It's a little bit hard for me to believe, but I've been working on these Octopath Traveler solo games for almost six full years at this point. I had played through and written about 11 previous jobs before leaving this final playthrough for the Starseer class. While it felt a bit sad to be covering the last job in the game, I also wanted to make sure that I did complete this project given that I was down to the final unexplored class. The Starseer is another one of the secret endgame jobs which cannot normally be played from the start of the game; I'd be using a Cheat Engine script to unlock it from the outset. The Starseer occupies the niche of being the best utility class in the game, with a series of useful buffing abilities along with arguably the best passive skills in the whole game. I needed to pick one of the eight characters to serve as the Starseer since it's not one of the default starting jobs and my choice was Primrose. I needed to have some kind of spellcasting character and Primrose had good elemental attack along with excellent evasion which leaned into one of the Starseer abilities. I also liked the fact that the Starseer sprite design wears elegant formal robes and it felt to me that Primrose deserved the chance to be attired in something other than a skimpy dancer's outfit.
As mentioned above, I used a Cheat Engine script that I had discovered online to force Primrose into a new class that she doesn't normally possess. (I had earlier created starting savefiles for each of the secret classes due to the buggy nature of how this worked, with no guarantee that it would continue operating in the future.) With Primrose as the default character, she would be allowed to use her Allure ability to complete town quests but not to Summon NPCs into battle - that's a Primrose ability, not a Starseer ability. As a quick refresher for our rules in an Octopath Traveler solo game, the seven other characters will all be recuited (to allow playing through their respective storylines) but won't take any part in combat. The lesson that I learned from my initial Tressa solo game is that the Path Actions of the other characters also need to be included or else it locks out too much of the gameplay. So that's the rule for this game: Primrose can use the other characters to Scrutinize/Inquire for information, Challenge/Provoke NPCs in town, and Steal/Purchase items, but none of those other skills can be used for combat purposes.
These were the initial stats for Starseer Primrose at Level 1. Interestingly, these were almost identical to the base stats of Primrose when using her normal Dancer job, with exactly 1 additional stat point higher for most categories (here's the comparison screenshot). The only stats that had notable increases were health and spirit points, both of which increased by 15%. Was this due to the Starseer job not providing much of a boost to base stats, or was the Starseer innately very similar to the Dancer job (?) In any case, the Starseer version of Primrose was boosted into the average range on HP, which was going to be a big help, and was well above average for SP growth. Starseer Primrose nearly equalled Cyrus' starting SP point total but without his crippling lack of health, and I was going to need those spirit points given the extremely costly spells of this class. All of the other stats basically matched the default setup for Primrose: she excels at elemental attack, speed, and evasion while struggling mightily at physical defense. Readers should recall that 80 is the default value for all of these stats and anything above or below 80 indicates areas of strength or weakess. Primrose is perhaps better suited for an evasion-based build than anyone else in the game, aside from maybe Therion, and I was going to be relying on dodging attacks once again for survival.
The Starseer class matches Primrose's Dancer job by being a spellcasting role that can't equip staffs as a weapon type. Instead, the Starseer gets knives and a surprising spears for its two weapon categories; this is a stroke of good fortune since knives happen to be the most important weapon type for breaking the Chapter 4 bosses. I looked over the weapons list and there's a lategame spear that boosts wind element along with a lategame dagger that boosts dark element, both of which are accessible by the Starseer class. As we'll see in a minute, this class deals a mixture of wind/light/dark element damage in a really funky way that's unlike anything possessed by the other classes. Since Octopath Traveler's combat engine will use the best stats from either weapon slot, my longterm plan was to equip knives that had big boosts to evasion while relying on the spear slot for boosts to elemental attack.
Like all jobs in Octopath Traveler, the Starseer begins the game with two abilities. The first of these was vastly more important: Shooting Stars hits all elemeies on screen three times, first with wind element and then with light element followed by dark element. It's the only skill in the game that hits with three different elements at once, with the closest match being the Runelord's Divine skill that uses all six of the elements in succession. While this sounds pretty cool, it's actually not terribly useful for breaking the shields on opponents unless they would happen to have weaknesses to at least two out of three from the wind/light/dark combo. For damage purposes, Shooting Stars deals exactly the same amount as the Sorcerer's six elemental abilities, hitting three times at a strength of 1.06. By way of comparison, the Scholar's Fireball hits once at a strength of 1.33, Fire Storm hits twice at a strength of 1.20, and the Sorcerer's Ignis Ardere hits three times at that same strength of 1.06. Generally speaking, hitting more times for less damage is a good thing as it makes it easier for this class to get around the 9999 damage cap that other solo characters like H'aanit's Hunter kept slamming into. Unfortunately there was a big downside: Shooting Stars costs a whopping 35 spirit points per use! 
Even with Primrose beginning the game with a mighty 57 SP, she could only cast Shooting Stars a single time before running out of spirit points. This would become less of an issue as I made it further into the gameplay but it was a tough barrier for the moment.
The other starting Starseer ability was BP Boost, granting an ally a set number of turns with doubled boost point generation. This was clearly a support skill intended to be used in a fully party and it didn't have much practical use right now for a solo character, especially not with its own 25 SP cost. Note that characters still do not generate boost points on the turn after boosting even with this buff in place which was really going to limit its usefulness for solo Primrose. Here's the full list of the Starseer's abilities:
As with all jobs in Octopath Traveler, the first two abilities are an innate part of the class and then the following five skills can be unlocked in any order once there are enough job points. The final Divine skill requires unlocking all of the other seven skills before it can be taken to finish off the class. As befitting its nature as a support class, the Starseer has a whole bunch of buffing abilities along with a single powerful debuff. Several of these abilities aren't particularly useful for a solo game, as Divination providing guaranteed crits doesn't really matter when every attack goes critical in the lategame anyway, and Ethereal Healing being vastly better in a party setting where four characters are benefiting from it. However, there were two extremely powerful abilities to learn on this list, starting with Starsong which may be the single best buff in the whole game. Starsong boosts physical defense, elemental defense, speed, and evasion simultaneously; this is the only way to get the Evasion Up property in the entire gameplay. I didn't even know what that would do but I was eager to test it out. Celestial Intervention also has a unique function by protecting the player from being subject to enemy debuffs, or preventing the opponent from putting any buffs on themselves. I could see that there were a couple places where bosses give themselves one-time buffs which this skill should be able to lock out from happening, or use it to prevent some really nasty stuff from happening to Primrose.
This is not a class that has a particularly useful Divine skill, a major contrast to the ridiculously overpowered final abilities of the Runelord and Warmaster classes. The Starseer eventually unlocks Steorra's Prophecy which deals non-elemental magic damage based on the total number of boost points currently held by the party. This is understandably not going to be helpful for a solo character and Steorra's Prophecy doesn't count the boost points that need to be spent to cast the Divine skill itself, whoops. This means that the Starseer is pretty much reliant on Shooting Stars alone to deal damage. The saving grace for this class comes in its amazing support skills which unfortunately were going to take some time to unlock. Each Starseer ability had a hefty price tag of 2000 job points and Primrose would need to unlock two of them for the first support skill, five of them for the full collection of passive abilities. Better get to grinding!
I started out the Starseer's journey by taking the time to watch Primrose's opening story sequence, something that I rarely do but enjoyed for this final playthrough. Past experience has taught me that the first order of business for a solo character is to increase their defensive stats, particularly their physical defense since they'll be absorbing a lot of hits standing there by themselves. I used the starting funds to purchase a Fur Robe and a Feathered Hat which together took Primrose from 64 to 96 physical defense. That was still on the low side but at least she'd have a chance now. Combat against the monsters in the starting dungeon was pretty much what you'd expect, a lot of slashing at the enemies with Primrose's starting dagger (which I hadn't had enough money to upgrade yet). She could wipe out any opposing group with a cast of Shooting Stars... and then be completely out of spirit points until the next time that Primrose leveled. This made the combat rather tough and I actually found myself running away from a couple of the encounters where the monsters didn't have a daggers weakness. Primrose simply took too much damage fighting those battles to make them cost-effective.
By contrast, Helgenish was very easy for Primrose to defeat. He had reduced stats by virtue of this being the only boss in the game intended to be fought with a solo character and Shooting Stars alone was more than enough to deal with this initial theat. Primrose broke through Helgenish's shields with her dagger, then cast Shooting Stars for approximately 280 x 3 = 840 damage to everything on screen. That was sufficient to wipe out Helgenish's two minions, followed by Primrose eating an Inspiriting Plum to restore her SP, then breaking and finishing off the boss with the second Shooting Stars. I had the feeling that the Starseer was a class that would become easier over time, not harder, so getting past these initial hurdles was a good sign.
I wandered around a bit with Primrose after completing the opening story sequence. The first order of business was completing the one side quest in Sunshade that Primrose could fulfill, then using the resulting money for some basic equipment upgrades. She purchased the Round Shield to get her physical defense up to 113, followed by the Arcane Knife with a nice boost of 42 to elemental attack and then the War Spear to have a weapon in the spears slot for the first time. Due to the hacked nature of how I had given Primrose the Starseer job, she actually couldn't attack with a spear at all until I gave her this weapon, heh. Then it was time to begin traveling the countryside; I tried to go do the Lost Grandfather escort quest to Clearbrook for 2000 money but apparently that doesn't unlock until after finishing Alfyn's story sequence. Instead, I turned around and headed east into the Highlands fighting monsters and opening the scattered treasure chests along the way. Primrose lacked enough money for the next equipment purchase that I wanted to make in Cobbleston so I kept on going and ventured all the way up to Tressa's hometown of Rippletide. Almost everything in these areas was weak to either spears or daggers, and it certainly helped that I was in the portion of the map where Olberic and Tressa (both spear-wielders) begin their quests.
By the time that Primrose reached Rippletide, she had enough funds on hand to teleport back to Cobbleston and purchase the Silver Vest. This is a piece of equipment that I often target with my solo characters for its 60 physical / 68 elemental defensive ratings at a very reasonable price of 4160 money. I wanted to have this item in place before taking on Gaston at the end of Olberic's Chapter 1 story. Gaston has a very strong physical attack for this portion of the game and I felt much better going after him with an upgraded 154 physical defense. Primrose even found something called the Black Cap within Olberic's dungeon that gave her an additional 31 points of evasion. She was getting to the point where roughly a third of incoming attacks were being dodged which was a major help.
Now fortified with those additional defenses in place, Primrose was able to tank Gaston's Mighty Blow for roughly 200 damage taken. That might not sound so bad, however I've had other solo characters where I didn't emphasize physical defense taking as much as 400-500 damage here which would have been a deathblow for Primrose's paltry HP total. It did help that Gaston had lowered stats by virtue of being the second Chaper 1 boss and Primrose's natural dodginess had her evading a good portion of these attacks too. I was a bit worried here that Primrose's Shooting Stars ability would wipe out both of Gaston's minions, which would be a bad thing because he starts using a stunning attack once they're gone. Fortunately the first Shooting Stars did not drop the minions below half health, which allowed me to cast a second one without worry, followed by the third one wiping out both boss and minions simultaneously. I had to use an Inspiriting Plum after each casting of Shooting Stars as Primrose continued to struggle with her low starting SP total.
Tressa's Chapter 1 story was the obvious next target since Primrose had already walked all the way up there. The Caves of Maya dungeon was uneventful (aside from getting wiped out once by poison on the snakes inside) before reaching the two bosses at the end. Mikk had a weakness to spears while Makk had no weaknesses that Starseer Primrose could target. They were both weak against wind element though that wasn't terribly helpful given that each casting of Shooting Stars only hit with wind element one time. I had Primrose break Mikk with her spear and then hit with Shooting Stars for the pictured damage. The spell did enough damage to wipe out Mikk in two castings which left me with only Makk to contend with. Once his partner was gone, Makk buffed himself and started using an ability called Pirate's Pride that hit for roughly 150 physical damage. I would have preferred to keep both of them alive together but it wasn't really possible given the nature of how Shooting Stars always hit everyone on screen. Primrose kept eating Healing Grapes and needed to go through several Inspiriting Plums before wiping out Makk on the fourth casting of Shooting Stars.
The experience from that boss fight allowed Primrose to clear a major milestone: she finally hit 70 SP at Level 11 to allow *TWO* castings of Shooting Stars before running out of spirit points, hooray! 
Silly as it might sound, that was a real help for the character. I continued onwards further north to Atlasdam where Tressa was able to Purchase the Elusive Shield from a boy in the castle. This new equipment had slightly higher physical and elemental defense, but the real prize was 56 more points of evasion. Primrose already had a score over 200 in that category and was starting to exhibit some real elusiveness. This was handy in Cyrus' dungeon where some of the monster encounters were pretty difficult for a solo character who was still using mostly dagger and spear attacks. Eventually Primrose would be able to lay waste to everything with her spellcasting but she was still reliant on stabbing things most of the time.
The Russell boss fight was... kind of hard, say what?! Although this is normally one of the easiest bosses in the game, Russell was the first opponent to have his full stats and it was no walk in the park for Starseer Primrose. The tricky issue here was Russell having 8 shields which took a long time to cut through with Primrose's dagger attacks. Once the shields were down, Shooting Stars hit for roughly 450 x 3 = 1350 damage against the boss and that meant no fast kill against Russell's 5750 HP. I'm also used to most of the area-of-effect abilities being able to wipe out Russell's two Water Wisp minions almost immediately, however they survived two castings of Shooting Stars and didn't fall until the third ability usage. Primrose kept getting blasted by enemy spells the whole time that she was laboriously cutting through those shields and this could have been really ugly if she didn't have good elemental defense. When Russell dropped low on health, he started using an Intimidate attack that could silence Primrose (which I had to wait out because I didn't have any of the items that cure silence status yet) and something called Dragon's Breath that dealt nearly 200 fire damage. While Primrose was never in true danger of dying, she did have to consume about a dozen Healing Grapes over a long battle before Russell was finally defeated. Sheesh!
Rather than venture into the Frostlands, I turned Primrose in the opposite direction and went west around the inner circle. My rationale was simple: Ophilia's Guide ability would do nothing for my setup since I already had Primrose as the featured solo character while I desperately needed access to Therion for opening purple chests and Stealing from townspeople. I figured that I would tackle Alfyn's Chapter 1 sequence along the way, though this may have been a mistake since the enemies in his Caves of Rhyio dungeon were legitimately tough for Primrose. The River Froggen III monsters in particular liked to spam a healing ability that restored about 150 health, and since most of the enemies here weren't weak against either daggers or spears, Primrose couldn't outdamage that healing with her auto attacks. It was actually impossible to win these fights without casting Shooting Stars and I couldn't exactly do that for each random encounter. Thus Primrose was left with no choice but to run away, the legendary Starseer class turning tail and fleeing from a bunch of frogs. What an embarassment!
One way or another, Primrose made it to the conclusion of the dungeon where she had to face off against the Blotted Viper and its two Asp minions. This boss fight is all about poison and I made sure to stock up on a bunch of the Healing Herb items that cure it ahead of time; what I wouldn't have given for an Antidote Stone accessory at this point in the gameplay. The trick for a solo character is that the two Asp minions cannot be killed as the Blotted Viper switches over to a stunning attack after they're gone. That was a potential problem here since Primrose couldn't exactly tell Shooting Stars not to hit the two minions. The good news was that the Viper did have a daggers weakness which allowed Primrose to cut through its shields (getting poisoned all the while and repeatly having to heal or clear the poison) and then cast her only offensive spell. Shooting Stars did the now-familiar 1350ish damage to the boss and importantly did *NOT* drop the minions below half health. This allowed Primrose to cast a second Shooting Stars, this one putting the minions into "red health" damage to indicate they were near death. Now I took the time to break the Blotted Viper two more times, each time stabbing it with a bunch of auto attacks while its shields were down, before breaking the boss for a fifth time to launch the killing Shooting Stars and wipe the whole board. Whew, that was a long fight with a lot of healing items used but Primrose did make it through. I probably should have saved this boss until a little later when Primrose had more upgraded equipment.
The Blotted Viper was probably the hardest opponent that Starseer Primrose faced throughout the course of the Chapter 1 stories and things were mostly downhill from this point forward. I ran the side story quests in Clearbrook that opened up after finishing Alfyn's initial tale, picking up a Mighty Belt accessory worth +50 physical attack which would be quite useful for the moment. Afterwards it was onward to Bolderfall en route to which Primrose ran into her first Cait of the run. I sacrificed the only Medium soulstone that she had acquired to this point in exchange for about 2.5 levels worth of experience along with a bunch of gold and job points. That was well worth the trade. Then Therion's Chapter 1 story sequence was extremely easy to complete as none of the monsters in Ravus Manor had poison or healing abilities to contend with. Heathcote might very well be the easiest of the initial set of bosses as I don't think I've ever had trouble with him no matter what wacky variant I happened to be playing. Primrose used her dagger to break his shields and then hit with Shooting Stars for 600 x 3 = 1800 damage; he was dead in three castings. Easy stuff.
And now I had access to Therion! If there was a turning point in Primrose's journey around the inner ring of towns, this was the moment where the difficulty level plummeted. I started out by having Therion steal the townsfolk in Bolderfall blind, including save-scumming a Stimulating Necklace accessory at 3% odds which was worth 80 SP (!) when equipped. That thing took Primrose from 95 SP to 175 SP and made it much, much easier to cast a bunch of Shooting Stars spells in succession. Then I took the time to Steal a Commemorative Coin from one of the bar patrons in Sunshade at those same 3% odds (which took about 40 attempts) because it sold for a badly-needed 25,000 money afterwards. I was also confident that I could make the run out to Noblecourt in the second ring at this point, equipping a Wakeful Stone to prevent the sleep attacks used by the Night Raven / Giant Sheep pairing that always seems to be the first encounter on the path north. Primrose broke the raven with her dagger, killed it with a max boosted Shooting Stars, then cast two more Shooting Stars in succession (which she wouldn't have even had enough SP to use without that Stimulating Necklace) to defeat the Giant Sheep as well. That was the only fight necessary to reach the town and now we were really in business.
Noblecourt always has a lot of equipment upgrades available and on this playthrough I truly let Therion loose to wreck havoc on the town. I began by Stealing the Oasis Hat from the Impresario outside the town entrance, which always has 100% odds to succeed and yields the best helmet available in this portion of the gameplay. By way of comparsion, the previous Black Cap that Primrose had been using had a mere 15 physical / 20 elemental defense, heh. Then it was on to this Soul Knife at 3% Steal odds which had a huge boost to both physical and elemental damage, making it worthwhile to run the several dozen attempts needed to claim the item. Therion lifted the new knife with only 1 failed attempt remaining before having to restore reputation, so I simply got caught again on purpose and paid the fee at the tavern to keep running 5 attempts before needing to reload. Next I Purchased the Empowering Bracelet with Tressa since it was a faily cheap item and having 500 extra health would be super useful, before finally getting another 3% Steal of the Sorcerer's Robe which landed relatively quickly. This item had higher physical defense than the previous Silver Vest along with MUCH more elemental defense and a nifty boost to elemental attack to boot.
The net effect was a massive gain to pretty much every stat across the board. Physical defense increased from 170 to 315 while elemental defense increased from 205 to 527 (!!!) So much for taking damage from spells in this portion of the gameplay. Primrose's physical attack with her dagger went up by about 70 points while her elemental attack leaped up by more than 200 points. I was also knocking out a bunch of the side stories in these towns for additional stat-boosting nuts which continued to scale up Primrose's numbers further. And I even stopped to clear out the Path of Beasts optional side dungeon while heading up to S'warkii because there was an improved spear named the War Lance hidden inside in a purple chest. It wasn't a great weapon but it added another 40 points of physical attack to the spear slot as well, completing the set of upgrades as Primrose had now swapped out the item in every single equipment slot for something better.
All of this stuff was far better than what the player is supposed to have while completing the Chapter 1 stories which meant that the dungeons for the final two characters turned into something of a joke. I was having Primrose equip the Mighty Belt for the monster-crawling portions of the dungeons, as she was still auto attacking most enemies to death, then swapping it out for the Stimulating Necklace when it was time to fight bosses for those additional 80 SP. I also finally reached 2000 job points to unlock the first new Starseer ability while fighting through H'aanit's tale, with Starsong being the obvious choice to take. I experimented with this ability for the first time against the Ghisarma: it augments physical/elemental defense, speed, and evasion for 2 turns for each boost point invested, up to 8 turns for a fully boosted spellcast. I was already well familiar with the boosted physical/elemental defense from playing other characters, both of which are extremely helpful as they reduce incoming damage of the associated type by a third. The evasion up buff was new though: it clearly increased Primrose's evasion by a massive amount, to the point where she was dodging about 75-80% of the incoming attacks. She wasn't completely invincible but that creature was whiffling on nearly everything it tried. Offensively, Shooting Stars was dealing close to 3000 damage despite Primrose not being able to break the shields on the Ghisarma which once again ended the fight after three castings. I was mostly playing around with the new Starsong ability moreso than actually trying to kill the boss since the danger level was nonexistent.
And it was the same story for the Guardian of the First Flame which can sometimes pose a genuine threat to a solo character. Not for Starseer Primrose though, who could use her dagger to cut through the big golem's shields and then cast a max boosted Shooting Stars for 1700 x 3 = 5100 damage, ouch! That was tremendous punishment for this early in the game and a single casting was enough to drop the Guardian below half health. It summons three Dark Wips at this point, each of which will self-destruct for huge damage after a couple of turns pass... only to flail hopelessly against a Primrose who had her Starsong protection in place. Two of the three Dark Wisps missed her entirely with their detonations and the one that hit only inflicted about 250 damage - not too scary at this point. If they had been a threat, Primrose could have wiped them out before exploding with a max boosted Shooting Stars, which finished off the Guardian on the next casting and easily one-shot the minions at the same time. Starseer Primrose was finishing up the Chapter 1 stories in style!
Things were indeed getting easier rather than harder as Primrose began to unlock more of her Starseer abilities and gain enough spirit points to be able to cast them. Next up would be gaining access to more of her class abilities as well as unlocking the overpowered Starseer passive support skills. I felt sorry for the upcoming Chapter 2 opposition: they had no idea what was in store for them.
