What does Advanced Magic Master do in Octopath Traveler 2?

The vaguest support skill in the game

Advanced Magic Master is the fourth support skill Scholars can learn in Octopath Traveler 2. It is also, without a doubt, one of the confusing passive abilities in the game. Its official description is “Raises the number of times the equipping character can use more intense spells by 1,” which provides more questions than it does answers. What is a “more intense spell?” What does it mean when it says the character can use them one more time? Also… what?

Fortunately, there is an explanation for all of this. The problem is that Advanced Magic Master interacts with a central mechanic for Scholars that goes almost entirely unexplained. In fact, since I didn’t use Osvald early on, I hardly understood what “intense spells” were until I was about halfway through the game. If you are just as confused as I once was, here’s all the ramifications of Advanced Magic Master, explained.

What are intense spells in Octopath Traveler 2?

If you’ve unlocked all of a Scholar’s Job Skills, you should notice two curious abilities. Advanced Magic is described as boosting “the intensity of a single ally’s spells 2 times,” and Alephan’s Wisdom claims to “greatly boost the intensity of a single ally’s spells  3 times.” If you use these skills on a character using either Scholar, Cleric, or the Arcanist secret job, you’ll notice that some of their spells will change. For example, typically Scholars know the spell Fireball, which deals fire damage to the enemy party. However, if you use Advanced Magic, Fireball will change into Fire Storm.

As you can see, this adds an extra hit to Fireball, making it a bit better at breaking enemy shields. Furthermore, if you use Alephan’s Wisdom, Fireball will instead turn into Ignis Ardere.

In other words, these are “intense spells” in Octopath Traveler 2. As long as the buffs from Advanced Magic or Alephan’s Wisdom are active, any applicable spells will be modified into one of their intense forms. These typically add extra hits to attack spells, though the Cleric’s healings spells do have intense variations. Keep in mind that buffs don’t last for a set amount of turns, but rather work a set amount of times. For example, if you use Alephan’s Wisdom but decide to defend for five turns afterwards, you’ll still have three intense spells to use.

Should you use Advanced Magic Master in Octopath Traveler 2?

With the above explanation tucked away, we can now describe Advanced Magic Master itself; it simply increases the duration of Advanced Magic and Alephan’s Wisdom by one use. So whereas one cast of Alephan’s Wisdom would greatly boost the intensity of spells three times, its effect would extend to four times.

Tragically, even though so much thought was put into this complex spell system, Advanced Magic Master is overall unremarkable. In the early game, you have little reason not to use it. It’s not like the extra turn isn’t welcome. However, Advanced Magic Master will eventually have to contend with other support skills that boost your damage further. Additionally, once you unlock Scholar as a secondary job, you may opt to have a support characters use these intensity moves on your lead damage dealer of choice.

The real elephant in the room is that Octopath Traveler 2 is massively biased towards physical attackers. Characters like Hikari and Ochette excel at breaking enemies and dealing damage, all without setting up intense spells. Advanced Magic Master can work if your spell caster is primarily there to break enemies, but the practical usefulness of this perk is minimal. If you don’t have anything else to boost your spellcaster’s damage potential, Advanced Magic Master isn’t a bad pick. It’s just a slight modification to an already niche mechanic.

Whether you use Advanced Magic Master or not, at least now you won’t feel completely confused trying to figure out what it does.