Octopath Traveler 2 Merchant Job Guide

This is an in-depth guide to the Merchant job in Octopath Traveler 2. This guide will break down the Merchant job including Skills and interaction with other Jobs of Octopath Traveler 2.

What is the Role of a Merchant

Merchants are mostly a supportive job, being able to provide supportive skills like Donate BP or some of the secondary effects of Hires, or the Hired Help skill. They’re also deceptively durable between Rest and Sidestep.

The Merchant is also a great job for grinding, being able to provide both additional money and JP through combat. The Arrow of Fortune Skill can quickly build up JP and ease early grinding woes.

In Octopath Traveler 2, Partitio Yellowil has Merchant as his main role. Partitio is a young merchant who has seen the rise and fall of the pioneer town that he calls home. Having gone from riches to rags, he sets out on his journey looking to eliminate poverty from the world.

How the Merchant Job Changed for Octopath Traveler 2

The Merchant hasn’t changed all too much from Octopath Traveler 1, only having two skills that changed at all. The main one is the loss of an AoE Elemental Attack.

The AoE Elemental Attack has been removed, instead being replaced by a new skill called Arrow of Fortune. This start skill for Merchants allows you to generate JP based on the damage dealt from a bow attack.

The biggest change for skills is Hired Help. Hired Help is no longer a starting skill, and also has new options. It has gained the ability to restore SP, while also raising Elemental Attack; delay attacks with a Staff Attack; debuff Physical Attack and Physical Defense of foes; Consistently deal damage to Shield Points with generic Physical Damage; and Vertern Soldier is now all weapon types, instead of just Sword.

Merchant Skills: Overview and Recommendations

Like all classes, the Merchant has both Active Skills and Support Skills that can affect their combat ability. Below you can read the overview and recommendations for each skill individually, followed by a segment with recommendations on which skills to pick first and why!

Active Skills

Active Skills are skills used in battle, to either attack, provide buffs, or apply debuffs. Below are the Active Skills available to Merchants. Merchants have access to Arrow of Fortune and Rest by default, the other skills require the use of Job Points, or JP to unlock.

Among the Active Skills are Divine Skills, which are powerful skills that are unique to each class. These however cannot be unlocked until all other skills have been unlocked first, which requires a large amount of JP, in addition to their own unlock cost.

Arrow of Fortune

• Skill Type: Bow
• SP Cost: 12
• Effect: Unleash a powerful bow attack on a single for and receive JP. The more damage you deal, the more JP you receive
• Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP Spent.

Arrow of Fortune is a great skill for both damage and grinding. The additional JP effect is however limited by the monster’s HP, despite the wording. This holds the skill back a bit early on but allows it to scale as foes get stronger.

While being a strong damage skill, the bonus JP it grants can be a strong support skill too. It can heavily shorten the grind for maxing out a single class. Combined with earlier access to Hard Worker and more support for EXP and JP gain, it’s surprisingly potent.

Rest

• Skill Type: Recovery
• SP Cost: 0
• Effect: Restore your own HP and SP, while removing Status Ailments.
• Boost Effect: Increases the amount of HP and SP recovered per BP spent.

Rest makes the Merchant much less reliant on healing items and allows them to shrug off many harmful effects. While it’s typically less than a healing item without boosting, it restores both HP and SP

Collect

• Skill Type: Acquisition
• SP Cost: 2
• Effect: Collect money from a single foe.
• Boost Effect: Increases Collect chance per BP spent.

Collect relies on chance, but the chance of successfully collecting increases as the foe’s HP get lower. Having this early on can make it very easy to get many of the purchasable items or use Hired Help without worry. The collection amount varies by the enemy, with bosses generally giving high amounts.

Ember

• Skill Type: Fire
• SP Cost: 7
• Effect: Deals fire-based damage to a single foe
• Boost Effect: Increases damage per BP spent.

Being the Merchant’s only Magic option early on, it’s not terrible as a single-target damage spell. While not every foe will be weak to it, most foes won’t resist it much either.

Donate BP

• Skill Type: Recovery
• SP Cost: 6
• Effect: Grants 1 BP to a single ally
• Boost Effect: Increases the BP given by one per BP spent.

Despite the name and wording, this skill doesn’t require BP to use unless you boost it. It’s actually quite strong as a supportive skill, letting allies do multiple back-to-back fully boosted attacks.

Sidestep

• Skill Type: Buff
• SP Cost: 10
• Effect: Grants a 100% chance to dodge one physical attack.
• Boost Effect: Increases the number of attacks dodged by one per BP spent.

Sidestep is a great defensive tool, fully mitigating physical hits. The only downside to it is that multi-hit attacks will eat multiple charges of it. This makes it better at avoid single large hits, rather than a flurry of attacks.

Hired Help

• Skill Type: Attack
• SP Cost: 25
• Effect: Pay Money to summon hired help to the battlefield.
• Boost Effect: Increases the attack count by one, recovery of stats, or duration of any applied buffs or debuffs by two turns per BP spent.

Hired Help consists of 6 different skills, each providing different effects with the more expensive options generally dealing higher damage. Each provides some form of utility, but not all of them provide damage.

Mercenary summons basic mercenaries. This deals Sword damage to all foes, while increasing the party’s physical defense. This summon costs 150 leaves.

Ruffian summons a band of thieves, which reduces the physical attack and physical defense of all foes. This summon costs 800 leaves.

Thespian summons jesters that increase the party’s Magic Attack and restores SP. This summon costs 2,000 leaves.

Guard summons bodyguards, which deal Staff damage to all foes, delaying their turns. This summon costs 7,000 leaves

Beastling summons Beastlings, which deal physical damage to all foes and reduce their shield points regardless of weak points. This summon costs 15,000 leaves.

Veteran Soldier summon a band of mercenaries that unleash a powerful attack on all foes with various weapons. This summon costs 30,000 leaves.

Foreign Assassin summons a group of assassins that deal high Dagger-based damage as well as recover the HP and SP of your party. This summon costs 50,000 leaves.

The first four above focus more on supporting your team through buffs or debuffs. While the three four are focused on damaging or breaking foes.

The Foreign Assassin is an incredibly powerful option but requires you to take on an optional boss to unlock. This boss isn’t available until late in the game, being located just outside of Merry Hills.

Divine Skill – Bifelgan’s Bounty

• Skill Type: Elemental
• SP Cost: 30
• Effect: Deal high non-elemental damage and receive leaves in an amount equal to the damage dealt.
• Boost Effect: Required maximum boost to activate.

Bifelgan’s Bounty exists to help offset the costs of Hired Help. It’s not exceptionally powerful and often pales in comparison to the damage dealt by Hired Help. Though it will help with farming additional leaves, it is not a huge boon and you’d often be better off using Collect more often instead.

Which Merchant Skills you should take first

Since Active Skills can be taken in any order in Octopath Traveler 2, it’s worth considering the benefits of taking each skill. The cost for the next skill increases as you pick skills, so take the time to plan which skills you’d want to make sure you never feel weak.

Without a doubt, Hired Help is a great early skill. Not only does it give you access to additional weapon types if you can afford the skill, but it also gives you access to a lot of debuffs and recovery options.

If you’re starting with the Merchant, Collect is amazing to have early on. Not only does it removes many of the concerns of using hired Help too often, but also allows you to much more easily Purchase items or Hire NPCs.

If you want extra elemental coverage, Ember can be useful. It’s a decent single-target spell. While not everything is weak to it, until you have a Scholar it’ll be the only way to check for Fire weaknesses.

As far as defensive skills go, Sidestep is fantastic. having a guaranteed chance to doge physical damage can mitigate a lot of damage. So long as the Merchant isn’t the only target, it can last a while. Even if they are, it’s not a big deal as it’s rather inexpensive in terms of SP.

I recommend avoiding Donate BP early, as it won’t be too strong until you start getting Divine Skills. When used with Partitio’s Latent Power it can still be useful for early damage as well thanks to the instant refill from the Latent Power.

Support Skills

Support Skills are passive bonuses that can be mixed and matched with Support Skills of other classes after unlocking them. Support Skills are unlocked alongside your Active Skills, being tied to the number of unlocked Active Skills for the class. These provide stat boosts or other combat effects entirely passively and do not need to be activated beyond applying them to a character.

Grows on Trees

• Total JP Cost: 130
• Effect: Acquire additional money from encounters. Does not stack if equipped by multiple characters

Grows on Trees helps when you need to earn money quickly. However, if you’re not in dire need of money it’s best replaced by another support skill. It’s great for building an early pile of money passively

Boost-Start

• Total JP Cost: 630
• Effect: Grants the equipped character with an additional BP at the start of a battle.

This effect can be very useful for very quickly getting a boosted effect or attack off, allowing a full power boost on the second turn.

When combined with the Donate BP skill, this can allow any character besides the Merchant to be able to perform a fully boosted attack on the very first turn.

Hang Tough

• Total JP Cost: 1,630
• Effect: When the equipped character is not near death, they will survive otherwise lethal damage with 1HP.

This is a very potent Support Skill for the more fragile characters, preventing them from being taken out in one hit as long as they are above 33% HP. This however will not prevent death if your health is taken down by a multi-hit attack, as it only considers the state of your health prior to the recent hit.

Full Power

• Total JP Cost: 4,630
• Effect: Grants the equipped character a full Latent Power Gauge at the start of a battle.

Of all the Support Skill for the new Latent Power system, this is the most potent of them. This can be useful for many other jobs in addition to Merchant, with the biggest beneficiaries being Agnea, Throne, and Castti for general combat; while it can also be great for Hikari, Ochette, and Temenos for use with their Path Actions

Merchant Job Synergies

Below you will learn which secondary Jobs best complete the Merchant as a starting Job and how the Merchant Job synergizes and performs best as a secondary job with other starting jobs!

How Partitio Synergizes with Other Jobs

Through the use of his Latent Power, Hoot and Holler, Partitio can excel as a damage dealer, being able to launch multiple Divine Skills or other powerful skill in quick succession. Likewise, this can also enable him to be a great support letting him quickly refill allies BP with Donate BP to do the same.

Partitio’s Latent Power can also allow him to quickly apply long lasting buffs to allies in rapid succession as well. This can make Dancer, Cleric, and even Scholar great battle jobs thanks to their various buffs.

Check out our Partitio Character Guide to learn about this character and their unique actions within the game. You can also check out our Walkthrough of their story, for hidden items in their story and boss strategies.

How the Merchant Job Synergizes with Other Jobs

Combining the Merchant with the Warrior can be an effective way to wall off physical damage while not lacking damage. By cycling the use of Vengeful Blade and Sidestep, you get to evade physical attacks made toward you, while also counter attacking and lowering shield point for each attack.

Additionally, you can even add Incite into the mix to ensure you’re the target when against physical damage-heavy foes. Rest also helps to maintain your SP quite easily, while shrugging off any stray status effects.

If you wanted to focus on and ensure foes are easy to Collect from, you could pair the Merchant job with Hunter. This will allow them to use Mercy Strike to prevent themselves from taking out a foe before collecting while also maximizing the chances of success.

While typically you’d probably want the effects on separate characters, Arrow of Fortune plays well into the random effects of the Dancer‘s Bewildering Grace skill. Bewildering Grace has a chance to multiply JP gain for the encounter, while Arrow of Fortune increases the amount of JP earned.

The Merchant’s Full Power Support Skill has a ton of potential, especially when combined with effects like Boost-Start on Agnea. This would allow her to apply a long-lasting buff to the whole party with her first turn in combat.

As far as advanced jobs go, Arcanist is an incredibly powerful option on Partitio. The Arcanist’s Seal of Diffusion skill can allow him to spread the effects of Sidestep, allowing the entire party to mitigate physical damage entirely, with the only risk being multi-hit attacks and elemental attacks.

Being a supportive job that can make excellent use of BP, and therefore Partitio’s Latent Power, Inventor can also be an exceptionally strong option. When supported by a Dancer, Partitio is able to use his Latent Power to fill everyone’s HP, SP and BP with Arkar’s Coil, use the BP from Arkar’s Coil to fill everyone’s Latent Power Gauge with Tin Horn, then use his Latent Power again to use All Purpose Hammer and get them both building again.

This concludes our in-depth Class Guide for the Merchant Job in Octopath Traveler 2.