Olberic's travels continued as he prepared to face off against the formal ending to each character's story sequences in Chapter 4. While this was the stopping point for many of my solo characters, I already knew that Warmaster Olberic would be venturing onwards to test himself versus the optional superbosses, making the Chapter 4 bosses more of a warmup practice session. Rather than head off into some of the side dungeons as I normally do, I opted instead to head immediately for Riverford to complete Olberic's tale. This was the moment where I allowed him to unlock the Divine skill for the Warmaster job:
He had 56,000 job points saved up in reserve, heh. I could have learned this Divine skill far earlier in the game but there genuinely hadn't been any need to do so, not with Olberic crushing his opponents left and right. With the ending stages of the game approaching though, I was content to unsheath the power of Winnehild's Battle Cry and allow Olberic to start experimenting with his ultimate ability. There's a good argument to be made that this is the highest-damaging skill in the whole game and especially when combined together with the Warmaster's Physical Prowess passive support skill. According to the algorithms guide, Winnehild's Battle Cry adds half of each weapon's physical attack value to the character's physical attack (on top of the normal amount for that weapon) when calculating its damage. This would mean that Olberic's devastating Forbidden Axe would effectively function with 585 physical attack instead of its base 390 attack value when calculating damage and everything would still be getting boosted by 50% thanks to Physical Prowess. While each individual hit from Winnehild's Battle Cry would be weaker than an ability like Qilin's Horn or Phoenix Storm, much of their damage was getting wasted at the moment because they were running into the 9999 damage cap. Winnehild's Battle Cry would spread out that damage because it hit *SIX* times in a row, once with each of the Warmaster's equipped weapons, and that allowed for a much higher total than the 10k cap from a single ability. This was the physical damage version of Balogar's Blade and we had already seen how monstrous that was in the Runelord solo report.
I had sent Olberic straight after Werner because completing this particular story would allow him to pick up several important pieces of equipment that would power up the Warmaster Divine skill even further. The Lord's Manse dungeon presented no issues and soon Olberic was knocking on the door of the foul tyrant. I equipped the standard Conscious Stone and Calming Stone to block Werner's status ailments and was pleased to see that Olberic still boasted nearly 6000 HP. This should give him enough health to be safe without needing to worry overmuch about getting bursted down by a sequence of bad attacks.
Werner is always a dangerous opponent but Olberic's high health, strong physical defenses, and his Physical Prowess support skill took some of the shine off his opponent's blade. Even with Werner's Oppression debuff to lower his physical defenses, Olberic was only taking about 1000 damage from the incoming boss attacks. It was incredibly useful to have a permanent physical attack/defense buff countering the opposite debuff from the enemy. As far as the general tactics for the battle were concerned, I wanted to minimize the time spent dealing with Werner's more dangerous second half AI routine where he gets an extra action each round and adds additional attacks. The tried-and-true strategy for this fight therefore revolves around knocking him down to half health and then trying to burst down the remaining lifebar on the boss. I was careful not to break Werner, cutting his shields down without removing them entirely. This Tiger Rage did 7000 damage despite the Opression debuff and knocked out a shield in the process. Once I had Werner down to a single shield remaining, I had Olberic use Qilin's Horn specifically because Werner lacked a spears weakness and it still did 9999 damage when fully boosted.
Soon enough Werner's health shifted over to yellow text and indicated that he had fallen below the halfway point. I waited until the current Oppression debuff ran out, then broke the last shield and prepared to use Olberic's Divine skill for the first time. I knew that the damage output would be enormous but how enormous would that be?
OK, so, uh, wow - that was an awful lot of damage there! 
I tallied up the six attacks and it came out to 50,708 damage in total. Werner has 101k health and since he was under the halfway point already this was enough to finish him off completely. There was no need for a second half of this battle because the boss simply died immediately. Yikes Olberic, maybe slow down there a little bit? This was why I previously refrained from unlocking the Warmaster's Divine skill back during the Chapter 2 stories since it would have trivialized the earlier portions of the game even more so than what we had already seen. I think that Olberic legitimately could have one-shotted some of the lower health bosses even while taking into account the fact that he had weaker weapons and a lower level back them. Winnehild's Battle Cry is ridiculously strong as an ability and it would be the main tool in Olberic's arsenal when he prepared to take on the superbosses later on down the road.
Those challenges were still ahead in the future though. At the moment, it was time to keep getting stronger by Purchasing the new equipment which had unlocked in the wake of completing Olberic's Chapter 4 story. This was the big pickup:
The Battle-tested Blade is unequivocably the best sword in the game, tied with several other weapons for the highest physical attack value at +400 and also containing a juicy bonus to critical chance as well. It was nice having Olberic's top attack value in the swords slot once again since Olberic always defaulted to the swords slot at the start of each battle. While it might seem like a minor thing, having to spend a second or two selecting a different weapon at the beginning of each combat added up over time. Much better to have the sword as the default best weapon and be able to use it immediately against anything that had an innate swords weakness. More importantly though, the Battle-tested Blade has an additional poorly documented in-game property that "augments physical abilities". What this actually means is that any physical abilities that the character uses while the Battle-tested Blade is equipped deal 30% additional damage. It doesn't even matter if the ability uses a sword itself, it simply has to be physical in nature. This was the reason why I wanted the Battle-tested Blade so badly since it would power up every Warmaster ability for the rest of the game, including all six strikes from Winnehild's Battle Cry. Did you think the damage was disgusting before? Olberic was only getting started here. The 30% damage bonus from the Battle-tested Blade only applies to abilities and not basic auto attacks but that was a limitation that Olberic could live with.
There were other treasures to pick up as well starting with the Crystal Armor in Cobbleston. This has been useful for some other solo characters but not so much for Warmaster Olberic, as its +300 physical defense simply ran into the 999 maximum value for the stat and ended up wasting most of the benefit. I'm still annoyed that this restriction exists in Octopath Traveler and it made the Crystal Armor an unappealing choice. A better addition was the Battle-tested Shield which was available in Marsalim. While there was no elemental resistance to be found on this shield, the constant regeneration of 200 HP and 8 SP per round made Olberic significantly harder to kill. It also let me spam the Warmaster abilities in random battles without fear of running out of spirit points or need to bother with Inspiriting Plum items. A lot of random encounters started looking like this:
Accumulate boost points for a round or two and then unload Tiger Rage against those poor unfortunate souls on the other side. Thanks to the 30% damage bonus from the Battle-tested Blade, Olberic didn't even need max boost points to wipe the field in many of these encounters. Two boost points was often sufficient. I tried to use Tiger Rage (or Yatagarasu if the enemies had a daggers weakness) in battles where the monsters were somewhat more dangerous and then regenerate spirit points by using auto attacks in less difficult setups. The passive regeneration from Olberic's new shield was enough to keep him mostly topped off on health and he didn't even need to use Healing Grapes more than occasionally. In some ways the game was actually getting easier for Olberic as he moved into its later stages simply because his class was so absurdly powerful.
The picture above was taken in the Ebony Grotto as part of Ophilia's Chapter 4 story, not that much of anything is visible beyond the flashy Tiger Rage graphics. I was prioritizing Ophilia's story sequence to unlock another useful piece of equipment afterwards and it wouldn't hurt either that Mattias tends to be easy to defeat. Unlike most of my other solo characters, Olberic hadn't ventured up to Northreach yet and therefore when he found an Adamantine Hat in the Ebony Grotto it was a new piece of equipment. The bonus to elemental attack was irrelevant for Olberic but the physical and elemental defenses on the new hat were significantly better than the old Oasis Hat that he'd been wearing. I would use the Adamantine Hat in virtually every situation going forward for Olberic.
Eventually it was time to face Mattias at the end of the dungeon. Olberic prepared himself with a Void Amulet against dark element damage although I forgot this time to bring a Tempest Amulet to block the wind element damage from Mattias' frequent Black Gales. This didn't end up mattering as it turned out that Mattias had an easily exploitable vulnerability to swords. Olberic was able to break out Guardian Liondog once again for shield breaking and deal some legitimate damage in the process. 1500 damage per successful hit was pretty impressive for a unboosted attack against an unbroken target. This was enough to pop the shields on the boss and I saw no reason not to unload with Winnehild's Battle Cry for well above 50,000 damage to the fallen prophet. Mattias tried to reload his shields afterwards and I kept hitting with Guardian Liondog to smash them down once again. Just out of curiosity, I decided to see how much damage the same ability would do if fully boosted when the boss was broken. Well, it turned out that this was 5000+ damage per swing and across a bunch of repeated strikes that added up pretty fast. Yes, even Guardian Liondog could now be a massive damage dealer for Olberic! He ended up slaying Mattias before the boss summoned any minions at all in what turned out to be a brief fight.
I had undertaken Ophilia's Chapter 4 story because it opened up the village of Wispermill and unlocked a series of useful side quests. Along with the standard collection of stat-boosting nuts to be found, Olberic was able to complete the "Back with Bale" side quest and obtain the Captain's Badge accessory. This item increases experience gain by 50% for the whole party and synergized together with the Warmaster's Extra Experience support skill:
Together the two of them doubled all experience gain and for someone who's played this game a lot the results were very noticeable. A good example was winning a Challenge duel against the 10 starred Swordsman Yuri in the Marsalim marketplace. This was an easy fight for Olberic by now and normally the experience payout would be 2000 points, an excellent result and more than what the party would get for defeating one of the Chubby Cait enemies. However, with his double XP gain in place, Olberic instead picked up 4000 points plus the 10% bonus for breaking his opponent! I could grind up his level quickly by repeatedly defeating this opponent if that was my goal but there was no need to engage in those shenanigans. Olberic would pick up plenty of XP from running through all of the normal dungeons. But since I was going to be clearing out those areas anyway, I figured that I might as well do so with the Captain's Badge in place, thus the reason why I completed Olberic's and Ophilia's stories right away. The accessory only becomes available upon completing both of their Chapter 4 stories and this timing lined up nicely with Olberic's desire to finish his own story for the Battle-tested Blade.
At this point I belatedly sent Olberic into some of the optional side dungeons that he normally would have completed before starting any of the Chapter 4 tales. This was the moment where he explored the Refuge Ruins, the Marsalim Catacombs, the Moldering Ruins, and so on. These areas were all pretty routine by now since there wasn't much that could hurt Olberic at this point. I fought the optional minibosses that popped up like the Lord of the Sands and Gigantes but there wasn't much to say; Olberic flattened them with Winnehild's Battle Cry and they died instantly. There was only one new item of note obtained in these areas, a slightly stronger spear named the Master's Spear found in the Marsalim Catacombs. I'll repeat my longstanding complaint that Octopath Traveler has almost all of its best loot found in towns via Purchase/Steal from NPCs and has virtually nothing useful in treasure chests out in dungeons.
I sent Olberic after Esmeralda next since there were more goodies to be unlocked for completing Tressa's story. Olberic equipped an Inferno Amulet to protect against one of the three blades that she could use and otherwise stacked as much evasion as possible. Esmeralda started the battle by using her Red Blade ability and while Olberic was protected against the fire damage it locked out his auto attacks for the time being. My response was to switch over to using Tiger Rage, not boosting the ability and simply using it in place of a normal melee attack. This worked for a couple of rounds and chipped away at Esmeralda's axes weakness. Then she countered with her Blue Blade ability that dealt ice damage and locked out Olberic's physical abilities as well. Literally every single offensive ability was locked out on the interface with red text. Now what was I supposed to do?
Well the first thing was to guzzle down a Refreshing Jam to restore HP and SP from the dire state of the image snapped above. I had earlier consumed two Refreshing Jams against Werner and this was the second opponent of the game that forced Olberic to use these items. Once he was healed back to full, I could fall back on more item usage and Olberic smashed a Wind Soulstone to break through Esmeralda's one remaining shield. This was the first time that Olberic had needed to use soulstones but the item worked like a charm and he immediately regained use of his auto attacks and physical abilities. I followed up with Winnehild's Battle Cry for 50,000+ damage and this caused Esmeralda to shift into her secondary AI routine. She started making use of her Black Blade ability that put a ticking death clock over Olberic's head which turned out to be much less dangerous than stripping away his physical abilities. Esmeralda also switched to a swords weakness and that left her easy prey for Guardian Liondog's shield-breaking capabilities. I broke the boss a second time and a max boosted Guardian Liondog finished her off.
Finishing Tressa's Chapter 4 story was only the first half of my current goal. In order to open up additional high end gear, Olberic also needed to defeat Darius and complete Therion's Chapter 4 story. I had reasonably good luck at landing the plot-mandated 3% Steal odds and Olberic made his way up to the dreaded Darius fight at the end of this tale:
Darius is a major variant-buster thanks to his item-stealing abilities and his infamous "Call Comrade" move which instantly kills any non-Therion solo character if it pops up. Fortunately, the Warmaster was one of the few classes that had ready solutions to Darius' annoying antics. Darius always starts out the battle by stealing away your items and has to be broken in order to get them back. This can be exceedingly difficult for many classes but not so much for the Warmaster who could always hit the daggers weakness on this boss. Since Olberic had plenty of health for the moment, I was having him employ Qilin's Horn while the boost meter filled up rather than use auto attacks. Darius was going to steal away Olberic's SP anyway, might as well make use of them before they were robbed. Note in the picture above that an unboosted Qilin's Horn against an unbroken target was still dealing 5300 damage. That was totally nuts and suggested that the ability could deal as much as 30,000 damage if it wasn't being limited by the 9999 damage cap. Anyway, Olberic broke the remaining shields on Darius and secured control over his items once again.
I did not want to use Winnehild's Battle Cry for the moment, saving it for after Darius dropped below half health with the intention of powering through the more dangerous second half of the boss fight. This would hopefully allow Olberic to skip past the Call Comrade nonsense entirely. As a result, the battle stretched out for a little while as I held back Olberic from using his most powerful attacks. I knocked Darius down to a single shield remaining and then hit him repeatedly with Guardian Liondog since there was no swords weakness to exploit on Darius. I was waiting for him to steal away Olberic's items again and I was ready when it happened:
A simple dagger slash is all that it required to get those items back immediately. Sadly, only a minority of the solo classes have access to daggers and otherwise have to spend long rounds fiddling with soulstones to hit the wind element weakness on Darius. (He locks out spears, axes, and ice element in this part of the battle which doesn't leave a lot of options.) The Warmaster had no such problems and with Darius unable to monkey around with item stealing he ended up being a bit of a paper tiger. Olberic invested boost points into auto attacks and quickly peeled off Darius' shields with a series of dagger blows, then when the boss finally fell below half health Olberic initiated a third and final break. Now it was time for the real pain with Winnehild's Battle Cry and the Warmaster Divine skill blasted through the remainder of Darius' healthbar. There was never any chance for Darius to attempt his Call Comrade maneuver and this ended up being a pretty easy victory on the first attempt.
It's always a bit ironic that defeating Darius (along with Esmeralda) unlocks the high evasion Mikk and Makk's Shield, an item that would be absolutely perfect for the Darius fight. You can never have it until after the moment when it's most needed, heh. I found myself keeping the Battle-tested Shield equipped on Olberic for random encounters so that he could spam his abilities more often without running out of SP, then switching over to Mikk and Makk's Shield for the superior evasion in boss fights. Completing Tressa and Therion's Chapter 4 stories also unlocks the side quest that yields the Blessed Blazon, an accessory with +100 physical and elemental defense. It's a nice general use item that Olberic would equip frequently. Finally, there was also a new weapon for Purchase back in Rippletide:
The Battle-tested Spear has the highest physical attack on any spear and comes in just slightly below the +400 physical attack on the Battle-tested Sword. It's another amazing weapon and one of the few ways to inflict blindness status on enemies in Octopath Traveler. I spent the money to pick up the new spear (note that this is yet another top-end item only available via Purchase/Steal) and immediately used it to beat up Captain Leon Bastralle in a Challenge duel. The former pirate captain had a 9 star rating and some nice abilities but Warmaster Olberic was basically an incarnate death god by this point and laughed off such feeble opposition.
I decided to head after Alfyn's Chapter 4 story next as it was yet another requirement for a lategame weapon. The monsters in the Forest of Rubeh are worth substantial amounts of experience and Olberic was happily gaining close to 2000 XP per victory. For the Ogre Eagle boss at the end, I gave Olberic a Tempest Amulet to protect against wind element damage and then the Blessed Blazon for more physical/elemental defenses. I've gradually come to the realization that the Ogre Eagle inflicts too many different kinds of status ailments to block them all, it's usually not worth tying up accessory slots in a fruitless attempt. The Ogre Eagle was the first boss that Olberic had come across with no physical weaknesses to exploit at all, only ice element available as a possibility at the outset. This meant that it was another rare opportunity to pull out Ice Soulstones from his stash and use them to break through the shields. I knocked the boss down to a single shield remaining and then smacked it around with Guardian Liondog while chipping away at the bird's health. This was a low-danger situation and I had plenty of time to use Healing Grapes and Inspiriting Plums rather than Refreshing Jams.
Things became more interesting when the Ogre Eagle finally dropped below half health and initiated its Toxic Rainbow ability. This is a unique attack the slowly reduces the max HP of each character in the party at the end of each turn. It's a major problem for low offensive variants... and of course no obstacle at all for the Warmaster. This was the signal to break one final soulstone to punch through the creature's shields, then let fly with Winnehild's Battle Cry for the predicted mass damage. Olberic was getting close to the point where all six of the individual strikes would produce 9999 damage outputs with just the bow and the staff still sitting under the damage cap. By the way, the order in which the weapon strikes take place in Winnehild's Battle Cry is not what you might expect. The six weapons are listed as sword, spear, dagger, axe, bow, staff but that's not the order of the Divine skill's attacks. Instead they proceed in the order of sword, bow, axe, dagger, staff, and finally spear. I have no idea why this skill uses a different order and it normally doesn't matter but occasionally it can affect when the target has its shields broken. Anyway, the Ogre Eagle took the expected 50,000 damage and keeled over instantly afterwards. Scratch one bird.
Finishing Alfyn's Chapter 4 story meant the usual additional side quests and stat-boosting nuts available for Purchase. I try to mention this from time to time while writing the reports because it's an important part of making each character stronger. A single Large Fortifying Nut added a whopping 38 points to physical attack for Olberic, a very nice pickup indeed! All of the stat gains are weighed by character and class so Olberic did see smaller gains in his weaker stats when consuming their associated nuts, however naturally it never hurts to have additional points in everything. Over the course of the full game Olberic had gained more than 200 points of physical attack from eating these nuts and that was a big deal indeed. He was getting close to maxing out the physical attack stat altogether and ditto for physical defense. While Olberic's elemental defense was weaker, he was still very sturdy and he'd even managed to pick up a good deal of evade. I was running the Ethereal Dancer Gear along with Mikk and Makk's Shield in this screenshot since tankier armor mostly ended up getting wasted by hitting the 999 stat cap. It was better for Olberic to pick up some evasion and avoid more of the incoming attacks.
Of course the real reason why I'd completed Alfyn's tale was for the purpose of unlocking another weapon. This was the Battle-tested Dagger which can be Purchased from Vanessa Hysel down in the bowels of the Undertow Cavern. It's the best physical dagger in the game by a wide margin and has the secondary property of further increasing the wielder's evasion. I believe that the user does get this benefit even while attacking with other weapon types although I'm not completely certain on that. I'd been saving this optional side dungeon until after completing Alfyn's Chapter 4 story and Olberic quickly grabbed all of the treasure chests inside along with the new dagger. Then he Challenged Vanessa and knocked her out again - she had it coming after the scam that she pulled back in Goldshore! 
I was starting to run out of the remaining Chapter 4 stories and headed off to Duskbarrow to complete Cyrus' journey next. Olberic had briefly dipped into the Ruins of Eld earlier for the Void Amulet used against Mattias and this time I had come back to complete the full task of clearing the dungeon. For the Lucia boss at its conclusion, I had to be careful not to break through the 30 shields and trigger a change in her AI routine. Guardian Liondog was therefore out as an option since I specifically did not want to break through the shields on this opponent. Instead Olberic used this moment to get some practice with his new Battle-tested Dagger via Yatagarasu. He was producing well over 3000 damage on an unboosted attack against an unbroken target, another sign of the Warmaster's crazy damage output. I didn't want to waste Refreshing Jams needlessly in this battle and therefore hit Lucia with Winnehild's Battle Cry as soon as Olberic had sufficient boost points available. It didn't do as much damage because the shields on the boss were unbroken but Olberic still inflicted somewhere between 30,000 to 40,000 damage with his Divine skill. I let the boost meter fill back up and used Winnehild's Battle Cry again, and that was that. Since Olberic started the battle with 8000 HP he didn't even need to use any healing items, winning before he had ever been in danger.
You're never going to believe this but there was another weapon that Olberic could acquire by completing one of the last remaining Chapter 4 stories. This time it was H'aanit's sequence that took Olberic back to the deserts of Marsalim once again. After wading through the poison-heavy opposition in the Grimsand Ruins, Olberic faced off against the boss Redeye. The gimmick on this boss is that it shifts its set of weaknesses at the start of every round, something that perhaps would have been troubling if Olberic hadn't been able to hit the creature with strong weapons no matter what weaknesses it might be showing. I used an unboosted Guardian Liondog whenever there was a swords weakness showing, and it's worth noting here that this Warmaster ability had really been growing on me over time. All of the other Warmaster non-Divine skills would just hit for 9999 damage and get stuck there but Guardian Liondog would hit anywhere from 3-6 times and could therefore wind up producing far more damage. It was also fantastic for breaking shields as it had been for the duration of the Warmaster run. In any case, Olberic punched through the shields on Redeye and then Winnehild's Battle Cry did its typical thing. Rinse and repeat twice to win the battle.
With Redeye eliminated it was time to reap the rewards for heroism. H'aanit's story ends with the rescue of her mentor Z'aanta and Tressa was quite happy to Purchase away his excellent weapon. The Battle-tested Bow is the best bow in the game (at least in terms of physical attack) and could occasionally decrease the target's physical defense on a successful hit. I was also able to send Olberic on a series of fetch quests that ultimately completed the "Zeph and Mercedes" story and produced the Memorial Axe. This is the axe weapon with the top physical attack in the game, coming out slightly higher at +400 as compared to the Forbidden Axe's +390. Aside from the slightly higher attack value, the Memorial Axe also lacked the accuracy penalty on the Forbidden Axe and it was nice to get out from under that issue. Olberic now had all of the Battle-tested items in the game between the sword, spear, dagger, axe, bow, staff, and shield. He wasn't using the Battle-tested Axe because it has a lower attack value (paired with a boost in ice/lightning element damage) and he wasn't using the Battle-tested Staff because it similarly was designed for a spellcaster. The top physical attacking staff is something called the Giant's Club which Olberic had been using for some time. It was far weaker than the other weapons though at only 229 physical attack while they were all in the 380-400 range which meant that staff attacks remained a last resort.
Primrose had the last remaining Chapter 4 story to complete, but before that could begin I had some housekeeping to do first. I had completely forgotten about the Leviathan and the Captain's Bane dungeon and now belatedly returned to Goldshore to finish up with them. This optional boss fight was fully as much of a slaughter as expected; imagine an axe blade sinking into the head of an unlucky octopus over and over again, that's pretty much how it went down. Then I still needed to reach Everhold in the Highlands which Olberic hadn't even visited up to this point in time. This meant fighting more monsters and conducting more side quests in the town before beginning the story sequence itself. I hadn't remembered that one of the blocked houses in Everhold has the Deathly Blade available for Purchase inside, an extremely rare weapon that can occasionally one-hit kill the target. Bosses are immune to the effect though and the Deathly Blade has a low attack value so this weapon still remains pretty useless from what I can tell.
OK, let's finish up with the last of the Chapter 4 stories. I brought the standard Void Amulet and Articulate Stone accessories for the boss fights at the end since Olberic had plenty of base health without needing to add more. Simeon Phase One involves fighting against the boss himself along with two marionette minions. The two puppets have the most dangerous attacks in this phase and I resolved to eliminate them one at a time through the Warmaster's Divine skill. Olberic charged up for a big attacks against the Dancer Marionette and, wait, Winnehild's Battle Cry hit everything on the screen simultaneously?! Somehow I had missed this fact and thought that it was a single-target ability. I'd been mentally comparing it to the Runelord's Divine skill Balogar's Blade which only hits one target at a time. Apparently Winnehild's Battle Cry lacks that same restriction and pulverizes everything in sight. The Warmaster Divine skill emphatically does not need this power but has it anyway and, well, there went the two marionettes. Simeon himself was left redlined and quickly dispatched to conclude the first phase of the battle.
Simeon Phase Two is another one of the boss fights that becomes much more dangerous after the opponent falls under half health. He's quite tame during the first half of this battle if the player has a Void Amulet to protect against his dark element spells. Simeon is only vulnerable to daggers and nothing else during this phase which makes him a massive pain for many variant setups. As usual, that wasn't a problem for Warmaster Olberic and I knocked Simeon down to a single shield remaining with a series of Yatagarasu attacks. I held off on breaking Simeon for the moment and slapped him around with Guardian Liondog and Phoenix Storm abilities since the boss wouldn't be broken by either of them. With the Battle-tested Bow in hand, an unboosted Phoenix Storm was dealing almost 5000 damage against an unbroken target who wasn't even weak to bows. (Apologies for continuing to make this point, the Warmaster class simply has ABSURD damage output!) You know the drill from here, once Simeon's health turned yellow and indicated that he had dropped below the halfway point, Olberic broke the last remaining shield with another Yatagarasu and let Winnehild finish things off. Another 50,000 damage and another dead boss. I think that I used two Medium Healing Grapes and a couple of Inspiriting Plums in this battle - what a drastic change from some of the other solo characters who had all kinds of trouble with Simeon.
That was all she wrote for the Chapter 4 stories. I had been expecting Winnehild's Battle Cry to put up incredible numbers and it still managed to overperform. Although this set of bosses hadn't been completely routine, Olberic didn't face much in the way of challenges and only rarely needed to resort to Refreshing Jams. He had a full stock of them saved up and ready for future use. It looked like the real test would come against the optional superbosses in the days ahead. Would the Warmaster end up being the strongest of the twelve jobs in Octopath Traveler? That was what I intended to find out in the fifth and final part of this report.
