Danger Level: 20
Location: South Bolderfall Pass, down the ramps and hills on the east side of the map and around a blind corner on the right at the bottom of the gorge
Discoverable pretty soon after you begin Octopath Traveler, the Carrion Caves are a good test of your team before you try to take on any character's second chapter. It's not that huge an area, has a reasonably tough boss at its end, and is an indication of what you can expect when you enter the second ring of settlements in the game. Tread cautiously with a low-level party.
You can expect to run into the following enemies in the Carrion Caves:
- Dread Falcon - Weak to Polearm, Dagger, Bow, Wind, and Dark. The weaklings of the Carrion Caves. Should get wiped out before anything else.
- Tempest Falcon - Weak to Polearm, Dagger, Bow, and Wind. Stronger version of the Dread Falcon with more Wind Skills. Still gets taken out in largely the same fashion.
- Great Condor - Weak to Polearm and Bow.
- King Condor - Weak to Polearm and Bow. Powerful enemy that can hit everyone with Wind damage, as well as some painful single-target attacks. Knocking your characters unconscious may be its worst attack. Worth stunning early.
- Night Raven - Weak to Polearm, Dagger, Bow, and Wind. Can seal your Boosting ability with Horrific Claw. Quite vulnerable to breaking, so use a group move that will stun every one of them simultaneously.
- Dire Night Raven - Weak to Polearm, Dagger, Bow, and Wind. Stronger version of the Night Raven that can use Blinding Mist to blind your whole party. Kill these first.
- Ash Raven - Weak to Polearm, Dagger, Bow, and Wind. Similar to the Night Raven, though can use Horrific Cry to hit the whole party with terror status.
- Dire Ash Raven - Weak to Polearm, Dagger, Bow, and Wind.
- Crawly Fledgling - Weak to Sword, Axe, and Lightning. Foot soldier that doesn't hit terribly hard but has a surprising amount of health. Can be ignored in favor of more powerful enemies.
You'll quickly notice that the enemies in the Carrion Caves follow some pretty strict themes in terms of weaknesses. Assuming you haven't been delving too deeply into secondary jobs, you'll want to bring the likes of Olberic, Tressa, and H'aanit along to clip the wings of the many, many birds in the dungeon.
Head northeast from the entrance and the path will soon split in two. Both paths will take you to the top, though the northern path will get you there much more quickly - and skip some items, to boot. Ignore it and head east. Travel all the way across the cavern to the southeast corner, where you'll find a purple chest containing a Tough Nut.
Head north through the cavern until you see a path leading back to the west side. Ignore it and keep following the path you're on to the northeast corner, where you'll find a chest containing an Inspiriting Plum (M). Grab it, then backtrack and head west. You'll see a save point to the north. Go a short ways south and you'll find a chest containing an Olive of Life (M) on the left, behind a rocky pillar.
Look to the right of the save point to find a ramp up to a chest containing 6,000 leaves, then use the save point and head northwest. You'll get a warning that the sense of danger ahead is overwhelming. Forge bravely ahead and you'll find yourself facing down the master of the Carrion Caves.
Heavenwing
Weakness: Polearm, Bow, Dark
Of course they would end the dungeon with another bird. Of course. A pretty straightforward boss, Heavenwing doesn't have any crazy tricks up its feathery sleaves - it just uses painful attacks on you. Capable of buffing itself and debuffing members of your party, Heavenwing otherwise enjoys normal physical strikes and two Fire Skills. The first, Meteor Storm, hits a single target, while the second, Incinerate, hits everybody. Any equipment you have that reduces Fire damage, such as Fire Amulets, is recommended, as are Skills that reduce elemental damage.
If you heeded the advice earlier about bringing characters with polearms and bows along this fight shouldn't be too bad. Heavenwing hits quite hard, true, but it has no help, and you can get rid of its ten defensive shields pretty quickly under a sustained assault. Rain of Arrows and Thousand Spears are particularly useful if you get lucky on your hits. Break Heavenwing, heal when it hits your crew too hard, then break it again. It has just under 10,000 HP so the fight shouldn't last too long.
Once Heavenwing is out of the way you'll have a straight line to the final chest in the dungeon, which contains an Enchanted Axe. That's all for Carrion Caves, so feel free to teleport out and go heal in a town of your choosing. (Though if you ever want a rematch with Heavenwing, it now has a small chance of spawning in random battles.)