Good early game team combos?

[RainbowRuby]

i did a post asking who a good starting character was, i picked Cyrus and im glad i did, helped me pick up the game easier. but now im at a small roadblock. idk who to have on my team (all chapter 1s are done)

cant remove Cyrus since i started with him. i want Therion because of the locked chests but the other 2 spots im not sure. i was using Ophilia, Hannit and Therion at first since those were the first 4 i got and swapped them around a bit during the other characters chapter 1s to get a feel for their combat.

im not seeing why Tressa is considered so good imo (especially early game) when therion can just steal everything and her stats are really weak compared to others around her level

any advice would be great tyvm!

[marcv666]

Tressa being so good relies on the fact that you can travel to Tier 3 town with Evasive Maneuvers, at low level Therion can't easily steal good stuff where as with Tressa, all you need is money and you can get end game gear right from the start.

With Tressa, you'll also be able to find leaves just running around, so that's something good while you travel everywhere.

If that's your first playthrough I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching this but I made a series of video showing how you can progress fast in the game:
https://youtu.be/9sXC7txQ7y4

[Cyn0sur3z]

If you're new to this game then choose whatever four characters you like, all combinations will work out because this does not make a huge difference, especially if you're unfamiliar with the map and all sorts of things, so just explore and enjoy Octopath the way you like.

Like you said Cyrus is a good character to start with, scholar class gives you super early access to evasive maneuvers (Scholar Passive skill #1), once you have that skill equipped, you can basically running around unlock all portions of the map without worrying about encounters (with the help of save&load). Once you sneaks in those high level towns you will find that steal rate is very low and it's just easier to purchase those good items with your money. The money Tressa pickup along the way increases significantly when you're in higher level maps so there's no reason not taking her with you when you explore those new places. There are lots of money treasure chest each contains approximately 20,000-30,000 leafs most of them hidden in dungeons (some requires Therion's ability to unlock purple chests), with the help of evasive maneuvers you should be able to grab them safely.

so that makes a perfect early explore team- Cyrus, Tressa ,Therion

I was not aware of the high power-level of Tressa until I saw some professional speedrunners running OctopathTravelers and they all need Tressa or merchant sub-class badly. Donate Bp skill fits every teams, it gives your main damage dealer extra steam. Hired-help is also a very powerful skill, like I said before, you can gain access to a lot of money chest in early-game so the 30,000 option veteran soldiers(with 3 boosts) gives you ability soloing mighty boss at low-level. Even in late game, I still use Hired Help skill as an easy way to break enemies' shields( sword, axes, dagger, light magic)

[Eltia]

I went with Cyrus, Theorion, Olberic and Ophilia for the first 1/3 of the game. It's the classical RPG party setup (tank, healer, nuke, support) and it's versatile. Later on you would want to use Alfyn and Tressa. Alfyn's Aelfric's Auspices is OP strong when combined with Concot and Tressa is excellent as BP battery and perfect dodge when you unlock secret jobs.