The JP farm in Bravely Default 2 is a tedious, but alas necessary one, especially when you want to unlock skills for all the jobs within the game, so here’s a guide for that grind to help you along in the early game (pre chapter 2).
OPTIMUM PREPARATIONS
Jobs can go up to a maximum of level 12. What you want to prioritize is getting the Freelancer job to level 12, as you will unlock the JP Up and JP Up and Up passive abilities to make the grind smoother. Of course, remember to equip them! You should also send out the boat expedition to chance on the JP orbs along the way, and collect the spoils every 12 hours.
I will recommend buying the usable items – Stones and such – for faster clears of monsters, especially early on when you don’t have that many jobs / AOE attacks on your person. Since you can only gain JP for your main job, keeping Freelancer as your sub job is not a bad idea early on to Forage for materials, and even JP orbs.
Preferably, you will want to chain as many monsters as possible, so night would be best. Where possible, use the correct monster bait to guarantee at least 3 encounters in a row of that enemy type to maximize farming efficiency. A big time waster is trying to corral enough enemies close enough together to chain them properly, so sometimes it’s fine to have “just” a sub 2x multiplier instead of chasing monsters around.
The multiplier for battles work as follows:
Number of consecutive battles | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6+ |
Multiplier | 1.1x | 1.3x | 1.6x | 2x | 3x |
LOCATIONS
NORTHEAST HALCYONIA
Monsters you’ll attract include Insects, Plants, Spirits and Undead, so if you happen to have any on hand to corral them together, use them in this spot. The dungeon north of this area, Hydrangea Hills, will have more Aquatic creatures. You can either gather up monsters out here, or in the dungeon, whichever you find easier.
To the left, you can also encounter the Leannan Sith with 14k HP. When you’re just starting out, it’d be very unlikely for you to fight her on your own. In the Prologue with Sir Sloan, you can try to keep yourself alive and use him to kill her for you to really bump up those levels. She can Charm your party, so it can be a dangerous fight if you’re not prepared. Equip Swords and not have Freelancer (as Treat will heal up to 1000 HP) to exploit her weakness. You can simply walk in and out of Hydrangea Hills to respawn her.
HYDRANGEA HILLS
This beach here allows you to corral up to 4 creatures nearby, due to their frequent respawn rates. Beast Meat and Fresh Fish are highly recommended.
UNDERGROUND RESEVOIR
Right above the teleporter is this long and narrow corridor. If you have the patience to herd monsters into the dead end (where you also would have found two chests), you can chain the battles for that sweet JP.
OUTSIDE SAVALON
In the deserts of Savalon, you’ll be able to find a lot of Insects. Don’t bother trying to herd them to a specific location as this area is very large. Especially helpful will be having Insect Nectar to lure the Insects towards you instead.
TREETOP TOWER
The narrow corridors and relatively tough monsters makes for some easy herding in this area. After you defeat the boss, you’ll get really easy access too across the floors to chow down on unfortunate creatures.
JAWS OF JUDGEMENT
You’ll be able to access this area in Chapter 3, and as such, is also more involved than the other methods. First of all, you’ll need:
- Beastmaster level 8: Obtain Spearhead passive
- Allows you to always have the first turn when you have a Spear equipped
- Thief
- Level 10: Obtain Magpie passive, 25% chance for rare items
- Level 12: Obtain Rob Blind passive, steals two items at once
You’ll want to find this cavern entrance, and follow the ice path on the left. You can fall off, so take it slow.
Once you make it along the path, you’ll find these three chests. The north chest will always be an encounter, where you will find Wiki-wikis you can steal JP Orbs from. For maximum efficiency, all four of your characters should have the Spearhead + Rob Blind passives in tandem.
You can then attempt to steal the JP Orbs. As long as you do not defeat all monsters / continuously flee once you steal, the chest will always spawn the encounter for you to farm up those orbs. Having Thief as your main job is a decent idea to get the Shakedown special, to guarantee a stolen item.
The road to farm JP in Bravely Default 2 is a long one, so godspeed to your grind.