This is an in-depth guide to the Armsmaster job in Octopath Traveler 2. We’ll break down the Armsmaster job, including skills and interactions with the other jobs of Octopath Traveler 2.
Role of an Armsmaster
Role of an ArmsmasterThe Armsmaster is one of four advanced jobs found in Octopath Traveler 2. They have the unique ability to equip and use all six weapon types. They have a special weapon for each of these weapon types that also enabled the use of a powerful damage skill.
The Armsmaster focuses on purely breaking foes and dealing heavy physical damage. Unlike other jobs, they are required to have a Divine Weapon equipped to make use of its associated skill. All of their skills have exceptionally high costs, limiting how much you can use them without any form of SP recovery or SP-increasing accessory.
As an advanced job, there are no characters that start with this job. You’ll need to find the NPC that enables you to use this job.
How to Unlock the Armsmaster Job
The Armsmaster Job can be obtained by speaking with Porta the Blacksmith in Gravell. Upon speaking to him with any of the six rusted Divine Weapons in your inventory, he’ll grant you the Proof of the Armsmaster, enabling the job for use.
You’ll need to return to Porta multiple times after unlocking the class, to fix up any other rusted Divine Weapons you find. By the time you reach him, it’s very likely you’ve come across at least one or two of them.
We have a complete guide for the side story In Search of Divine Weapons. It will help you locate the NPC, start and complete the quest and earn all rewards, including unlocking the Advanced Job Armsmaster and collecting all Rusty Weapons.
Armsmaster Skills: Overview and Recommendation
Like all jobs, the Armsmaster 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 by handing Rusty Weapons to Porta the Blacksmith in Gravell (more on that later in the guide). He then turns them into Divine Weapons, with each unlocking a new skill for use by having the weapon equipped as an Armsmaster.
The Armsmaster’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. The Armsmaster doesn’t have a Divine Skill, but each of its unique weapon skills could be considered such, minus the requirement of a full boost.
Sixfold Strike
- Skill Type:
Sword, Polearm, Dagger, Axe, Bow, AND Staff - SP Cost: 30
- Effect: Unleash attacks with six different weapons on random foes.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.
Sword, 
Polearm, 
Dagger, 
Axe, 
Bow, AND 
Staff
This skill is exceptionally good at quickly checking the physical weaknesses of a boss, as long as they are alone, you’ll see how many of the six weapons they’re vulnerable to. It’s also quite good for breaking and damage as well, as the multiple hits all do fairly high damage
Bulwark
- Skill Type: Physical
- SP Cost: 25
- Effect: Unleash a physical attack and go on the defensive until your next action. The higher your physical defense, the greater the potency of this skill.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.
This skill can be quite strong if you stack up Physical Defense on your Armsmaster. Taking reduced damage until your next action can save you in some situations, but not too often. The only downside to this skill is that it does generic physical damage, meaning it cannot break.
Conqueror’s Sword: Cosmic Roar
- Skill Type: Sword
- SP Cost: 35
- Effect: Charge your attack until the end of the turn, then unleash a powerful sword attack on a single foe. The longer you charge the attack, the greater the damage.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage per BP spent.
This skill can do some serious damage, but requires a lot of additional planning and risk to execute. It’ll do the most damage in situations where the user moves first, and the target is broken on the attack just prior to the skill going off. You’ll also have to suffer some attacks from a boss in a lot of cases for max damage but the pay off is worth it.
Warlord’s Spear: Giant Swing
- Skill Type: Polearm
- SP Cost: 35
- Effect: Unleash a moderately powerful polearm attack on all foes. The more foes there are, the greater the damage dealt.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.
This skill is exceptionally niche, despite it’s effect. It doesn’t gain a ton of damage unless there’s a full set of 4 or more enemies on the field, and even then it’s a single hit. In the rare situations you’re able to break everything prior to using this, this cna be a nice way to clean up, but otherwise not great.
Dancer’s Blade: Mischievous Step
- Skill Type: Dagger
- SP Cost: 35
- Effect: Unleash dagger attacks on random foes at least 3 times. The more foes there are, the more attacks that will be unleashed.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.
This skill can be exceptionally good, despite its low damage potential. It’s great for breaking, as well as applying the status effects of the Dancer’s Dagger. Outside of Sixfold Strike, it’s one of the only other multi-hit skills the Armsmaster gets.
Lionheart’s Axe: On the Hunt
- Skill Type: Axe
- SP Cost: 35
- Effect: Unleash an axe attack on a single foe 2 times. The Second strike will be more powerful than the first. The more weak point the target has revealed, the greater the potency of the attack.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.
This can be an exceptionally strong skill for enemies that have a ton of weaknesses. While it’s not quite as powerful as Cosmic Roar, it’s still exceptionally strong when you get 4 or more weaknesses revealed. While it’s only 2 hits, it can still be a decent breaking skill for foes weak to Axe but not really much else for physical damage.
Hunter’s Bow: Flurry of Arrows
- Skill Type: Bow
- SP Cost: 35
- Effect: Unleash a moderately powerful Bow attack on all foes. If a foe is broken by this skill, it will trigger again.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage dealt per BP spent.
This skill can be a little niche, but the Hunter’s Bow passive effect of also triggering the skill again can help a fair bit. In the rare situation you get the Hunter’s Bow passive as well as another trigger from the skill breaking while its fully boosted, it can deal some serious damage. There’s a fair bit of potential for this skill to chain repeatedly if set up right with the right foes.
Spiritlord’s Staff: Deliverance
- Skill Type: Staff
- SP Cost: 35
- Effect: Unleash a powerful staff attack on a single foe. The higher your Elemental Attack is, the greater the potency of this skill.
- Boost Effect: Increases damage per BP spent.
This skill is a little niche but allows for characters like Temenos and Psvald who have a naturally high Elemental Attack to have a powerful and reliable skill as an Armsmaster. Even outside of that, it can still be great if you commit to building around it.
How to unlock Armsmaster Skills
The Skills of the Armsmaster are unlocked as you find the rusted Divine Weapon and take them to Porta to be restored. Some of these are accessible long before you meet him in Gravell. We’ll list these in the rough order in which they can be found or collected.
If you want a more detailed explanation with maps and more visual presentation, use our guide to In Search of Divine Weapons Side Story in Octopath Traveler 2.
The Rusty Sword can be obtained as a reward for completing The Sword in the Stone Side Story. This is a side story available in Winterbloom. It doesn’t take long to complete.
You can find the Rusty Staff, in the Seat of the Water Sprite. This side area is tucked behind a waterfall in Borderfall, an area of the Crestlands between Flameschurch and Montwise.
The Rusty Axe is found in the Quicksand Gaol in the Western Sai Sands. This side area is the next lowest level, and is possible to get prior to reaching Gravell, but is the first to require a boss to be defeated to collect it.
Next up, the Rusty Polearm is found in Timberain Castle: Town Square. This is the area of the city that’s just outside the castle and danger free. In the Town Square, you’ll need to head to the Westernmost part of the area, where you’ll find a guard blocking the path to the Rusty Polearm.
Using Ambush or Soothe is recommended as he’s a pretty tough fight, but after he’s unconscious, go claim your Rusty Polearm.
Just outside of the Nameless Village and inside the Sinking Ruins is the Rusty Bow. This is a fairly high-level area, but not much higher than Gravell itself. When you make your way through the mostly linear path in the ruins, you’ll need to fight another boss to claim the Rusty Bow.
Finally, the Rusty Dagger can be found in the Shipwreck of the Empress. This side area is only accessible after you’ve complete Partitio’s Scent of Commerce side story in Tropu’hopu and gotten a personal ship. This area can then be sailed to by heading East from Crackridge Anchorage or North from Canalbrine.
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 Armsmaster will be unlocked for all characters immediately upon unlocking the required number of skills.
Master of Offense
- Skills Required: 4
- Effect: Increases equipped character’s chance of landing critical hits on broken foes.
With the breaking potential the Armsmaser has, this is an exceptionally good passive. Due to Sixfold Strike, it’ll be fairly easy to break most foes. There are even accessories that you can use to further build around this.
Peak Performance
- Skills Required: 5
- Effect: Increases damage dealt by the equipped character while at or above their maximum HP.
This is a fairly easy condition to meet in a lot of cases. Outside of rare cases, it’s very easy to keep a party topped off, or even over-healed with skills like Prayer for Plenty. unless a boss dealt a ton of multi-target damage or you take a stray hit from a surprise attack, this will be a fairly consistent bonus.
Invigorating Break
- Skills Required: 6
- Effect: Restores the HP of the equipped character when breaking a foe.
This Support skill is fairly niche, but can definitely have its uses for Hikari and Ochette to use with their Challenge and Provoke Path Actions. Beyond that, it’s hard to reasonably fit into the current four slots provided without a large sacrifice of some kind.
Arms Refinement
- Skills Required: 7
- Effect: Slightly fills the equipped character’s Latent Power Gauge when exploiting an enemy’s weak point.
This can work exceptionally well in combination with Sixfold Strike. This can allow characters that absolutely want to use their Latent Power often to do so even if they only have their own multi-hit skill to rely on.
Armsmaster Job Synergies
As an Advanced Job, the Armsmaster is restricted to being a secondary job only, and thus cannot be paired with other Advanced Jobs. Below you will learn how the Armsmaster pairs with each of the basic jobs and which makes for the best primary job.
How Armsmaster Synergizes with Other Jobs
The 
Apothecary doesn’t have any strong direct synergies with the Armsmaster job. At the very least, the Armsmaster can make great use of the Vigorous Victor Support Skill from the Apothecary to offset their high SP costs between encounters.
At first glance, you’d think that giving a primarily physical damage job to a more supportive and elemental attack-focused character like the 
Cleric would be a bad thing. However thanks to Spiritlord’s Staff: Deliverance, Temenos can deal great damage still without any sacrifices elsewhere. Sixfold Strike also gives him a ton of breaking power alongside his Latent Power.
The 
Dancer is easily one of the strongest pairings, if only due to Agnea‘s Latent Power and Sealticge’s Seduction. Both of these allow an Armsmaster’s attacks to hit all foes, which is really powerful for every skill with the exception of the Warlord’s Spear. It’s exceptionally strong in combination with Sixfold Strike and Mischievous Step, which makes them target all enemies instead of random foes.
Hunters aren’t a fantastic pairing outside of their higher base Physical Attack. They do have a decent synergy with the Hunter’s Bow Divine Weapon, which can allow them to trigger Precise Shot or possibly Draefendi’s Bow twice in a row. The Hunter would at the very least gain more multi-hit and multi-target skills, though nothing that’s well above Ochette’s options with beasts.
With 
Merchants being more of a supportive job, they can definitely benefit from the extra offensive options. However, this really only serves to mitigate their reliance on Hired Help for damage, and gives some options to actually go above the damage cap. Though it’ll still be tough for them to reach a point where Veteran Mercenaries or Foreign Assassins get out damaged.
Unfortunately, the 
Scholar has roughly the same synergy as the Cleric, offering a high base Elemental Attack to start with. The only interesting thing the Scholar offers is the Stroke of Genius Skill, which can grant an assortment of random buffs. However, between Armsmaster and Scholar, you can cover 9 of the 12 damage types, and check all of them fairly quickly with a single character.
The 
Thief‘s high base Speed and Swift Step make them able to very easily take full advantage of the Cosmic Roar skill, easily dealing high damage with the skill when timed appropriately. Throné‘s Latent Power can even add a turn of charging to increase its damage further.
Her Latent Power also allows you to reduce defenses in combination with any of the Armsmaster skills, allowing for a ton of extra damage potential to a class that lacks additional setup power on its own.
Finally, the 
Warrior can be a great option due to their self-buffing potential. Being able to increase both Physical Attack and Defense helps all of the Armsmaster’s skills. In particular, you could make Hikari an absolute wall of a tank thanks to Stout Wall, Incite, and Bulwark all working together. Due to how Bulwark works, you wouldn’t even be sacrificing much, if any, damage in the process.
