Alright, now we were starting to get to the real challenges. Sorcerer Ophilia was about to begin the final set of Chapter 4 stories where many of the game's most dangerous bosses would be lurking. The Sorcerer class continued to have outstanding damage output, if not quite as good as the Runelord and Warmaster classes due to its dud of a Divine skill, however it lacked any kind of defensive abilities whatsoever and often left Ophilia a complete sitting duck. Basically she had to kill things quickly before they could kill her because she was unable to hold out for long in any kind of extended fight. Now typically I'll use this time to knock out some of the optional side dungeons before returning to the main plotline. However, there were a series of critical equipment upgrades available for Ophilia if she could complete a couple of the Chapter 4 stories, and as a result, I dove right into her own tale in the town of Wispermill:
This is the story sequence where Ophilia manages to get herself captured and then winds up snapping her adopted sister Lianna out of her trance by telling a story about a dead bird. (No, I will not stop making fun of how poorly this is written.) Anyway, the Ebony Grotto dungeon that Ophilia had to pass through was a total breeze, one of the easiest areas that I'd encountered on this solo playthrough. Virtually everything inside was weak against light element and the monsters had health totals low enough that Ophilia could use her one starting boost point, then blast them into oblivion with Lux Congerere. That produced the perfect after-battle results screen with money, XP, and job points all getting the 10% bonus. I ran through the dungeon at breakneck speed opening up all the treasure chests while barely taking any damage on Ophilia. She simply needed to keep consuming Inspiriting Plums to keep from running out of spirit points.
Mattias is the boss at the end of this story sequence and he's much, much easier to defeat than many of the other Chapter 4 bosses. I had made one pit stop with Ophilia before heading to Wispermill, venturing into Cyrus' Chapter 4 dungeon to grab a Void Amulet and its protection against dark element abilities. The standard tactic for Mattias is to equip that Void Amulet along with a Tempest Amulet to block damage from wind element as well, which together basically eliminate everything that Mattias can do. For whatever reason, I opted to equip a Conscious Stone instead with Sorcerer Ophilia to protect against the stunning effect on his Black Thunder ability. That was a clear mistake, as Mattias spams his Black Gale (wind element) spell constantly whereas he doesn't use Black Thunder until he's under 25% HP remaining. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble in this boss fight if I'd gone with the normal accessory setup.
Anyway, Mattias is always weak to light element and he was taking a pounding from Ophilia's Lux Congerere. Then he summoned some additional minions and broke out his Infernal Flame ability:
Infernal Flame blocks the use of all offensive magic spells - ack! That was pretty much the calling card of the Sorcerer class and left Ophilia with few available options. In fact, the one ability that wasn't blocked from use was Elemental Break which is apparently classified as a physical attack. I remembered earlier swinging and missing with Elemental Break when Ophilia had been blinded so yeah, I guess that staff attack was indeed physical and not magical in nature despite applying the elemental defense debuff. In any case, this was a massive penalty for Ophilia who couldn't use any of her six elemental attack spells so long as it was active. In order to dispell the Infernal Flame, Ophilia needed to break Mattias, which first required eliminating the minions who were locking out all of his weaknesses. She was able to use the Forbidden Bow to kill the first set of Senior Cultist minions, who were then replaced by this group of Black Matter elementals. They were weak against staff blows and thus Elemental Break was actually useful here as an offensive weapon, not simply as a tool for debuffing elemental defenses. Ophilia slowly eliminated this second set of minions while continuing to eat Medium Healing Grapes for HP recovery.
Once the second set of minions was gone, Ophilia could hit the weaknesses on Mattias for the purpose of breaking his shields. However, his four weaknesses are swords, axes, ice element, and light element. Ophilia had no access to swords or axes and she couldn't use ice or light elements so long as Infernal Flame was in effect! I had to fall back on hitting Mattias with soulstones which I had not been very diligent in collecting since the Sorcerer class didn't seem to have any use for them. Well, in this one specific situation, I very much did need the soulstones and wished that I had a lot more of them. Ophilia was able to break Mattias and get her spells back, only for him to summon his third group of Augmented Remnant minions and then reimpose Infernal Flame a second time, argh! I had to fall back on the use of more soulstones to eliminate this final set of minions and work through the remaining health on Mattias himself. The last few rounds of the combat saw Ophilia alternating soulstone use and eating Medium Healing Grapes, not exactly the stuff of heroic legends. Long story short, I did win this battle on the first attempt and didn't need to use any Refreshing Jams. Ophilia went through more than 50 of those Healing Grapes though (!) - the boss was honestly tougher than I'd been expecting. Infernal Flame really neutered the Sorcerer class into uselessness.
The other Chapter 4 tale that I wanted to complete was H'aanit's story. Fortunately this also tends to be one of the easiest of the bunch as the boss at the end doesn't have the kind of nasty tricks pulled out by Darius or Werner. Ophilia equipped an Antidote Stone to counteract the poison in the Grimsand Ruins and had almost as easy of a time making her way to the finish as what she'd experienced in the Ebony Grotto. She had to accumulate more than one boost point to defeat most of the monsters but still blew away everything without much trouble. To deal with Redeye, I had her equip a Conscious Stone for protection against stunning and otherwise made sure to have the Empowering Necklace for +1000 HP and as much physical defense as I could muster together. I made a fairly big mistake here, forgetting to equip the Elemental Aid passive support skill which as a reminder increases elemental damage by 50% at the cost of needing double SP for abilities. Elemental Aid was the obvious choice in any situation where Ophilia would have to heal with Refreshing Jams, as they would keep topping off her SP total and ensure that she never ran out.
That extra damage would have come in handy here since Redeye has a hefty 109,000 HP to work through. I knew that Ophilia would need to rely on Refreshing Jams for healing since Medium Healing Grapes and their 1750 HP restored were insufficient to keep pace with the physical punishment that Redeye was dishing out. Normal attacks from the boss dealt about 700 damage, Sweep attacks did about 1100 damage, and its Rend ability was the most serious in the 1300-1400 damage range. Many of my other solo characters have used an evasion setup to dodge some of Redeye's blows but that wasn't an option here, not with Ophilia having such poor natural evade. She simply had to tank the incoming damage and burn through healing consumables as needed.
On the offensive side of the combat, Ophilia was able to take advantage of the fact that Redeye is always vulnerable to light element. This is the "enemy who shifts its weaknesses every round" gimmick fight but it really didn't matter for Ophilia as she was able to break out Lux Congerere for massive damage at all points in time. The big danger came when Redeye dropped under 50% health remaining and went up to three actions per round which plunged Ophilia into mortal peril. Twice she survived with 200-300 HP remaining which was followed by the use of a Refreshing Jam - always make sure to grab all those Nourishing Nuts to increase max health! Long story short, Ophilia kept pounding away and was able to win the combat on the first attempt at the cost of three Refreshing Jams and one Revitalizing Jam.
With these two Chapter 4 stories complete, Ophilia was able to reap their associated rewards. First I sent her to S'warkii where she was able to Purchase the Battle-tested Bow from H'aanit's mentor Z'aanta. This is the bow with the highest physical attack value in the game, not something that Ophilia particularly cared about due to her spellcasting ways but still better than any other bow options at the moment. More important was the opportunity to Purchase the Bishop's Staff from Ophilia's sister Lianna, the best item in the game to equip in the staff slot. While the Battle-tested Staff has a higher boost to elemental attack, the Bishop's Staff was the superior option for Sorcerer Ophilia because it also boosts the damage of light element spells. The horribly unhelpful in-game text doesn't detail the amount of this bonus but the out-of-game resource materials explain that the bonus is actually 30%. This was a huge deal as Ophilia could always use Lux Congerere against broken opponents to get that bonus 30% additional damage; if she brought along the Elemental Aid support skill, she wouldn't even need to apply the Elemental Break debuff to hit the 9999 x 3 damage cap. It also felt thematically appropriate that the light element Sorcerer spell would be the most effective one for Ophilia to use, just as in her normal Cleric job.
I had wanted to finish Ophilia's and H'aanit's respective stories for the purpose of unlocking these two items. (The town of Wispermill also blocks all of its side stories and Purchaseable items until finishing Ophilia's story which makes it a good choice to complete quickly.) Now I took the time to finish exploring the rest of the world map, visiting the remaining towns out in the third ring where Ophilia hadn't gone before. She briefly brought along a friend for this part of her journey:
I revived Olberic and had him stand around using the Defend command to absorb some XP for leveling purposes. Olberic must be Level 30 in order to Challenge the egg thief and complete the third tier of the "Kaia Mother of Dragons" side story and this journey out to Orewell and Riverford was a perfect opportunity to gain those levels. I've actually done this with every previous solo character, each time when I wasn't using Olberic himself as the featured character anyway, and I figured that it was worth mentioning here. Once I had fast travel unlocked to all of the remaining towns, I spent the next hour running around completing all of the various side stories and Purchasing the various stat-boosting nuts to be found there. This can be somewhat tedious after playing the game a bunch of times already, however it really does make a big difference in terms of pumping up the stats of the solo character. I didn't even mind this time around since it had been so long since I last played Octopath Traveler. I've also learned some time-saving tips, like saving up all of the Challenge fights and then doing them at once to avoid having to swap gear on and off Olberic repeatedly.
Once that was out of the way, I started running some of the optional side dungeons with Ophilia. I started with the Moldering Ruins near Duskbarrow where I had to carefully select the other party members. This dungeon required Ophilia to Guide Ashlan to knock out the third part of his quest sequence, Therion to open the purple chests in the dungeon, Tressa to Purchase the Critical Nut held by the Grave Robber NPC inside, and then Olberic to Challenge that same NPC to complete another side story. (Just make sure to Purchase the Critical Nut before finishing the side story or it disappears forever!) Ophilia managed to find one of the rare Chubby Cait monsters inside and her Sorcerer spells were strong enough to one-shot it on the first turn of battle for a nice 2500 XP payout. That was much less impactful than defeating the early game Caits since Ophilia's levels were already up to 12k experience required, still a nice break of luck though.
Quite a few of the optional side dungeons in the outer ring have bosses included. I started with the Captain's Bane dungeon, which is technically in the second ring but does have the dangerous Leviathan lurking at its conclusion. This time I made sure to bring the Elemental Aid support skill along with a Conscious Stone accessory to prevent Ophilia from getting stunned. With the Bishop's Staff in hand and Elemental Aid to further increase her damage output, Ophilia simply blew away the undersea creatures that accompanied the Leviathan. The two urchin minions each have about 8000 HP and her max boosted Lux Congerere went far, far beyond that in terms of damage. The Leviathan itself was weak against wind element so Ophilia calmly broke the big octopus and then slammed it with another max boosted Lux Congerere which nearly hit the 9999 x 3 damage cap. The boss fight was over so quickly that Ophilia's lack of defense and crazy rate of SP consumption never mattered.
I also realized at this point that having finished Ophilia's and H'aanit's Chapter 4 stories meant that the "Again with Alaic" side story opened up. This is a very simple side quest that involves talking to Alaic in Victor's Hollow and then defeating a weak Bandit Leader in the nearby Forest of No Return. (Yes, it's actually named the Forest of No Return, I'm not making that up.) The quest reward was the best bow in the game for Ophilia's Sorcerer setup:
The physical attack on the Primeval Bow of Storms was much less than on the Battle-tested Bow, which would have meant something if Ophilia was ever using her physical attack for anything. What did mean something was the new bow having the same elemental boost property as the Bishop's Staff: 30% more damage from wind element spells. Now Ventus Saltare would get the same advantage as Lux Congerere which would be highly useful against a number of upcoming bosses. Ophilia gave the item a test run against the Dreadwolf optional boss in the Maw of the Ice Dragon side dungeon, a test run that the new bow passed with flying colors. These enemies were all weak against wind element and Ventus Saltare shredded them with extreme prejudice. I had Ophilia use the Defend command for the first two rounds of combat, then unloaded with her spellcasting and everything died instantly (this boss only has 12k health). It might as well have been a random encounter, sheesh Ophilia! 
What followed was a montage of side boss slaying as Ophilia traveled around to the various optional dungeons in the outer ring destroying everything in sight. I started with the Loch of the Lost Kingdom outside of Grandport and traveled in a clockwise circle around the rest of the map. First to fall was the Tyrannodrake, then the Lord of the Sands in the Marsalim Catacombs, then Gigantes in the Refuge Ruins. All of these optional side bosses were weak against wind element, or their minions were weak against wind in the case of the Lord of the Sands, and they fell in the same fashion as the Dreadwolf. Defend for two rounds, then unload the max boosted Ventus Saltere for the win. The Lord of the Sands took slightly longer because I had forgotten to assign the Elemental Aid support skill to Ophilia for extra damage and the creature didn't have any elemental weaknesses at all. It still wasn't much of a challenge to defeat in a slightly longer fight - so much for this set of optional bosses.
Eventually all of these optional side areas were complete and it was time to return to the main challenge, the remaining Chapter 4 stories. The next big batch of loot for Ophilia would unlock after completing Tressa's and Therion's stories and therefore I headed to Grandport to knock out the easier of those two options. Tressa's story had another dungeon located in the sewers to pass through, a place where I often need to equip a Conscious Stone on my solo characters as one of the monsters has a stunning ability. This was unnecessary for Sorcerer Ophilia as she simply ended all of the random encounters on the first round of combat by blasting away with the appropriate elemental spell. Soon enough she reached the end of the area and I could begin planning the best way to handle Esmeralda, the boss at its conclusion.
This was going to be a lot harder than the random encounters. Esmeralda has a number of nasty abilities, starting with three different elemental blades attuned to fire, ice, and dark element which will temporarily lock out melee attacks, physical abilities, and magical abilities respectively. Fortunately she always uses the Red Blade (melee attacks) first and the Violet Blade (magic) last and I was hopeful that I could knock Esmeralda into her second AI routine before the Violet Blade ever showed up. In order to counter these blades, I equipped Ophilia with the Inferno Amulet to nullify the fire damage as well as the Leviathan Shield which has a secondary property of reducing ice damage by half. This would do nothing for the Violet Blade but again my hope was that it would never show up. The other big danger from Esmeralda is her physical attacks: she will debuff your physical defense and then use Five Strikes which hits five times. Ophilia did not have enough evasion to dodge these blows and probably could not survive a full combo with her defenses debuffed. I had to win quickly with overwhelming offense before Esmeralda could set up that combo.
The overall plan here was simple: hit Esmeralda as hard as possible and win the battle ASAP before she could land all of her nasty stuff. Esmeralda starts with only four shields and I had Ophilia cast Ventus Saltere on the first turn to pop off three of them. Then on the second turn I used an Energizing Pomegranate for two more boost points before launching a max boosted Lux Congerere on the third turn. The first tick of the spell broke the last remaining shield and then the second two ticks hit for the maximum 9999 damage. Ophilia then had to eat a Refreshing Jam on the turn that Esmeralda was broken because the boss always uses Five Strikes when recovering from a break and that would instantly kill Ophilia if she wasn't at full health. It always feels weird to do that but something it's the only move possible. Fortunately now Esmeralda swapped over to using Black Blade, which causes a ticking death clock to appear above your character's head, something that was much less dangerous for Ophilia than the elemental blades. I had to burn another Refreshing Jam to heal off the damage from the Five Strikes but then found myself in this position:
Ophilia was fortunately able to act at the end of one turn and then the beginning of the next turn with Esmeralda having six shields in place. This was a perfect setup: an unboosted Ventus Saltere at the end of this turn, a double boosted Ventus Saltere to land the break at the beginning of the following turn, and then a max boosted third Ventus Saltere agaisnt the broken boss for the finishing touch. The three combined spellcasts inflicted about 60,000 damage and that was enough to polish off this opponent together with the damage landed from the previous break. Esmeralda never managed to use Violet Blade or even Blue Blade so I guess the protection against ice element from the Leviathan Shield had been unnecessary. This was the Sorcerer class at its finest, powering through a dangerous opponent with overwhelming offense to paper over its defensive liabilities.
As obnoxious as Esmeralda had been, I was concerned that Darius would be even worse. The boss of Therion's Chapter 4 story is infamous as a roadblock foe for my solo characters due to the way that he steals away your items and has his "Call Comrade" instant kill move that can't be dodged or avoided in any way other than breaking him at the exact right moment. There are two key breakpoints to watch in the Darius fight: when he drops below 50% health (at 49k HP remaining out of his 98k total) and again when he drops below 25% health (at 24k remaining). Darius goes from two actions per round up to three actions per round at the first breakpoint and will use his Call Comrade move at the second one. My goal with Sorcerer Ophilia was to weaken him down close to the 50% health breakpoint, then try to burst through the remaining health all at once, hopefully dodging the Call Comrade ability altogether. Ophilia had to equip a Conscious Stone for stun protection and otherwise could only hope for the best.
The Darius battle always begins with him stealing away the party's items; he must then be broken to get them back again. Darius has four shields initially and convenient weakness to wind element which allowed Ophilia to knock off three of these shields with a single casting of Ventus Saltere. By the way, note that an unboosted and unbroken casting of Ventus Saltere was dealing 2800 x 3 = 8400 damage to Darius, holy cow! 
The Sorcerer class was no joke now that it had scaled up with maxed out elemental attack, all of its support skills in play, and boosted wind/light element damage from Ophilia's equipment. Now Ophilia had to break Darius on the following turn by casting Ventus Saltere again, only there was a problem here: Darius kept using his Steal SP ability and removing 234 spirit points! This left Ophilia with a mere 6 SP remaining which wasn't enough to cast another Ventus Satere... which meant no breaking the boss... which meant no way to restore items. I had to re-run the battle several times until Ophilia acted before Darius on the second turn of combat and could get the second Ventus Saltere off before he used Steal SP. The alternative would have been running the battle without Elemental Aid in place but I really didn't want to do that - Ophilia needed that extra damage to defeat Darius as quickly as possible.
The turn order RNG lined up correctly on about my fourth try at the battle, with Ophilia landing the second Ventus Saltere to break Darius and deal 2700 / 3700 / 3800 damage in the process. This allowed Ophilia to use a max boosted spell of her choosing on the following round for the guaranteed 9999 x 3 = 30k damage and just like that Darius was right around the half health breakpoint. I actually overshot the damage that I intended as his healthbar dropped into the "yellow" range to indicate he was under half health, but I found that Ophilia had one extra round before Darius gained his third action. I had her gulp down a Revitalizing Jam which restored all HP, SP, and boost points followed by casting a max boosted Ventus Saltere using the restored boost points. Darius was not broken but he still took 9999 x 3 damage anyway due to his weakness to wind element. That led to this situation:
Darius' health had now dropped into the "red" zone which meant that he was under 25% remaining. He was guaranteed to use Call Comrade on his next sequence of moves which would instantly kill Ophilia and lose the battle. However, her previous casting of Ventus Saltere had knocked Darius down to three shields remaining which set him up for an unboosted Ventus Saltere on this turn for the shield break, followed by Lux Congerere for the guaranteed 30k damage and a victorious ending to the fight. Call Comrade never showed up and Darius basically never got to use his three actions per turn setup either, Ophilia simply killed him too fast by burning through his final 50,000 health in a handful of turns. This is the biggest advantage of the Sorcerer class: not only does it inflict amazing area-of-effect damage attuned to any of the six elements, the class also has incredible shield-breaking power since its spells always hit three times. Ophilia was popping the six shields on Darius like they weren't even there and that was the biggest reason why this fight went so smoothly. Victory on the first attempt that made it through the initial turn order / Steal SP shenanigans.
With the storylines of Tressa and Therion completed, Ophilia could lay her hands on more sweet loot:
Additional side quests open up each time that a character finishes their Chapter 4 stories, some of which require more than one character to have finished their story sequences. There are a pair of these associated with Tressa and Therion: Keeping Up with the Wyndhams which yields the Blessed Blazon and Mikk and Makk Make Good which grants Mikk and Makk's Shield. These are both excellent items although it's the shield that serves as the far better prize. While the physical and elemental defense are a good bit lower than the Forbidden Shield, Mikk and Makk's Shield has a bonus of +178 evasion instead of a penalty of -171 evasion. This gigantic net increase in total evasion made it viable to swap over to the Ethereal Dancer Garb in the armor slot which has another 166 evasion on it. With all of those items combined together, even Ophilia could reach 668 evasion and start dodging many of the incoming physical blows. This was exactly what she needed to handle some of the remaining Chapter 4 bosses and it's the reason why I'd been approaching the story sequences in the order that I had.
With this new evasion configuration available for the first time, I next sent Ophilia after Werner at the end of Olberic's Chapter 4 story. Werner is typically one of the most dangerous of the Chapter 4 opponents due to his extremely heavy physical attacks, his tendency to debuff your character's physical defenses, and the need to tie up both accessory slots with status protection against stunning and terror conditions. Very few characters have enough health and physical defense to tank through his attacks which means that dodging them through high evasion is usually the best tactic. I equipped Ophilia with Mikk and Makk's Shield, the Ethereal Dancer Garb, and even dropped the Adamantine Helm in favor of the Silent Bandana which brought her total evasion up to 782 points. She also had to remove the Empowering Necklace and its +1000 HP for Conscious and Calming Stone accessories which gave Ophilia less room for error. The good news was that this stacked evasion had Ophilia dodging about 60% of Werner's attacks, not quite as good as some of my other solo characters but hopefully good enough to get the job done.
The other big danger in the Werner fight comes when he drops below half health and increases from two to three actions per round. This often increases his damage output to the point where it's no longer survivable for solo characters. Ophilia's solution here was the same tactic that she'd employed against Darius: damage Werner down to just over half health, then burst through his remaining lifebar all at once to skip the more dangerous second half of the boss battle. Werner begins with five shields so I had Ophilia knock one of them off with a soulstone, then three more with a max boosted cast of Ventus Saltare to leave a single shield remaining. I whittled the boss down with a few spellcasts of elements that Werner wasn't weak against, then followed the earlier strategy of a double boosted Lux Congerere for the break into a max boosted Lux Congerere against Werner with his shields down. This left him with almost no health remaining, and Ophilia ate an Energizing Pomegranate into a final max boosted Lux Congerere for the immediate victory on the next turn. Werner never had the chance to do anything in the second half of the fight and Ophilia only had to consume a single Refreshing Jam for health recovery.
Werner is another one of the bosses that unlocks a lot of additional equipment upon defeat. The Crystal Armor (highest physical defense in the game) can be found in Cobbleston, the Battle-tested Blade is available for Purchase in Wellspring, and the Crystal Vest with the best combined physical / elemental defense (205 points in each) is available in Victor's Hollow, not to mention several additional stat-boosting nuts too. I didn't have much use for this stuff with Ophilia right now but hey, you never know, right? Might as well pick up everything since Ophilia had effectively infinite money to spend by now. More useful was the Captain's Badge accessory obtained by completing the "Back with Bale" side quest. This item increases XP gain by 50% while equipped which meant that it would be glued to Ophilia's side for all random encounters going forward. She had just hit Level 70 which is where the experience requirements start to balloon out of control in Octopath Traveler so this was certainly appreciated.
I sent Ophilia back to Duskbarrow at this point for a belated completion of Cyrus' Chapter 4 story. I had cleaned out about half of the associated dungeon earlier when grabbing the Void Amulet for the Mattias fight which allowed Ophilia to speed through the remainder of the ruins. Lucia is the boss at the end and the trick here is that the player does NOT want to break through her 30 shields as that unlocks more dangerous versions of the boss afterwards. Shield breaking wasn't a problem for Sorcerer Ophilia as the boss wasn't weak against any of her six elements, only five different kinds of physical damage (everything except staffs). I gave Ophilia her evasion setup again along with a Conscious Stone and had similar results as what she experienced against Werner, a bit more than half of Lucia's attacks avoided. This meant that I was able to approach the fight slowly and rely on Medium Healing Grapes instead of needing to use Refreshing Jams in what turned into a very relaxing battle. Keep healing as needed, slap Lucia with Elemental Break, then hit with a max boosted Ventus Saltere or Lux Congerere. The damage was only about 5800 x 3 = 17,000 per casting but that was plenty since Lucia couldn't really hurt Ophilia. This was the easiest boss fight yet amongst the Chapter 4 opponents.
There was one somewhat useful new item in the wake of defeating Lucia: the Absolute Zero Staff from another side quest. This has the same property of 30% more damage attuned to ice element as the Bishop's Staff (light element) and the Primeval Bow of Storms (wind element). However, the Absolute Zero Staff only has +293 to elemental attack while the Bishop's Staff has +352 to the same stat, and since they both occupied the same item slot, there was essentially no situation where it was worth using the ice-based weapon. I held onto it in case I'd ever find something that was only weak against ice element and demanded the use of Glacies Claudere which didn't seem likely.
The last remaining Chapter 4 stories had now become pretty routine for Sorcerer Ophilia. She pursued Alfyn's story sequence next which has the Ogre Eagle as its boss at the conclusion. This boss makes heavy use of wind element damage which can be countered by equipping a Tempest Amulet. It also likes to inflict lots of random status ailments and its Toxic Rainbow ability starts sapping away max HP at the end of each round once the creature falls below half health. Readers will probably know the drill by now: Sorcerer Ophilia equipped her evasion gear and then tried to knock the Ogre Eagle to just over half health, then burst through the remaining HP all at once to minimize the use of Toxic Rainbow. Once again Ophilia had good luck at dodging many of the bird's physical attacks while the Tempest Amulet countered its elemental damage. When the Ogre Eagle was down to 55k health remaining, Ophilia broke it with a casting of Glacies Claudere followed by a max boosted Ventus Saltere for 9999 x 3 damage. One more Energizing Pomegranate, one more max boosted Tonitrus Canere, and the battle was over. These boss fights were playing out exactly as I'd hoped: the Sorcerer class had enough damage to essentially skip the second half of each combat through massive burst attacks.
Primrose's Chapter 4 story and Simeon were the only obstacles remaining for Ophilia to complete the full game clear. I've faced this boss so many times with past solo characters that I have the setup memorized: bring a Void Amulet to nullify his frequent dark element damage along with an Articulate Stone to block the constant silencing attacks. Simeon is the only mainline boss in Octopath Traveler to have two separate phases, the first one including two puppet minions that can do some nasty stuff if they're left on low health. Ophilia didn't need to worry about that, of course, as both of the marionettes were weak against fire element. I had her tag the Father Marionette with Elemental Break since it has the higher HP total and then unloaded with Ignis Ardere which did more than enough damage to one-shot the pair of them. That left Simeon alone who does basically nothing in this first phase; I actually had Ophilia slap him repeatedly with her physical attack since Simeon was weak against staffs. That allowed me to save SP and go into the second phase of the battle with full spirit points on the gauge:
Simeon Phase Two is yet another one of these boss fights that becomes vastly more dangerous after he drops under half health. There was unfortunately no way to break the boss as he has every weakness blocked except daggers and that was a damage type that the Sorcerer class couldn't access. Instead, I had Ophilia chip away at his health bar while relying on Medium Healing Grapes for health restoration. Simeon's spells did absolutely nothing as all of them were attuned to dark element while his physical attacks were dodged about half the time thanks to running Ophilia's evasion setup once again. The situation was safe enough that Ophilia could apply Elemental Break's debuff followed by a max boosted spell; Lux Congerere did about 9000 x 3 = 27k damage under these conditions even though Simeon wasn't weak to the element and had all of his shields intact.
Ophilia carefully chipped Simeon down to the halfway point on health, then did her usual damage spike of a triple boosted spell immediately into a max boosted spell on the next turn. She couldn't break through Simeon's shields but this pairing still inflicted a good 40,000 damage and left Simeon practically crippled. The boss increases from two to three actions per turn at this point and starts pulling out his Act of Impulse ability which hits for extremely heavy physical damage. The one saving grace when it comes to Act of Impulse is that the attack has low accuracy and Ophilia dodged it like a champ. She only needed to avoid two such blows because I once again ate an Energizing Pomegranate into another max boosted spellcast for the quick victory. Ophilia didn't need to use a single Refreshing Jam here; in fact, she had used a grand total of one such item against Werner, Lucia, the Ogre Eagle, and Simeon combined. The Sorcerer class simply won the battles fast enough that they weren't required.
That brought an end to the main storyline in Octopath Traveler with all of the Chapter 4 quests completed. The gameplay itself wasn't completely finished, however, as I could tell that the Sorcerer class was strong enough to test its abilities against the endgame superbosses. This class might not be as strong as the Warmaster but I wanted to see how well it would do for itself. Ophilia's journey will complete for good next time in Part Five of this report.
