Octopath Traveler 2 Inventor Job Guide

This is an in-depth guide to the Inventor job in Octopath Traveler 2. We’ll break down the Inventor job, including skills and interactions with the other jobs of Octopath Traveler 2.

What is the Role of an Inventor

Inventors are one of the advanced jobs found in Octopath Traveler 2. They use various inventions to support their team and deal damage. They specialize in using Axes and Swords as weapons.

While the majority of their skills focus on supporting their team, they do have a few powerful damage options. Unlike other jobs, the Inventor must rebuild their inventions to use them again in battle.

As an Advanced Job, there are no characters that start with this job. This means you must find the NPC that enables you to use this job.

How to Unlock the Inventor Job

The Inventor Job can be obtained by speaking with Arkar the Inventor, who resides along the Eastern New Delsta Highroad in the Brightlands. Upon speaking with him, he’ll grant you Proof of the Inventor, enabling the job for use.

You’ll need to return to Arkar multiple times after unlocking the class to unlock the skills. Each skill requires a variety of items, including some special items to inspire Arkar to create the Invention.

Due to Arkar’s location, playthroughs that start with Throné will get sooner access to this advanced job. The next closest would be Temenos, who is just a bit farther away.

Inventor Skills: Overview and Recommendation

Like all jobs, the Inventor 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.

Unlike other jobs, you’ll need to initially unlock skills via quests, which limits which skills you can get and when you can get them. However, the skills and the respective Support Skills are available for all characters once unlocked.

The Inventor’s Support Skills are available even without equipping the job to a character.

Active Skills

Active Skills are skills used in battle, to either attack, provide buffs, or apply debuffs. Below are the Active Skills available to Inventors. Inventors have access to Changeable Catapult and Springy Boots 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.

Changeable Catapult

• Skill Type: Sword, Polearm, Axe, Dagger, Bow, OR Staff
• Build Time: 1 Turn
• Effect: Unleash an attack on all foes with the selected weapon.
• Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.

Changeable Catapult is a skill that is exceptionally good for hitting weakness as well as quickly defeating weaker foes. While it’ll still do fantastic damage against stronger foes, it’s strength is it’s power as a multi-target attack that cna be any physical type.

Springy Boots

• Skill Type: Buff
• Build Time: 2 Turns
• Effect: Allows a single ally to move first for the next 5 turns.
• Boost Effect: Extends the duration of the effect by 1 turn per BP spent.

Springy Boots is a very situational skill. It’s great for manipulating turn order in a pinch, if you really need someone to move before a boss or enemy. This can make it helpful in aiding with the defeat of Rare creatures.

Critical Scope

• Skill Type: Debuff
• Build Time: 3 turns
• Effect: All attacks on a selected foe will deal critical damage for the next 4 turns.
• Boost Effect: Extends the duration of the effect by 1 turn per BP spent.

This can be a great skill to use in preparation for breaking a boss or other strong foe. The damage bump that comes from critical damage can be just the edge you need to take a foe down quickly.

Elemental Bomb Bottle

• Skill Type: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, OR Dark
• Build Time: 4 turns
• Effect: Deals the same type of a single foe’s exposed elemental weakness 1 time.
• Boost Effect: Hit each weakness an additional time per BP spent.

Elemental Bomb Bottle is easily one of the strongest elemental breaking tools. Despite its wording, it will hit each and every elemental once. This means foes that are weak to multiple elements this skill can break with absolute ease, provided the weaknesses are revealed.

Tin Horn

• Skill Type: Recovery
• Build Time: 4 turns
• Effect: Fills the Latent Power Gauge of all allies.
• Boost Effect: Increases the amount of gauge restored per BP spent.

The Tin Horn is a great supporting tool, with a fully boosted use fully restoring the Latent Power Gauge of all allies. It’s very strong in the right situations, and due to the latent powers available has a variety of great uses.

Hastening Hammer

• Skill Type: Physical
• Build Time: 3 Turns
• Effect: Unleash a highly powerful physical attack on one foe and reduce the crafting time of an invention by 1 turn.
• Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.

This is a great skill, thanks to its heavy damage. Unlike the other skills for the Inventor, it also has no recovery time, serving as a very strong option to deal damage while also getting your inventions up faster.

Arkar’s Coil

• Skill Type: Recovery
• Build Time: 7 turns
• Effect: Restores 40% of an ally’s HP and SP while also granting 1 BP. Incapacitated allies will also be revived.
• Boost Effect: Increases HP, SP, and BP recovery per BP spent.

By itself, Arkar’s Coil is a potent healing effect; in combination with other effects, it’s incredibly strong. At full boost, it will recover 100% of HP and SP, as well as 4 BP. Using effects that allow the skill to affect multiple targets is quite powerful.

Divine Skill – All-Purpose Tool

• Skill Type: Recovery
• Effect: Begin crafting all inventions.
• Boost Effect: Requires Max Boost to use.

This Divine Skill is great to use once multiple of your longer recharging skills have been used. It will get them all building at once, instead of dedicating multiple turns to getting them going individually.

How to unlock Inventor Skills

Some of the Inventor skills can be gotten fairly early, due to only requiring a couple of basic items and no special items at all. Below is a quick list of the earliest you can unlock each skill.

Critical Scope will be one of the easiest skills to unlock, requiring two low-level accessories: an Unerring Earring and a Critical Earring. These can be bought from the vendors in New Delsta and Canalbrine.

Elemental Bomb Bottle can follow quickly as the next skill. This only requires 1 basic Soulstone of Fire, Ice and Thunder in addition to a Rainbow Glass Bottle. You should only be missing the Rainbow Glass Bottle, depending on how far into the stories you are. This Item can be acquired from the chest on the beach in Conning Creek.

Tin Horn requires an Empowering Lychee as well as two special items in the Tin Toy and Mythical Horn. Empowering Lychees are something you’re pretty likely to have on hand already.

The Tin Toy can be stolen from an NPC in the Wellgrove Department Store, accessible after Partitio’s Scent of Commerce in Wellgrove. The Mythical Horn can be found in Nameless Village, it’s hidden away in a chest guarded by a Beastling you’ll need to knock unconscious for access to it.

Hastening Hammer is one you can’t build until later into the game, despite only requiring a set of specific weapons. This is because the weapon it requires, being a Soldier’s Bow, a Great Blade, and a Guardian’s Axe. Chances are you’ll want to use these for a while or find replacements before throwing them into this invention.

The Soldier’s Bow can be purchased from the shop in Clockbank, or stealing it from a Guard in Conning Creek. The Guardian’s Axe can be gotten via purchase in Stormhail, or by stealing it from a Soldier in Crackridge.

A Great Blade can be gotten in Western Sai, by mugging or Entreating a Soldier there who happens to be night only. One can also be gotten by Entreating or Mugging an Elite Sanctum Knight from the Stormhail Tavern at night. A Great Blade can also be found for sale in Sai’s shop, once you’ve expanded the shop offerings there.

Arkar’s Coil requires three unique items, which can keep it from being built for a while. It requires Scrap Metal, an Ancient Cog, and Natural Magnetite.

Scrap Metal can be acquired in Clockbank by using Entreat/Mug on a Worker found near the Weapon Shop at night. The Ancient Cog can be acquired from an NPC on Roque Island, during or after Partitio’s Chapter 5 Story. The Natural Magnetite can be looted from a chest in the Unfinished Tunnel in the Wildlands, just west of Crackridge.

Upon unlocking all skills, you’ll also be given the All-Purpose Tool. There are no other requirements for unlocking it other than getting all the previous skills.

For a full guide on where to find the required items for each skill, check out our “A Genius Inventor” Side Story Guide. It goes over everything you need to locate and acquire the items necessary for new Inventor Skills in greater detail.

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.

The Support Skills of the Inventor will be unlocked for all characters immediately upon unlocking the required number of skills.

A Step Ahead

• Skills Required: 4
• Effect: The equipped character will act first in battle.

Despite its wording, this is an exceptionally powerful Support Skill. Any Character equipped with this doesn’t just move first, they get an additional turn at the start of the battle. Since it’s unlocked for all characters once you unlock 4 skills, you can end up forcing the Surprise Attack mechanic essentially. Unfortunately, this doesn’t prevent you from experiencing an ambush attack, which can nullify this Support Skill entirely.

Upgraded Accessories

• Skills Required: 5
• Effect: Increases the attributes granted by the equipped character’s accessories.

Whether certain Accessories, this can be incredibly powerful, though for the most part, it can work decently well with any accessories that grants at least 50 or more of an attribute.

BP in Adversity

• Skills Required: 6
• Effect: Grants the equipped character 2 BP when near death.

This has some niche applications, but often will not be as valuable as most other Support Skills. There are very few situations where you’ll ever want to be in critical health, though it can be forced with help from an Arcanist.

Fruits of Labor

• Skills Required: 7
• Effect: Increases the Physical Defense and Elemental Defense of the equipped character for each job skill learned.

While this grants just 1 Physical and Elemental defense per skill learned, this can provide up to a whopping 96 of each if a character were to fully master every job. This can be incredibly useful for boosting the healing power of the Apothecary and Cleric, as their healing scales with Elemental Defense.

Inventor Job Synergies

As an Advanced Job, the Inventor is restricted to being a secondary job only, and thus cannot be paired with other Advanced Jobs. Below you will learn how the Inventor pairs with each of the basic jobs and which makes for the best primary job.

How Inventor Synergizes with Other Jobs

While not the strongest pairing, combining the Apothecary with the Inventor does provide some interesting options. Among these are Poison Axe and Replenish Health. These allow you to deal damage and recover HP while still being able to build the inventions.

When paired with the Cleric Job, the Inventor will have access to defensive buffs like Prayer to the Flame and Sacred Shield, as well as recovery from Heal Wounds. This can allow the Inventor to safely and easily build their inventions as needed, with minimal risk so long as they maintain the buffs as well.

By pairing the Dancer job with the Inventor, a number of your strong supportive options become much stronger. This is the result of having access to both Agnea’s All Together Now as well as Sealticge’s Seduction to spread their effects.

Most notable among these are Critical Scope and Elemental Bomb Bottle for offensive options. Critical Scope would instead apply to all foes, allowing you to quickly and easily sweep groups of foes away with critical damage. While Elemental Bomb Bottle will also hit all foes, giving it exceptionally high breaking power.

All Together Now also allows Arkar’s Coil to affect the whole party, making it a great emergency heal, or to fully prepare a team for a burst window. With a full boost, it restores 100% HP, 100% SP, and 4 BP, which refunds the BP spent on boosting it.

The pairing with Hunter is exceptionally weak but does help Ochette significantly with capturing monsters more often without the need to focus a turn on it. Thanks to Ochette’s Auto-Capture Mechanic, the Inventor’s Changeable Catapult skill can allow Ochette to quickly defeat and capture monsters, making it easier to keep a supply of Jerky and other meats. Beyond this, it only offers additional buff and debuff potential in addition to access to Swords.

The Merchant expands the support potential of the Inventor, giving them more access to a variety of buffs through Hired Help, as well as Donate BP. They also get access to Rest, which allows them to stay healthy and shrug off the most harmful effects. Between Boost-Start and A Step Ahead, you can even have a character able to use their divine skill on their second action, with the first counting as a whole turn with A Step Ahead.

Additionally, Partitio’s Latent Power can be used to boost any invention on demand. This can allow for great emergency heals with Arkar’s Coil or Latent Power generation with Tin Horn. It’ll also allow for absurdly quick breaks against foes with multiple Elemental weaknesses using Elemental Bomb Bottle.

Scholar doesn’t offer all too much to the Inventor, with the bigger selling points being easier weakness reveals and self-buffs. Through Osvald’s Talent and the Analyze Skill, you’ll be able to quickly reveal weaknesses that can be exploited by Changeable Catapult and Elemental Bomb Bottle. Stroke of Genius offers a decent, but inconsistent means of providing various buffs to yourself.

There are many reasons why the Thief works exceptionally well with the Inventor. Among the Thief skills are the ability to recover HP while still dealing damage with HP Thief as well as Suprise Attack, which Springy Boots can allow it to deal max damage for a number of turns.

Additionally, you get access to Throné Talent, allowing you to start a nighttime battle with increased Speed, Physical Attack, and Elemental Attack. You’ll also have access to Leave No Trace, which can allow Throné to use an invention and get it building immediately after.

Warrior isn’t the greatest option but does still have some benefits. The biggest is the ability to counter physical attacks while still building. This can allow you to still squeeze more damage in while being able to mostly focus on your inventions in battles with plenty of physical attacks. Once you get All-Purpose Tool, you’re able to focus a bit on applying defensive bonuses to yourself while your gadgets recharge.