5. Town: Flamechurch

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Flamechurch, Sacred Light

This is Flamechurch, one of the foundational religious centers of Solistia.

We'll check out the town during the day at first.

I won't show all of the Guide info, since a lot of it is rather generic, but I will show some of the more interesting ones.

It's a bit odd just showing these without Scrutinize text to help out explaining these people, as it'd make more sense just who they are from that context. Things will clear up a bit once we hit night though.

They shed plenty of light, but more importantly, they seem to ward away monsters. Unfortunately, I don't have any to hand right now. Try a cleric, perhaps?

This is a clue towards a side story here that will clear up the path to the cathedral. You can even see the NPC that starts it up on that hill. Unfortunately, we're not able to complete it yet, so we have to hold off for now.

This man has a lot of opinions on things.

The tavern is where you can choose your party, gear up those not in your party, restore reputation if you annoy the townspeople too much, or start story content for characters. None of which we can really do yet, of course.

You are responsible for the lives of both mother and child.

Some NPCs we can't Guide, mostly notable with NPCs you need to knock out to enter places.

Right now anything that isn't Light or Staff-based is handy for exposing weaknesses. This is a single-target fire spell, which would be handy to us.

Same with this woman's ice magic.

You know, as long as you remember your damn lines.

This NPC has "Mental Augmentation" as a skill, which I can't find any reliable sources on but I assume buffs Elemental Attack. The spreadsheed I'm reading for a lot of this info says this is the only non-Crick NPC Temenos can Guide during his Chapter 1, but that involves grinding all the way to L10 in the path to the Cathedral, which is very major overkill. Still a neat detail!

Everyone loves that Cathedral. We'll revisit it ourselves in a bit once we finish with the actual town.

This Cleric has the skill "Striking Sermon", where they strike with a staff and have a chance to inflict Sleep.

Flamechurch, Sacred Light (Night)

That's it for Day, so let's switch to Night. It's hard to tell it's night in here, but you can at least see the NPCs are different.

This is the guy with the 8-star dagger skill.

Coercsion goes poorly. Fortunately, there's no penalty for failing, as counterintuitive as that may sound.

The problem with all the various Clerics here is they have no weaknesses to either staves nor light magic. This one is also problematic in that she has five shields, so even one max-boost blast of Temenos's Latent wouldn't work. I could try to slowly build up Latent Energy, but it's such a slow process I'll just revisit this Cleric later.

One interesting thing is that, unlike most NPCs, Mindt makes actual sounds when you battle her, which is odd since she cannot be Guided and thus cannot actually participate in battles. It may just be because she's a story NPC though, who knows.

This guy has the same dialogue, but we can actually break him, so...

Finally, some dark secrets we can extract from people. This is where we get to the juicy stuff.

Not this family, though. It's a couple of apothecaries and their son, and they live pretty normal lives. But you need those pleasantly normal people to balance out the other stuff.

Also, some NPCs have hidden items or other stuff to offer. We get an ingredient that Castti will appreciate once we recruit her.

Nothing but normal. It's nice to have the occasional well-adjusted family though.

The item is a Fumbling Flower, another apothecarial ingredient.

There's some decent upgrades here, but not much reason to buy these during the various Chapter 1 stories since you'll likely find better elsewhere. I might grab a Protective Earring before I leave the town, though, as it buffs both defenses, which Temenos would appreciate.

Some of these folk are just mostly-good people that otherwise get weighed down by their various vices. But hey, at least he can get us a discount at the inn, so that instead of spending 16 leaves, we only spend 8!

That said the inn fully recharges your latent powers, so I sleep a few times to mentally break those various clerics who are not persuaded by swift strikes to the shins.

Mindt is naturally very boring with no exciting dark secrets to note of.

Oh hey, a status effect!

There's the usual status effects, with the only unique one being Terror, which blocks both spending and gaining BP. There are various herbs that can heal these status effects, and they are very cheap too. Good to have a handful of each just in case.

Anyway it turns out this man who doesn't trust anyone takes advice from the cosmos. Fair enough.

Here we go, now we're getting to the good stuff: Marriage drama.

A former artisan who lost the will to work, and his wife that quietly resents being viewed as ordinary.

This is a pretty nice get, though.

Unforgivable.

The church shall confinscate this.

Some items are simply vendor fodder. They say "you'll make money for selling this" and that's all they're good for.

She does seem like a very experienced midwife.

Oh hey it's me with my creative endeavors.

Oh hey it's me with my drinking habits.

Hilariously this leads us to an Herb of Clamor.

That said I'm ready to call the MVP of Flamechurch, and it is clearly the Piano-Playing Cleric. All she wants to do is play the piano, and may Aelfric bless her for it.

Flamechurch, Sacred Light

I take the artist who won't art to escort Temenos to the cathedral.

Any guided NPCs will follow along beside you. There's even an achievement for having four NPCs following you around, the appropriately named "Octopath Traveler...?"

I forgot to show this off, but here is Summon.

NPCs may do several things in combat, like a physical attack, and of course their signature ability.

NPCs will stick around for a few rounds before retreating, and can even take hits for the person guiding them. There's only a set number of times you can summon an NPC before they go back to where they were, and you have to recruit them again.

Anyway, it's time to visit the Cathedral.

This man finds prayer so important his Guide ability is literally "Pray".

This cleric's skill is "Sacred Teachings", which buffs your weapons with a light-elemental attack. This is very useful and something we can't really do on our own until post-game, so of course this requires a hefty L30 to access.

This wonderful fellow has Umbral Strike, a single-target Dark magic move. Dark magic in particular is one of the more annoying ones to use, so I may go with guiding him before I set out.

This fellow has "Deep Analysis", which can reveal enemy weaknesses. Might be another Guide option worth looking into...

Luckily, the cathedral is back up and running despite the recent unfortunate circumstances.

Also this Sanctum Knight has a powerful wind spell, but also requires L20 to Guide.

The cathedral is certainly more welcoming during the day.

I hope not.

Ill Intent debuffs a target's elemental attack.

Uhhh, yeah, I'll be sure to do just that...

Yeah, nothing else too interesting here, so let's switch back to Night and finish things off.

Flamechurch, Sacred Light (Night)

Night shifts suck.

Also I didn't feel like trekking back and forth between the cathedral and the town to use the inn so sorry, no more Cleric info for now. Well, it'd be a one-way trek since I can always fast travel back to Flamechurch, but you can't fast travel to the Cathedral.