Octopath Traveler 0 Guide | Best Starting Job Tier List For Early Game

In Octopath Traveler 0, you create a custom protagonist who can start with any of the eight main jobs. That choice decides which weapons you use, which skills you learn, and how easily you break enemy shields in the early hours. 

At the beginning you have little JP, few leaves, and only a small group of companions, so your first job matters a lot. A strong job gives reliable damage, good breaks, or support your first allies cannot provide, and this guide looks at how each one performs before you unlock many skills and fill out your party.

Warrior – Safe And Strong Frontline Choice

The Warrior job turns you into a dependable physical attacker with swords and polearms, perfect if you want a simple but powerful frontline role. 

Skills like Cross Strike, Upending Strike, and Helm Cleaver deal big single-target damage, while Helm Cleaver also lowers an enemy’s physical defense and stacks well with Abide, which raises your physical attack. 

Extra tools such as Spearhead, Assault, and Counter Posture help you act sooner, hit whole enemy lines, or punish physical strikes, and support skills like Peak Performance and Phys. Atk. +50 push your damage even higher. 

Warrior lacks strong multi-hit moves and its best attacks cost a lot of SP, but it still stands out as one of the safest and strongest starting jobs.

Thief – SP Sustain And Consistent Breaks

The Thief job is one of the best starts thanks to cheap multi-hit skills and natural sustain that keep you going in long dungeons. SP Thief hits twice with a dagger and steals SP, so you break shields while refilling your own resources instead of burning through items. 

Multi-hit options like Master Of Shadows for dark damage and Tri-Edge for three dagger hits make you a top-tier breaker, and because Thief can equip swords you can add a strong mastery like Vacuum Slice for extra single-target power. 

Support passives such as Extended Enfeeblement and Evasion +50 keep your debuffs active longer and help you dodge more attacks, so Thief brings steady damage, constant pressure, and long fights where your SP keeps coming back.

Hunter – Multi-Hit Breaker With Turn Control

The Hunter job shines when you want to shred shields quickly and control the pace of battle. Using bows and axes, you gain powerful multi-hit skills such as Reign Of Arrows, which can strike between five and eight times, and moves like Stray Arrows and Boomerang Toss, which hit twice and are perfect for finishing breaks. 

The standout Two-Tiered Shot fires four bow hits at a foe, then automatically sends you to the back row, helping you recover SP while still dealing strong damage. 

On top of that, Ensnare forces a target to act last for several turns, giving you amazing turn control in boss fights, so even though early passives like Extra Experience and Invigorating Break are just bonuses, Hunter remains one of the best breaker jobs you can pick.

Scholar – Elemental AoE Nuker

The Scholar job focuses on powerful elemental magic that wipes out groups and cracks shields from the back row. With tomes and staves, you cover fire, wind, and light, so you hit many weaknesses early without needing extra jobs. 

You learn single-cast and double-cast spells for each element, and the double versions are some of the best early tools for clearing random encounters and breaking bosses, even though they burn SP quickly. 

Support skills like Study Foe, which reveals one weakness for every enemy, and Elem. Atk. +50 push your spells even higher, but Scholar offers almost no way to recover SP and little utility outside damage, so you must manage resources carefully if you pick this very strong offensive start.

Dancer – Powerful Party Buffs

The Dancer job exists to make your allies stronger while still helping with breaks when needed. You use fans and daggers, but your main value comes from four dances that boost physical attack, evasion, elemental attack, or elemental defense, letting your best attackers hit much harder and survive longer. 

Offensively, Frosty Refrain gives you single-target ice damage and fan skills like Wild Strike and Triple Arc provide multi-hit physical attacks for shield breaking. 

The support passive The Show Goes On extends the duration of your buffs, and Extra JP helps you unlock more skills faster, so Dancer is ideal if you want your main character to enable the rest of the party instead of carrying fights alone.

Cleric – Stable Healing And Light Damage

The Cleric job gives your team early and reliable group healing along with rare light-element damage. With staves and fans, you can hit a couple of weaknesses, but your real job is to keep everyone alive through dungeon runs and bosses. 

Heal Wounds restores HP to an entire row, which is great when enemies hit multiple allies at once, while Wondrous Veil lets an ally automatically revive once, making deadly attacks less punishing. 

Support skills such as HP Recovery Up and Elem. Def. +50 boost your healing and survivability since heals scale with elemental defense, so even though some smaller tools that reduce damage or play with SP are unreliable, Cleric stays a solid starting choice if you want consistent sustain.

Merchant – JP Farming And Versatile Utility

The Merchant job mixes support, economy, and ranged damage, but has trouble focusing on one clear role in the early game. 

It uses bows and spears and offers several handy skills that help your whole account more than any single battle, especially Arrow Of Fortune, which deals bow damage and gives bonus JP based on damage dealt, making it a great way to speed up skill unlocks despite its high SP cost. 

To stay healthy, you have Rest, a free skill that heals HP, restores SP, and cures status ailments, plus Mystic Shot, which hits all enemies with a bow and restores SP to the front row based on total damage. 

Utility skills like Donate BP let you share BP with allies for strong bursts, and passives such as Extra Leaves and Phys. Def. +50 are useful, but as a first job Merchant still feels more like a flexible helper than a true powerhouse.

Apothecary – Weakest Starting Option

The Apothecary job uses axes and tomes and focuses on healing and status support, but it struggles to stand out next to other options. You gain First Aid for single-target healing and Heal All to give one row HP regeneration over several turns, which is nice for chip healing but slow compared to direct group heals. 

For status control, Rehabilitate offers ailment immunity and Vivify revives allies, yet both moves cost a lot of SP and are often less efficient than using items. 

On offense, Amputation and Cross Cleave are single-target axe attacks that overlap heavily, with one simply hitting harder for more SP, and support passives like Resist Ailments and Max. SP +50 are weaker than what most other jobs receive. 

Because early companions already bring strong heals, debuffs, and utility, Apothecary ends up as the weakest starting job and is easy to skip.

Best Starting Jobs Ranked For Early Game

For the best opening hours in Octopath Traveler 0, the top picks are Thief and Hunter. Thief offers cheap multi-hit skills, natural SP sustain, and strong debuff support, making it ideal for long dungeons where you want to keep casting without running dry. 

Hunter brings some of the strongest multi-hit attacks in the game plus Ensnare for turn control, which makes breaking and surviving bosses much easier.

Just behind them are Warrior and Scholar. Warrior is a straightforward frontline bruiser with high single-target damage and strong passives, while Scholar erases random encounters with big elemental spells as long as you manage SP well. 

After that come Dancer and Cleric, which shine as support jobs that boost damage or keep everyone alive, and finally Merchant and Apothecary, which sit at the bottom for early-game mains because their best tricks either arrive late or overlap with what early companions already do better.

Also, check our Octopath Traveler 0 Review and other guides below:

 

• Octopath Traveler 0 Beginner’s Guide | Gameplay Tips & Tricks
• Octopath Traveler 0 Guide | Best Jobs and Best Job Order