Bestower of All Boss Guide — Beating Octopath Traveler 0's Default Final Boss

The Bestower of All is the boss waiting at the end of Octopath Traveler 0's main story — the finale of the Bestower of All arc (prologue plus eight chapters, closing with "At Journey's End") and the fight that produces the game's default ending. It comes immediately after a battle against Saint Sazantos, which means the finale is effectively a gauntlet: you need a party that can survive Sazantos and still have the resources, rows, and Ultimates to close out the boss behind him.

A note on honesty before the strategy: precise, consistently-sourced stat sheets for this fight (HP totals, Shield Point counts per phase, exact damage thresholds) are not reliably published as of patch 1.0.7.0, and community numbers conflict. Rather than invent figures, this guide teaches the mechanics and preparation that decide the fight — which, in this game, is genuinely the part that matters. Parties at the right level with poor Break discipline wipe; parties a few levels lower with clean rows and Lv.3 Ultimates win.

What you are walking into

The finale sequence works like this:

1. "At Journey's End" — the final chapter of the Bestower of All arc.
2. Saint Sazantos — the lead-in boss. Story-significant, mechanically serious, and the fight that sets your resource state for what follows.
3. Bestower of All — the default final boss, immediately after. Multi-phase, as series final bosses are.

Two consequences fall out of that structure. First, do not treat Sazantos as a warm-up you can spend everything on — whatever BP, SP, items, and Helper summons you burn in fight one are not coming back for free before fight two. Second, the finale is where the game's two headline systems — eight-member parties (four front, four back, free swapping) and Ultimate Techniques — stop being optional luxuries and become the intended solution.

If you are looking for the true ending instead, that is a different chain (The Heavens, Flamebringer's Shrine, Illuminate) that replaces this boss with Galdera — see the true ending guide. You can do both; since patch 1.0.7.0, bosses are repeatable via the strange monument, and a manual save before "At Journey's End" lets you experience each finale.

Prerequisites and preparation

Story and roster

• Bestower of All arc in progress. This fight is the arc's conclusion; you cannot reach it early, and you should not rush it underleveled.
• Eight combat-ready characters. Not "four mains and four bodies." The back row regenerates HP/SP and gains BP every turn, so a real bench converts directly into sustain and damage. With 35 recruitable companions in the game, you have the raw material — see recruit-all-characters if your roster is thin.
• Training Ground investment. Training Ground Lv.2 teaches Ultimate Techniques to companions, and its passive EXP/JP slots keep your second row leveling while you play. This is the highest-value town upgrade for any final-boss attempt.

Levels and skills

Community consensus puts a comfortable first clear in the mid-50s, with successful clears reported lower by disciplined parties. What matters more than the number:

• Lv.3 Ultimate Techniques on your two main damage dealers. Ultimate gauges charge by spending BP; long boss fights are where they shine, and the final boss is the longest fight in the story.
• Aelfric's Favor ready. The protagonist's first Ultimate — a front-row heal plus cleanse — is the best single panic button in the game for a two-fight gauntlet.
• Cleanse coverage that is not one character. Final bosses in this series lean on status pressure. If your only cleanse is one Cleric and that Cleric dies or is row-locked, the fight unwinds.
• Support skills and passives from job progression. Each job's later skills grant passives; a party that has broadly unlocked jobs (remember: the protagonist switches among eight jobs, and a new job unlocks after learning five skills in the current one) has a meaningfully deeper passive pool.

Items and Helpers

• Full healing, revival, and SP restoration stocks. Two boss fights back-to-back is an attrition check as much as a damage check.
• Helpers recruited and slotted. Helpers are summoned in battle at no turn cost — hold five, summon two per battle. Endgame-strength NPC Helpers are free Break progress, free buffs, and free damage. If you have ignored the Helper system all game, this is the fight to fix that; recruit strong NPCs before "At Journey's End."

Gear

You do not need post-game equipment for the default finale — the story is tuned to be beatable with what the arcs give you. That said, if you want margin, the Battle-Tested gear pieces (won by Contending Lv.60 NPCs) and the treasure lines in the post-game checklist are the fastest power spikes available, and nothing stops you from grabbing them first.

Party composition — building two rows, not one team

The single biggest strategic idea for this fight: compose two rows that each function independently. The classic failure mode is four strong characters in front and four afterthoughts behind, which collapses the moment the boss pressures you into swapping.

A reliable template:

• Front row A (offense row): your two primary damage dealers, a breaker (someone whose coverage shreds Shield Points fast), and a support/buffer.
• Back row B (sustain row): a dedicated healer, a cleanse/debuff option, and two characters who can swap forward to finish Breaks or cover a weakness the front row lacks.

Coverage targets across all eight slots:

• Weapon types: Sword, Polearm, Dagger, Axe, Bow, Staff, plus the two types new to this entry, Tome and Fan. You will not cover all eight deeply — cover six or more and know which pair swap reaches the rest.
• Elements: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, Dark. Scholars and elemental Action Skills ("Mastery" items, equippable by any companion) patch holes cheaply; the Training Ground's mastery system exists precisely for this.
• One reliable multi-hit option per damage dealer. Boosted normal attacks hit up to four times, and on a weakness that is the fastest Shield removal in the game. Multi-hit weapon skills serve the same role when SP allows.

Character-exclusive jobs are worth mentioning: by the finale you can field names like King Richard, Lord Bargello, Queen Alaune, Empress Tatloch, Knight Ardante Rondo, Wise King Solon, and Captain Eltrix from the Bestower of All arc itself. Several are strong frontliners; build around whoever your JP investment has made strongest rather than chasing a tier list. For a deeper dive, see best-party-composition.

Phase 0 — Saint Sazantos, the lead-in

Everything about the Sazantos fight should be viewed through one lens: win while spending as little as possible. He is a real boss with real pressure — story players who face-tank him do wipe — but every resource you burn here is a resource the Bestower of All will punish you for not having.

Operational rules for the Sazantos fight:

1. Probe weaknesses with cheap tools first. Single hits and low-cost skills until the weakness display fills in; only then commit boosted attacks. Wasted 3-BP swings into non-weaknesses are the expensive way to learn.
2. Break with multi-hits, kill with skills — not the reverse. Boosted normal attacks (up to four hits) remove Shield Points fastest; save SP-heavy skills for the Broken window when damage is roughly doubled.
3. Limit Helper summons. You get two per battle and they do not carry between fights as a replenished resource mid-gauntlet — treat them as Bestower-of-All tools unless Sazantos genuinely threatens a wipe.
4. Heal with efficiency, not panic. Top off before the killing blow. Entering the final boss at full HP/SP with full BP banks is worth more than any damage record in fight one.
5. Learn his rhythm for free. Sazantos telegraphs like the endgame boss he is. Watch his charge-ups and turn patterns; the Bestower of All's pressure style will feel familiar, and this is your rehearsal.

If you wipe to Sazantos himself, the fix is almost always the same trio: insufficient healing throughput, no cleanse, or a back row that cannot hold the line when swapped. Fix the composition, not the level.

The Bestower of All — fight plan

With no trustworthy public stat sheet, here is the plan that wins the fight regardless of the numbers: control the Shield Points, own the Break turns, and never let one bad turn become two.

Opening phase — information over aggression

• Spend the first turns mapping exposed weaknesses with single hits and cheap multi-hits.
• Establish your rotation rhythm immediately: front row acts, back row regenerates HP/SP and banks BP. A back-row damage dealer with 3 BP and a charged Ultimate is your loaded weapon for the first Break.
• Do not fire Ultimates in the opening unless the fight gifts you an early Break. The gauge you charge by spending BP early is the same gauge that wins Break turns later.

Mid-fight — the Break engine

The core loop, repeated until the fight ends:

1. Chip shields with weakness-matched multi-hits while keeping HP topped off.
2. Time the Break for a turn when your damage dealers hold BP and Ultimates. Breaking "whenever" wastes the window; Breaking on your terms doubles its value.
3. Unload inside the window: Lv.3 Ultimates first (they do not consume the BP you may need next turn), then boosted skills, highest SP cost first.
4. Rebuild immediately after the window closes. Heal, cleanse, swap battered pairs back. The turns after a Break are when greedy parties die to the boss's counter-tempo.

Charge-ups and big attacks

Series final bosses telegraph their fight-enders, and this one is no exception. Your two honest answers, in order of preference:

• Break to interrupt. If the Shield Points are within reach, cancelling a charge-up is both defense and offense.
• Brace, don't gamble. If you cannot Break in time: fragile pairs swap to the back, defend commands go up, heals are queued. "Maybe it won't kill us" is the thought that precedes most final-boss wipes.

Multi-phase discipline

Expect the fight to change gears — new pressure, new patterns, possibly new targets for your rows. The rules that carry you through phase transitions:

• Re-scout after every transition. Weakness exposure and targeting can shift; do not keep swinging at a phase-one read.
• Protect your sustain. If the boss starts pressuring your healer's row, rotate deliberately rather than reactively. Losing cleanse access mid-phase is the classic cascade.
• Keep spending BP. Nervous players hoard BP "for later" and arrive at the boss's death throes with full gauges and un-fired Ultimates. BP spent is Ultimate gauge gained; in a fight this long, aggression is scaling.

Common pitfalls

• Treating Sazantos as the final boss. Spending everything on the lead-in and meeting the real boss with empty SP, fired Helpers, and un-charged gauges.
• Four-man habits. Players who never built their back row discover, mid-finale, that half their "party" is dead weight. Build eight real characters before "At Journey's End."
• Breaking on the boss's schedule. A Break fired while your dealers are BP-empty and Ultimate-less is a wasted Break. Control the timing.
• Single-point-of-failure healing. One Cleric, one cleanse, no items — then one unlucky targeting sequence ends the run. Redundancy wins gauntlets.
• Ignoring the Training Ground and masteries. Elemental Action Skills from the mastery system are the cheapest weakness-coverage patch in the game, and companion Ultimates require the upgraded Training Ground.
• Panic after phase transitions. New phase, new patterns — re-read the fight instead of forcing the old script.

Expected result

Beating the Bestower of All rolls the credits on the default ending and closes the main story. From there, the game opens up rather than ending: the true ending chain (The Heavens → Flamebringer's Shrine → Illuminate → Galdera), the post-game super boss, the collectible lines, and town completion all sit on the far side of this fight. And thanks to the 1.0.7.0 strange monument, the boss himself is repeatable if you want a rematch or a cleaner clear.

Related guides

• True ending guide — turn this finale into the Galdera fight instead
• Super boss: Amatsukami No Orochi — the next wall after the story
• Post-game checklist — everything that unlocks after the credits
• Best party composition — the two-row doctrine in depth
• Battle-Tested gear — endgame equipment to over-prepare with
• EXP farming — closing level gaps before "At Journey's End"

Choosing your eight — who to bring

The roster question deserves its own section because the finale is where roster depth stops being abstract. By the end of the Bestower of All arc you can have the majority of the game's 35 recruitable companions, and the arc itself hands you seven character-exclusive jobs: King Richard, Lord Bargello, Queen Alaune, Empress Tatloch, Knight Ardante Rondo, Wise King Solon, and Captain Eltrix. Add the protagonist (who alone can switch among the eight standard jobs — Warrior, Merchant, Thief, Apothecary, Hunter, Cleric, Scholar, Dancer) and you have more good options than slots.

Principles for picking the eight:

1. JP investment beats theoretical power. A companion whose job skills you have unlocked deeply — remember, each job has seven battle skills and skills 4–7 each grant a passive — outperforms a "stronger" character you never developed. Audit your JP history before you audit tier lists.
2. Every row needs its own sustain. The most common composition mistake is putting all healing in one row. When the boss pressures that row, you are forced to choose between healing and everything else. Two rows, two sustain plans.
3. Coverage first, synergy second. Count your reachable weaknesses across the eight: the weapon types (Sword, Polearm, Dagger, Axe, Bow, Staff, Tome, Fan) and the elements (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, Dark). Any gap is a Break you cannot force. Action Skills from the mastery system patch holes cheaply — this is what the Training Ground economy (500–2500 JP fees) is for.
4. The protagonist's job is a flex slot. Because the protagonist alone switches jobs freely (a new job unlocks after learning five skills in the current one), use them to cover whatever your seven companions cannot. Protagonist-as-Scholar patching elemental gaps, or protagonist-as-Apothecary adding a second sustain line, are classic finale solutions.
5. Plan the pairs, not just the eight. Front/back pairs swap during their own turns, so pair characters who want to alternate: a fragile damage dealer behind a durable frontliner, a healer behind a breaker. Bad pairing wastes the swap system even with good characters.

Resource checklist — the night before "At Journey's End"

A concrete pre-finale audit. Run it before you cross the point of no return:

Resource	Target state	Why
Healing items	Deep stock	Two fights, no shop in between
Revival options	Several	Final bosses test them
SP restoration	More than feels necessary	Skill-heavy Break windows drain SP fast
Helpers	5 held, endgame-tier	Two free summons per battle, zero turn cost
Ultimates	Lv.3 on main dealers + protagonist	Break-window damage is the win condition
Training Ground	Lv.2 minimum	Companion Ultimates live here
Aelfric's Favor	Unlocked and understood	Front-row heal + cleanse, the best panic button
Weakness coverage	Audit done on paper	Know your gaps before the boss finds them
Manual save	Made, before the finale	Both endings, stress-free retries

Alternate approaches — if the standard plan is not working

The underleveled clear. If you are below the community's comfort range and do not want to grind, the levers that move the fight without levels are: endgame gear from the collectible lines (Battle-Tested first — it is the highest power-per-hour), deeper passive unlocks from job progression, and Helper quality. Levels are the slowest way to add power in this game; equipment and systems are the fast way.

The attrition plan. Some parties win not by burst but by out-lasting: two sustain-heavy rows, constant rotation to exploit back-row HP/SP regeneration, Breaks taken whenever they come rather than saved for stacked windows. Slower, but forgiving of execution mistakes. If your burst attempts keep dying to one bad turn, deliberately de-tune into attrition and let the boss fight your plan instead of the reverse.

The consumable plan. Unglamorous but real: this game's item economy is generous enough that a stocked inventory is a genuine strategy layer. If your SP economy collapses in long fights, that is a preparation failure, not a build failure — restock and the same build works.

After the fight — your save's next hour

Credits roll, the default ending is banked, and the game opens up. The efficient next moves, in order: reload or continue into the post-game state; start the true ending chain (The Heavens → Flamebringer's Shrine → Illuminate → Galdera) while your finale-built party is still hot; and consult the post-game checklist for the full map of what just unlocked. Whatever you do, do not dismantle the eight you just built — the same rows, upgraded with endgame gear, are your super boss party.

Worked example: the two-fight resource budget

The gauntlet structure (Saint Sazantos, then the Bestower of All with no breather) becomes much easier to execute once you decide — in advance, at the save point — what each resource is for. Here is a budget that works:

Resource	Saint Sazantos	Bestower of All
BP	Spend only to force Breaks and punish windows	Spend aggressively — every boosted action is Ultimate gauge for a long fight
SP-heavy skills	Broken-window damage only; multi-hit normals do the stripping	Windows first, then emergencies; never for chip damage
Helper summons	Hold both unless a wipe is genuinely threatening	Both early — free Break progress while you map the boss
Ultimates	Bank them unless the fight gifts you a free Break turn	Fire inside every stacked window, Lv.3 dealers first
Items	Heal efficiently, and top off HP/SP before the killing blow	Spend freely — anything left in the bag at the credits was wasted

Run the first fight on the left column and you walk into the second at full HP/SP, both summons in hand, and gauges charged from the approach — which converts the hardest part of the gauntlet (the second boss's opening) into a fight you start ahead. The classic failure is running both fights on the right column: a spectacular Sazantos clear, then a final boss met with empty SP, fired Helpers, and cold gauges. Budget first, fight second.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Bestower of All the final boss or not? It is the default final boss — the one the story gives you if you simply play to the end of "At Journey's End." The true ending swaps the finale to Galdera via an endgame chain (The Heavens → Flamebringer's Shrine → Illuminate). Both are worth doing; neither blocks the other.

Do I lose anything if I win "badly"? No. There is no ranking, no missable reward tied to clear quality. Win by attrition, items, and stubbornness if that is what works — the credits are the same.

Can I refight the boss? Yes — patch 1.0.7.0 added repeatable bosses via the strange monument, so the finale is not a one-time event. It is also a good benchmark fight for testing post-game builds.

What level should I be? Community consensus clusters around the mid-50s for a comfortable first clear, with lower clears reported by disciplined parties. If you are close and your fundamentals are right — two real rows, Lv.3 Ultimates, coverage, stocked items — attempt it; a wipe costs nothing but a reload and teaches you the fight.

Saint Sazantos keeps killing my momentum. Is that normal? Yes — he is the filter before the filter. If he is the wall, the fix is the same trio as everywhere in this arc: sustain redundancy, cleanse coverage, and a back row that can actually fight. And remember the resource rule: everything you overspend on him is owed to the boss behind him.