwhelm Ophilia's rather suspect physical defenses. She actually died here several times because I refused to waste a Refreshing Jam and tried to strategize a way to win while conserving the item. Eventually I swapped to the Dragon's Vest armor for some additional physical defense and just barely managed to knock out the two minions, then heal up afterwards with Healing Grapes, then defeat Albus. A better solution would have been taking Elemental Aid passive skill which would have granted Ophilia sufficient damage to one-shot the two minions when they first appeared and before they had a chance to act. I did get this done eventually although it was a bit sloppy on my part.
After dealing with Albus, I realized that it might be prudent to upgrade Ophilia's physical defenses a bit further. This led me to make the short trip through the southern deserts to Marsalim where she was able to Purchase the Dragonscale Armor. It had no elemental defense on it at all, instead bringing an increased 235 physical defensive rating which would be useful against some of the upcoming bosses who didn't use any elemental abilities. I continued to use the Robe of the Flame as Ophilia's default armor but this would definitely be handy.
I had delayed some of the easier Chapter 3 stories up to this point and now needed to backtrack to complete them. One such story sequence was Tressa's trip into the Forgotten Grotto dungeon where the monsters were easy enough that Ophilia could annihilate them without even needing to accumulate more boost points. She simply cast one of her Sorcerer elemental spells with the default one boost point added and that was sufficient to wipe out everything. This was enough to score the Untouched (no damage taken) and Domination (win on the first turn) bonuses, not that Ophilia particularly needed either money or job points anymore. It was certainly helpful at speeding through the dungeon in record time though, with the monsters dropping within seconds of loading onto the battle screen. If there's one place where the Sorcerer class truly excelled, it was tearing through random encounters at warp speed.
The Venomtooth Tiger is one of the easiest of the Chapter 3 bosses to defeat and Ophilia certainly had no problems here. With the mandatory Antidote Stone equipped to block its poison, Ophilia had no need to worry about any status effects and could concentrate fully on maximizing her DPS. The big cat starts with 6 shields at the outset of the battle, which Ophilia burst through by casting Ignis Ardere followed by Lux Congerere on the first two rounds of combat. This opened up the boss for a massive Tenebrae Operire that hit for 8400 x 3 = 25k damage which was fully half of the creature's healthbar. That increased damage was due to bringing the Elemental Aid passive skill though it did clean out Ophilia's SP gauge in a mere three casts. Ophilia spent the next few rounds healing and eating a Medium Inspiriting Plum to recover SP, followed by a final max boosted Ignis Ardere that sealed the victory.
The boss rush continued as Ophilia headed off to Stillsnow and H'aanit's Chapter 3 story next. Once again the accompanying dungeon flew past in a couple of minutes as Ophilia incinerated everything with her fire-based spells on the first turn of combat before the monsters had a chance to take any actions. It's certainly convenient that your character always acts first in combat when playing a solo game. For the Dragon boss at the finish, Ophilia loaded up on physical defense gear by equipping the Dragonscale Armor (appropriate here!) and an Inferno Ring to nullify the damage from its Dragonfire breath attack. I found that the Dragon's normal attack was hitting for 400-500 damage while its Rending Claw move dealt 1000-1100 damage, an incoming damage pace which was just barely sustainable for Ophilia with repeated consumption of Medium Healing Grapes. You know the drill by now, knock off the shields using the Dragon's weakness to light element, the hit with Elemental Break and a damage spell of the player's choice. I used Tonitrus Canere in this case because it looked the coolest in the screenshot. I played defensively and ate a bunch of Healing Grapes over the course of the fight but Ophilia never needed to use Refreshing Jams en route to a smooth and safe triumph.
Alfyn's Chapter 3 story followed with Ophilia equipping an Articulate Stone while racing through the Rivira Woods to prevent the monsters inside from silencing her. The boss at its conclusion is Miguel who has a bunch of multi-hit physical attacks and likes to debuffs the player's physical defense to make them more effective. I discovered long ago that the solution to this battle is stacking physical defense which Ophilia was able to do by going back to the Dragonscale Armor again along with the Protective Necklace accessory. She couldn't match the exploits of classes with higher base physical defense like Warmaster Olberic, however she was able to get Miguel's spear damage down to about 100 per hit which was eminently survivable. And then it was Ophilia's turn to strike back, which she did with extreme prejudice, easily breaking through Miguel's shields and then smashing him for 25,000 damage once his protection was gone. It was another easy fight in a sequence that was becoming routine.
I chose to continue the quest with Cyrus' Chapter 3 story next. Some of the enemies in Yvon's Basemet were mages that liked to buff their elemental defense and could actually survive long enough to require the full three points of boosting into Ophilia's Sorcerer spells. This didn't make them dangerous or anything but they did take more than the single round to eliminate that I'd been experiencing in the previous few dungeons. Yvon is the concluding boss and I actually screwed up here by forgetting to equip an Articulate Stone to block the very common silencing ability that he likes to spam. It didn't matter though since Yvon is another boss who never goes beyond one action per round and he had a convenient staffs weakness to make it easy to bust through the shields with Elemental Break. Ophilia tore through the starting Research Fellow minions (who do not come back afterwards as many boss minions do), broke Yvon with Elemental Break, and hit for 24,000 damage again. I had to spend some rounds removing silence status or replenishing SP after Yvon stole them away but the outcome of the fight was never in doubt.
These story sequences had been flashing by one after another in a rush; I think that I did three of them in less than half an hour of real world time thanks to running the gameplay at 3x speed and skipping all the cutscenes. The last one remaining was Ophilia's own Chapter 3 tale which required her to descend into the Seaside Grotto and save yet another child in danger. This dungeon holds a pair of bosses in the form of the Mystery Man and the Shady Figure who like to spam elemental damage:
Sorcerer Ophilia had the highest elemental defense of any Octopath character I've ever played, however, and she was not impressed by their attacks. The Robe of the Flame allowed Ophilia to hit the 999 cap on elemental defense and this blocked most of what the bosses could do, with only their Arcane Blade attack managing to surpass 100-200 damage. The gimmick in this boss fight is that the Shady Figure heals both opponents for 800 HP at the end of every round, and both of them start dealing much higher damage if they're the only one left standing. The player wants to eliminate both bosses at the same time and they need to make sure to deal enough damage to overcome the constant enemy healing. This can be a real problem for low-offensive variants or characters that can't hit multiple targets with their abilities.
Fortunately Sorcerer Ophilia had more or less the perfect setup to counter these two bosses. She had massive elemental defense to resist their spells, every single one of her elemental attack spells hit the whole board simultaneously, and she was a glass cannon build which had overwhelming amounts of offense at her disposal. The main thing that I had to watch was evening out the damage inflicted so that the Mystery Man and the Shady Figure would perish simultaneously at the tail end of the fight. The Shady Figure has 4000 more health as compared to its partner so I had Ophilia apply Elemental Break to the Shady Figure before hitting them both with Ignis Ardere. Both bosses have their elemental weaknesses blocked which meant that I didn't bother trying to break their shields, instead having Ophilia cast away whenever her boost meter was full. The Shady Figure actually hit the "red" health first so I applied Elemental Break to the Mystery Man before using Ophilia's second max boosted spellcast which finished off both enemies simultaneously. Just the way that I planned it out, excellent.
That brought an end to the Chapter 3 collection of stories. There was one more group to go followed by any potential endgame superbosses that the Sorcerer class might be strong enough to face. Stay tuned as this Sorcerer playthrough began to draw closer and closer to its ultimate conclusion.
