Octopath Traveler: How to Unlock and Master the Four Secret Advanced Jobs

Introduction to Secret Jobs in Octopath Traveler

So you've been grinding away with the eight core jobs, and they're fine—but they're only half the picture. Hidden across the world are four secret advanced jobs—Warmaster, Runelord, Starseer, and Sorcerer—that don't just add variety, they completely shatter the game's power ceiling. The best part? Even if you switch back to another class, these jobs give you permanent stat bonuses that stick around forever, which means your characters get tankier and stronger just for unlocking them.

But the real game-changers are the skills. The Sorcerer spams triple-target elemental spells that hit like trucks, while the Warmaster's Winnehild's Battle Cry unloads every weapon type on every enemy at once. And then there's the Surpassing Power passive—this is the big one—it raises your damage cap from 9,999 to 99,999. That's not just a numbers flex; it's borderline mandatory for post-game nightmares like the Gate of Finis gauntlet or the Devourer of Men super-boss.

Unlocking these beasts requires hunting down remote shrines and beating bosses at level 50+, though you'll want your party around level 55-65 to not get absolutely demolished. Each shrine sits in a different corner of the map: Sorcerer lurks in East Duskbarrow Trail, Runelord is tucked in West Everhold Pass, Starseer waits in Western Wispermill Flats, and Warmaster hides in North Riverford Traverse. They're intentionally off the beaten path, and each fight tests your party composition and strategy to the limit.

Now, here's the honest truth—you can clear the main story without ever touching these jobs. But if you're planning to dig into optional content like the Ruins of Eld or take on the true endgame challenges, these advanced classes aren't just "nice to have." They're your entire toolkit. They transform late-game battles from slugfests into tactical puzzles where you're finally the one dealing the ridiculous damage, and honestly, that feeling of breaking the old damage cap for the first time? Absolutely worth the effort.

Essential Preparation: What You Need Before Attempting Secret Shrines

Recommended Party Level and Gear

Here's the thing about secret shrines—they don't slap a level requirement on the door, but the bosses inside absolutely will one-shot you if you're not prepared. Each shrine boss is basically a stat check, and walking in under-leveled means you're just watching a fancy death animation.

So here's what you're actually aiming for:

Shrine (Job)	Safe Level	Speed Target	HP / Def Benchmark	Key Resistance Needed
Archmagus (Sorcerer)	45-48	240+	2,200 HP / 350 Def	Elemental resistance
Runeblade (Runelord)	46-49	250+	2,300 HP / 380 Def	Fire & Lightning
Starseer (Starseer)	48-50	260+	2,400 HP / 400 Def	Light & Wind
Warbringer (Warmaster)	50-53	270+	2,600 HP / 450 Def	Physical defense

Those benchmarks aren't suggestions—they're survival thresholds for the opening attacks. If your HP looks low, you're probably right.

Which brings us to gear. For the magical trio (Archmagus, Runeblade, Starseer), you'll want to stack elemental defense like your life depends on it—because it does. The Elemental Hat (124 E.Def) and Enchanted Robe (200 E.Def) are your best friends here. For the Warbringer's physical onslaught, switch to Crystal Helm (110 P.Def) and Crystal Armor (212 P.Def).

Accessories? The Forbidden Shield gives you 132 in both defenses, which is just chef's kiss for flexibility. The Protective Necklace adds +65 to both, and if you're still struggling, craft a Clarity Stone + at any blacksmith for an extra 90 E.Def—it's cheap insurance.

Essential Passive Skills and Abilities

Before you even think about stepping into a shrine, your party needs the right passive skills slotted. These aren't nice-to-haves—they're the difference between a victory lap and a wipe.

Saving Grace (Cleric): This is S-tier, non-negotiable. It lets you heal past your max HP up to 9,999, which basically nullifies those scary one-shot mechanics. Overheal your tank and breathe easy.

Surpassing Power (Warmaster): If you're hitting the 9,999 damage cap, you're not ready for these bosses. This raises your cap to 99,999, and it's mandatory for Sorcerer spells, Divine Skills, and any max-boosted nukes.

Resist Elements (Starseer): Approximately 30% elemental damage reduction, and it stacks with buffs like the Dancer's Divine Protection or Ratatouille food for up to 45% total reduction. Against these elemental-heavy bosses, that's huge.

Second Serving (Hunter): Gives physical DPS builds a 50% chance for a follow-up hit. It's not mandatory, but it speeds up breaking shields and adds free damage.

Patience: 25% chance for a bonus action at the end of the turn. Extra heal, extra break, extra anything—it's just universally helpful.

Consumables and Battle Items Checklist

Look, you can have the best gear and passives in the game, but if you get petrified and don't have a cure, you're done. Here's what you're stocking up on:

• [ ] Herb-of-Grace Bud / Herb Elixir: Cures petrification. You can grab these at the Black Market in New Delsta Flats during night. Don't get caught without one.
• [ ] Revitalizing Jam: Fully restores HP, SP, and BP to one character. Get these from Olneo in Quarrycrest via Steal or Purchase. They also drop rarely (3%) from Cait enemies, or you can find guaranteed ones in the Forest of Purgation and Refuge Ruins chests.
• [ ] Olive of Life (L): Revives at 100% HP and cures all ailments. Steal from Mathilda in Goldshore. Bring at least one for emergencies, especially for the final Galdera sequence.
• [ ] Olive of Life (M): Revives at 50% HP. Steal from Marina near Goldshore docks—a decent backup if you're short on Ls.
• [ ] Herb-of-grace Potion (x10): Get 10 of these from Susanna Grotoff after completing H'aanit's Chapter 3. It's a nice stockpile.

Why Sorcerer Should Be First

So you're staring at four secret shrines and wondering where to even begin? Pretty much every veteran player will point you toward the Shrine of the Archmagus first, and there's a very good reason: once you can cast three-element spells every single turn, the remaining three bosses start crumbling way faster.

Dreisang himself isn't too scary—he starts with just 4 shield points that only ramp up to 10 after each break, and his 185,000 HP is actually the lowest of the four shrine guardians. But the real prize is the Sorcerer job, which slaps on +222 Elemental Attack and +56 Critical while giving you that triple-cast ability. That combination guarantees a 4-hit break on Starseer's brutal 18-shield phase and makes breaking Balogar and Winnehild so much more reliable.

You can pull this off around level 42-45 if you're sharp, though 48+ feels way safer. The toolkit is pretty tight: you absolutely need Merchant's Hired Help (Mercenary) for those AoE sword breaks, and the Cleric Reflective Veil + Dancer's Sealticge's Seduction combo becomes your main damage source since it bounces Dreisang's own spells back at him. Keep those veils up, and he'll basically kill himself for you.

Recommended Party Compositions

The winning strategy for tackling these shrines in order revolves around horizontal swapping—pairing characters front and back so you can pivot mid-fight without losing momentum. A lineup that's proven itself runs Cyrus/Scholar+Sorcerer with Ophilia/Cleric+Starseer on one row, Olberic/Warrior+Warmaster with H'aanit/Hunter+Runelord on another, and Primrose/Dancer+Starseer with Tressa/Merchant+Runelord on the third. That leaves Alfyn/Apothecary+Sorcerer and Therion/Thief+Warmaster to round out your eight characters.

For skills, you can't skip the core four: Reflective Veil, Sealticge's Seduction, Hired Help (Mercenary), and Thief's Shackle Foe for cutting physical damage. The Sorcerer shrine specifically demands two dedicated Clerics—or one Cleric plus a Scholar running the Cleric sub-job—just to maintain constant Reflective Veil stacks, since that's genuinely your primary way to burn Dreisang down.

Gear checks are straightforward: grab the Battle-tested Staff and Elemental Augmentors for your casters, and make sure everyone hits about 1,200 HP after equipment or they'll fold to the big hits. When it comes time to permanently assign these jobs, the community has it pretty locked in: Cyrus claims Sorcerer for his insane Elemental Attack, Tressa grabs Runelord for the Transfer Rune + Rest combo, **H'aan

Boss-Specific Strategies and Counters

Countering Dreisang's Elemental Rotation

Dreisang doesn't mess around, cycling through elements in a strict order: Fire → Ice → Lightning → Wind → Light → Dark, then repeating the pattern. You'll know what's coming because he announces it with Element Augmentation, which gives him a nasty 2-turn damage amp for that specific element—and you don't want him hitting you with a boosted element.

Here's the key: if you can break him during this amp phase, you'll cancel the boost and reset his entire rotation back to Fire, which is huge. But once you get him below 50% HP, he starts using Extreme Elemental Augmentation, which hits your whole party three times with the current element, and yeah, it's as bad as it sounds.

Luckily, breaking him in phase 2 prevents that Extreme Augmentation for a full 5 turns, so you've got some breathing room. One more thing—his Divine Majesty debuff cuts your damage by 50% and locks your buffs, but you can completely ignore it if you have a Starseer casting Celestial Intervention.

The cheese strategy? Stack 8+ Reflective Veil buffs and watch his own spells obliterate him.

Surviving Winnehild's Shield Counter

Winnehild starts off reasonable enough with 5 shields and 2 actions per turn, but the moment you break her once, she instantly jumps to 8 shields—and the UI refills them immediately with no warning. Break her again? Now she's at 12 shields and it happens just as fast, with zero animation delay.

There's no grace period; she just... gets back up with more shields than before. At 90% HP, she enters her All Weapons phase, attacking six times per turn with Battle Cry, and it's absolutely brutal.

Your best bet is a Sorcerer with Runelord support who can blast through 8-12 shields in a single turn using multi-hit elemental spells. While you're setting that up, Shackle Foe and Physical Prowess will help you survive that six-hit barrage long enough to re-break her.

Managing Steorra's BP Starfall

Steorra's Supernova is a party-wiping nightmare that deals light elemental damage to everyone while completely eradicating 1 BP from your entire party, leaving you defenseless and vulnerable.

Here's how you recover: Merchant's Donate BP bypasses silence and BP drain entirely, giving you instant BP back, while Alfyn's Concoct with Purifying Dust + Essence of Pomegranate restores 2 BP to the whole party for zero SP—that's free recovery.

To survive the follow-up attacks, you'll want Saving Grace so your heals can exceed 9999 HP, and Hang Tough to keep characters at 1 HP if they'd otherwise die. Oh, and keep Reflective Veil up at all times because it bounces her physical attacks back for free shield breaks.

One last tip: Steorra's Prophecy divine skill scales with your party's current BP (+20%

Post-Unlock: Maximizing Your New Secret Jobs

You’ve clawed your way through the optional dungeons, beaten the secret bosses, and now you’re staring at these four broken jobs. Here’s how to actually use them without wasting your time on suboptimal builds.

Sorcerer: Elemental Domination Builds

The Sorcerer’s whole gimmick revolves around Aelfric’s Auspices, the Cleric Divine Skill that makes every non-Divine skill trigger twice for three turns. When you boost a Sorcerer spell like Fire Storm to 3 BP, it already hits all enemies twice—but with Aelfric’s active, that becomes six hits per target. That’s not just damage; that’s break meter deletion and lifebar vaporization in one action.

So who should hold this nuke button? Therion, hands down. His natural speed and E.Atk growth are already great, but the real kicker is his weapon flexibility. He can equip both a Harvester Dagger and a Tradewinds Spear, each slapping on +30% elemental damage from augmentor passives. That’s a clean 60% boost that Cyrus and Ophilia can’t touch—they’re stuck with staves only, which caps them at half that bonus. It’s not that they’re bad; they’re just leaving free damage on the table.

For passives, you want Surpassing Power (raises the damage cap to 99,999), BP Eater (+50% damage when spending BP), Elemental Aid (+30% elemental damage), and Augmented Elements (+20% E.Atk). Gear-wise, grab the Adamantine Hat (+100 E.Atk) and Sorcerer’s Robe (+120 E.Atk), then stack Elemental Augmentor accessories. With this setup, Therion can solo-wipe most encounters before the enemy gets a turn.

Runelord: Weapon-Element Synergy

Runelord looks weird at first, but it’s secretly one of the most flexible supports in the game. Transfer Rune takes whatever elemental buff you’ve cast on yourself and applies it to the entire party for three turns. Everyone’s basic attacks now trigger that rune, which means you’re spreading elemental damage, break coverage, and BP generation across all four characters in one move.

Here’s the weird part: rune damage scales off the weapon’s elemental attack, not your total E.Atk. That means you want weapons with sky-high E.Atk values, not necessarily the ones with good stats overall. The Harvester Dagger (292 E.Atk) is the universal best-in-slot for most characters, but Tressa breaks this rule completely. She’s the best Runelord because she can wield the Tradewinds Spear (240 E.Atk) while also using Sidestep to give the entire party evasion and Rest to heal herself—all while her rune-enhanced attacks keep hitting like trucks.

Her combat loop is stupidly simple: Turn 1, Transfer Rune + Sidestep; Turn 2, slap on a weakness-matching rune and attack; Turn 3, Rest or repeat. You’re untouchable, you’re healing, and you’re dealing damage that scales with gear instead of stats. It’s the ultimate low-investment, high-return build.

Starseer: Support and BP Management

Starseer is the backbone that lets your DPS characters actually pop off. Starsong buffs every stat—P.Atk, P.Def, Spd, E.Atk, E.Def—by 20% for two turns in a single action. That’s a full-party power spike that costs you almost nothing, and it stacks with most other buffs you’re already running.

But the real magic is BP Boost, a passive that gives each ally a 50% chance to gain +1 BP at the start of every turn. Over a long fight, that’s dozens of extra BP you didn’t have to spend actions generating. Combine it with Shooting Stars (a 2-hit light/dark AoE that refunds 1 BP to the caster) and you’ve got a self-sustaining engine that never runs dry.

When you need burst, Celestial Intervention grants all allies Physical & Elemental Critical ×2 for two turns, and Starseal guarantees the next hit for everyone will be a critical. That’s perfect for breaking a boss’s shield phase or setting up a 99,999 damage cap strike. And if you’ve got a full party sitting on max BP, Steorra’s Prophecy deals AoE damage that scales at 0.6× per BP—up to 9.6× multiplier total. It’s niche, but it can clean up a wave of adds in one flashy move.

Warmaster: Physical Damage Optimization

Warmaster is the answer to the question, "What if I want to hit one thing very, very hard?" It learns a single-target, 400-potency skill for every weapon type: Brand’s Thunder (sword), Heaven’s Drop (polearm), Nightmare (dagger), Tiger Rage (axe), Arrowstorm (bow), and Holy Trinity (staff). You’ve got a tool for every weakness, and each one can crack the damage cap with the right setup.

Passives are non-negotiable: Surpassing Power, BP Eater, Fortitude (up to +100% damage at low HP), and Physical Prowess (+50% physical damage at full boost). Weapon choice matters more here than anywhere else—the Battle-tested Blade (390 P.Atk), Battle-tested Axe (380 P.Atk), and Battle-tested Spear (380 P.Atk) are your holy trinity, with the Giant’s Club (350 P.Atk staff) rounding out the set.

Damage calculation gets nuts. You’ve got a 2× break modifier when the enemy’s shield is down, critical multipliers ranging from 1.25× to 1.75×, and elemental/weapon amp passives at 1.3× each. Stack all that, add Aelfric’s Auspices for double-casting, and a 4×BP Warmaster skill on a broken target will hit 99,999 twice in one turn. That’s a theoretical 199,998 damage in a single action.

H’aanit is the ideal candidate thanks to her monstrous P.Atk growth and Capture utility for emergency buffs, but Olberic works if you prefer his Challenge path. Either way, you’re building a delete button for bosses.

What Level Should I Be for Each Shrine?

Most players agree that level 45 to 55 is the sweet spot for a comfortable clear, though anything under 40 is going to feel rough unless you've got some serious optimization going on. Veterans have pulled it off at level 38-40, but they were running stacked BP-boost setups with Divine Skills and the best gear in the game. If you want the "no-stress" benchmark that most guide writers swear by, you want to be level 50 or higher.

The Shrine of the Runeblade (Runelord) is the easy introduction, while Shrine of the Starseer and Shrine of the Warbringer will absolutely wreck you if you're not ready. Technically you can access these after Chapter 2-3, but most players knock out all eight Chapter 4 stories first, which naturally puts you around level 45-50 and opens up the best shops. That's when you should start thinking about the secret shrines.

Can I Change the Unlock Order?

You're not locked into any specific sequence, so you've got some solid options depending on how you want to play. The story-friendly route starts with Sorcerer, then Starseer, Runelord, and Warmaster last. Sorcerer is the easiest fight, Starseer gives you support tools for the Chapter 4 bosses, and Warmaster is the final exam.

But if you want to break the game early, the power-spike rush goes Sorcerer → Runelord → Warmaster → Starseer. You grab Sorcerer first, then immediately chase Runelord for Tressa's Transfer Rune + Sidestep combo, which trivializes most physical threats.

The safety-first approach flips that: Runelord → Sorcerer → Warmaster → Starseer. You get Runelord immediately so Tressa can dodge everything with Transfer Rune + Sidestep, making the rest of the shrines way safer.

For endgame players with Battle-tested weapons, the "save the best" order is Warmaster → Starseer → Runelord → Sorcerer. You've already cleared all Chapter 4s, so you tackle the hardest fight first while you're at peak power. Your party level matters too—below 50, start with Sorcerer; at 55+, you can consider Warmaster earlier.

What If I'm Getting One-Shot?

Getting deleted before you can act? Yeah, that's the secret shrine experience until you gear up properly. Your front row needs 2,500+ HP, 300+ Physical Defense, and 250+ Elemental Defense minimum to survive those turn-1 ultimates.

Defensive skills are non-negotiable. Apothecary's Rehabilitate gives you status immunity, Merchant's Sidestep dodges physical attacks entirely, and Cleric's Reflective Veil bounces elemental spells back. For gear, you want the Crystal armor set or Enchanted Armor for phys def, Calamity Shield or Elite Shield for elemental defense, and Protective Necklaces or Empowering Bracelets for HP.

The right passives make or break these fights. Saving Grace (Cleric) lets healing exceed max HP, Hang Tough (Warrior) keeps you at 1 HP if you were above 25%, and Patience (Hunter) gives you a 25% chance for an extra turn.

For Winnehild (Warmaster), you need to stack Physical Defense to 450+ using the Imperial Shield (+135 Phys Def) and Physical Belt (+50 Phys Def) to survive her multi-hit rampage. For Dreisang (Sorcerer), use Reflective Veil with Sealticge's Seduction to bounce his own spells back and watch him kill himself.

The pre-buff strategy is clutch: before the fight, pop Merchant's Sidestep for 5 dodges, Warrior's Stout Wall for +50% Phys Def, and Apothecary's Rehabilitate to avoid getting cheesed by status effects. If you're still getting one-shot, you're either under-leveled or missing one of these pieces—there's no shame in coming back later.

Conclusion

Unlocking the secret jobs transforms Octopath Traveler's endgame from a grueling test into a showcase of overwhelming power. By strategically tackling the shrines, equipping the right gear and passives, and mastering each job's unique strengths, you'll be ready to conquer even the most daunting optional challenges. Now, go claim that power and break the damage cap for yourself.