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General Guide of Persona Series

2024-05-10 - Gaming
General Guide of Persona Series

In September 2022, the game NieR: Re[in]carnation introduced a crossover event with Persona 5 Royal (P5R). I was impressed by the crossover story and added P5R to my watchlist on Steam. However, it was until June of the next year that I finally had the time to have my hands on it. And later, I completed other Persona series available on Steam: P5S (Persona 5 Strikers), P5T (Persona 5 Tactica), P4G (Persona 4 Golden), P4AU (Persona 4 Arena Ultimax) and P3RE (Persona 3 Reload). The first two of the Personas aren’t available on Steam so this blog won’t discuss them, but hopefully the experience will help readers clear them. One thing to note that P4AU is a huge exception among all Persona games. P5X (Persona 5: The Phantom X) is not included in this guide because I haven’t played it yet.

Element System

Persona series features the Element System that all attacks are classified into different elements. All Personas will have different affinities for all elements. The affinities are:

The Almighty attack is an exception to above affinities as all characters are Normal to them. The game will not prompt anything other than the damages taken. The “All-Out Attack” is also a type of Almighty attack. However, certain enemies will take significantly less or more Almighty damage than others, so watch out for them. For example, the “ultimate enemies” (for the sake of spoilers, I’ll not mention their names here) in Persona games “resist” Almighty attacks. They will receive significantly less damage from Almighty skills and All-Out Attacks.

Attacks, in terms of source, can be roughly classified as Normal attacks, Item attacks, Physical Skills and Magical Skills.

You don’t know your enemies elemental affinities at first unless you have hit them with certain elements before. You can infer enemy affinities by judging what attacks they have used. Remind you that this is not 100% correct, but a good guess anyway. The 100% correct method is to check comprehensive guide online about affinities of any enemies in the dungeon.

P5R and P5S

In P5R and P5S, attacks can be classified as Melee, Gun, Fire, Ice, Electricity, Wind, Nuclear, Psychokinesis, Bless and Curse. The Melee and Gun attacks are Physical Attacks. All characters can use Physical Attacks from both Normal Attacks and Gun Attacks. Other attacks are Magic Attacks.

P5T

The element system described above does not work in P5T. In P5T, attacks can be classified as Melee, Gun, Burn, Freeze, Shock, Sweep, Vortex, Hypnosis, Dizzy, Despair, Sleep and Forget. In addition, the elements in P5T do not have affinities.

P4G

In P4G, attacks can be classified as Physical, Fire, Ice, Electricity, Wind, Light and Dark. All attacks other than Physical are Magical Attacks. Light and Dark can only be insta-kill attacks.

P3RE and P3P

In P3RE and P3P, attacks can be classified as Slash, Pierce, Strike, Fire, Ice, Electricity, Wind, Light and Dark. Slash, Pierce and Strike attacks are Physical Attacks. All characters have their fixed element of Normal Attacks. Other attacks are Magic Attacks.

Building Teams

In all Persona games, you will unlock characters as the story progresses. Unlike your teammates, you, as the protagonist, will be able to wield multiple Personas. Typically, you will need to make your team cover all elements in order to hit any possible weaknesses. It is recommended to have a physical attacker with high critical rate in order to strike down enemies with no weaknesses.

You can recall skills for your teammates if you need a change of style. However, it costs time in the calendar.

P5T

P5T is an exception to above rules. In P5T, there’s only three affinities against any elements of incoming damages. All characters can use one Sub-Persona. In other words, Joker isn’t special anymore and doesn’t have to participate in all quests.

In P5T, you need to prioritize movement and attack ranges because flexibility can significantly reduce the number of turns you need to clear quests. In other words, Mona and Fox are your prime choices, and Noir is your worst choice (even though she is the greatest Technician in P5R). In addition, Fox’s Persona Goemon can unlock a strong passive skill “Auto-Masuku” that can further temporarily increase movement range for all allies from the beginning of the battle for three turns. When you purchase or forge weapons, prioritize the attack range, then consider the attack power and elements.

Your main goal of the beginning stage in every playthrough, including NG+, of P5T is to level up as soon as possible because levelling up is an important way to earn Growth Points. You will equip your team with Sub-Personas with both skills of “Knack for Conflict” (innate skill from Persona Dionysus) and “Efficiency Aficionado” (innate skill from Persona Tam Lin). In other words, both Dionysus and Tam Lin must have both “Knack for Conflict” and “Efficiency Aficionado”. The third Persona must have “Knack for Conflict” as well. The other recommended skill is “Auto-Masuku” (innate skill from Ardha) in order to temporarily raise movement range for all allies. Use recipe generator to build these Personas with required skills.

Attack Skills

There are various attack skills in Persona series. Here is a list for you to decode their meanings.

The skills can have prefixes and suffixes:

Supportive Skills

There are various supportive skills in Persona series.

To maximize damage (to fulfill some achievements), you will need to:

Because P5S is not a turn-based game, all support skills are timed instead of turn-based. It is crucial to unlock “BOND” skills in order to make supports more extensive.

Building Personas

You will need to make the Protagonist’s Personas be extremely professional in one aspect, especially when you prepare for high-difficulty battles. In other words, “jack of all trades, but master of none” is in fact a terrible build (e.g.: a Persona that can attack in all elements) for Protagonist’s Personas. Each Persona has eight skill slots, so build your Personas wisely.

You will primarily utilize the “Recipe Generator” tool in order to build your ideal Personas. Skill cards can work, but it’s typically supposed to be replacing “Growth 3” unless you are rich in skill cards.

P5T

In P5T, every character from the Phantom Thieves can use sub-Personas. The sub-Personas only have two skill slots. One is innate and the other is inherited from fusion. Equipping sub-Personas will increase HP and SP and have two more skills for the Phantom Thieves. DLC Personas, due to their high stats, will make your team drastically tanky and staminal.

There are no skill cards in P5T, so you must build your Personas by proper fusion in Velvet Room.

Classic Persona Builds

Here lists some good practice of Persona Builds. You are recommended to copy these builds in NG+ with lots of cash. Due to randomness, this blog cannot offer exact formulae for best practices.

P5R

In P5R, “Magic Ability” is the most important passive skill to amplify magic damages. However, the source is random and can only be done through Network Fusion. The fastest way to obtain this skill is to fill the Persona inventory. In addition, you should also obtain “Almighty Boost” and “Almighty Amp” so that you can build a powerful Almighty Persona like Izanagi-no-Okami (Picaro).

Yoshitsune: Physical Skill DPS

Yoshitsune is the prime choice of Physical Skill DPS in P5R.

Satanael: Gun DPS

Satanael is probably the only choice to build a Gun Skill DPS in P5R if you aim for high power.

Satanael: Hybrid Magic DPS

Satanael’s default trait “Pagan Allure” can boost any magic skill damage by 50%, but, unlike “Universal Law”, it can’t exceed the 2.0x cap.

Mada: Fire DPS

Mada is the prime choice of Fire DPS in P5R with cheap SP cost.

Asterius (Picaro): Fire DPS from DLC

Asterius (Picaro) is the prime choice of Fire DPS in P5R with very unique specialties and can deal more powerful damage than Mada.

Satan: Ice DPS

Satan is the prime choice of Ice DPS in P5R with cheap SP cost.

Odin: Electricity DPS

Odin is the prime choice of Electricity DPS in P5R with cheap SP cost.

Baal: Wind DPS

Baal is the prime choice of Wind DPS in P5R.

Chi You: Psychokinesis DPS

Chi You is the prime choice of Psychokinesis DPS in P5R with cheap SP cost.

Kohryu: Technical DPS for Mind Ailments

Kohryu is the prime choice of Technical DPS for Mind Ailments (Rage, Fear, Brainwash, Forget, Confuse and Despair). You are strongly recommended to build Chi You before building Kohryu.

Asura: Nuclear DPS

Asura is the prime choice of Nuclear DPS in P5R with cheap SP cost.

Nuclear can deal Technical Hits on Body Ailments (Burn, Freeze and Shock). There is no specific prime choice of DPS. You can build such a Persona in the same way as Kohryu.

Kaguya (Picaro): Bless DPS from DLC

Kaguya (Picaro) is the prime choice of Bless DPS in P5R.

Daisoujou: Bless Insta-Kill DPS

Daisoujou is the prime choice of Bless DPS to deal Insta-Kill in P5R.

Tsukiyomi (Picaro): Curse DPS from DLC

Tsukiyomi (Picaro) is the prime choice of Curse DPS in P5R.

Alice: Curse Insta-Kill DPS

Alice is the prime choice of Curse DPS to deal Insta-Kill in P5R.

Attis: Use All Surrounded-Only Skills

Attis’ default trait “Vitality of the Tree” can enable surrounded-only skills.

Orpheus F (Picaro): Supporter from DLC

Orpheus F (Picaro) is the prime choice to add buff on all allies.

Social Link System

Maximizing all Social Links (Confidants in P5R) is the most crucial game experience in the Persona series. However, this is typically impossible on the first run because certain social links require a great level of social stats. You will aim to maximize social stats on the first playthrough of the game and then maximize all Social Links in the NG+ playthrough. Note that P4AU, P5S and P5T do not have this system.

To level up Social Links, you will have spend time with them. Different people have different schedules. Therefore, you must plan your schedule wisely. The process of leveling up Social Links is basically going through dialogues. Choosing correct replies in the dialogue options can accelerate leveling your Social Links. It is recommended that you use detailed online guides to find their schedules and best replies.

Certain female Social Links are viable to form a romantic relationships. You can have more than one girlfriends, but it’s not recommended. In Persona 3, you must trigger romance flags in order to have the option to choose whether you will be her boyfriend. You cannot dump your girlfriend, and the romance option will not come back again. Therefore, if you made a mistake on choosing the romance option, the only thing you can do to fix is to revert your save data. Forming a romantic relationship will give you chances to spend special time with them in certain events (e.g.: Christmas). Note that romance is viable on your first playthrough because it is absolutely possible to maximize a few Social Links in the first playthrough.

Each Social Link person will have a corresponding major arcana from the Tarot. If you have a Persona in your inventory (not the Persona Compendium) with the same arcana to that person, you can level up your Social Link much faster.

During class, the teacher may ask your classmates some questions. They would get panicked and ask for your help. Successfully answering the question will increase the Social Link point.

The Social Link mechanism also features a praying feature. You can pray in certain places in order to increase more points for any arbitrary Social Link.

The Social Link level can affect the result of Persona Fusion. If the Social Link level of the arcana is maximized, the target Persona will receive an immense amount of experience. Maximized Social Links can also unlock ultimate Personas and they are the keys to reach 100% Persona Compendium. If correctly built, they are extremely powerful.

In P4G and P5R, you may receive extra effects (e.g.: Your teammates may have new skills on their Personas) during the level up process. Maximizing Social Link with your teammates will evolve your teammate’s Persona.

Reaper Fight

Reaper is a powerful boss in Persona series since Persona 3. Among the Persona games I played, it appears in P3RE, P4G, P5R and P5S. It doesn’t appear in P5T. Defeating Reaper will drop immense amount of experience points and it can appear again so it’s a good source to farm EXP.

P5R Reaper

In P5R, Reaper can spawn in Mementos on any unsafe levels if you stayed on that level for a very long time. Morgana will inform you its presence and you will hear the sounds of rattling steel chains. It is recommended to challenge it from at least Level 60. It has two moves per turn. If Reaper ambushes you, however, it will only have one move per turn, making the fight much easier. Reaper can exploit your team’s weaknesses. However, if anyone has a magic wall (via Makarakarn), Reaper will be forced to use Concentrate + Megidolaon. So it is strongly recommended to make someone wear Ring of Gluttony so that Reaper will always use this fixed pattern. It doesn’t have weakness and doesn’t resist any elements. It’s immune to all ailments and can’t be insta-killed.

Due to the fixed pattern, my recommended course of action is to stack Heat Riser (ATK/DEF/AGI up) and Charge/Concentrate (next attack deals more than double damage) on your DPS, and to inflict Debilitate (ATK/DEF/AGI down) on Reaper. Orpheus F (Picaro) is strongly recommended because this Persona’s unique skill “Neo Cadenza” can recover 50% HP for all allies and inflict Heat Riser effects on all allies. The Ring of Pride (Hammered Will Seed from Shido’s Palace) and the Ring of Greed (Hammered Will Seed from Okumura’s Palace) are recommended because they can inflict Charge/Concentrate effect for any one of the allies with 15SP, same cost to the regular Charge/Concentrate skill. The Debilitate skill can be learned by your teammates by taking them to the Jazz Club on Dec.11th. If you can consistently maintain this buff and debuff, you team will have a fairly good rate of evading Reaper’s attacks and will take significantly less damage from Reaper.

The “Beast Weaver” skill from Ariadne (Picaro) is strongly unrecommended because this skill will reduce all your future damage to 10% until the end of the battle, even though it has the strongest damage multiplier than any other skills. If you failed to kill Reaper with this skill, you have no choice but to rely on other DPSes on the team. This skill should only be used as last killer move and as a show-off of how much damage you can deal on the Reaper.

If you have properly built Izanagi-no-Okami (Picaro), you can cheat the Reaper fight by abusing “Myriad Truths” skill.

P5S Reaper

P5S Reaper is the final boss fight that will enable NG+. In other words, it won’t spawn during the story. This boss fight has two phases and the second phase will activate once you depleted Reaper to 50% HP. In the first phase, Reaper will cast any kinds of elemental “-dyne” spells. In the second phase, Reaper will cast Megidolaon and Riot Gun.

Wolf is strongly recommended due to his supportive skills and he has no weaknesses against any elements. It is recommended to fully charge Show Time skills for all allies before fight. When you use Show Time, make sure that you have ATK up (Wolf can cast Heat Riser or Tarukaja) effect and Reaper has DEF down (Wolf can cast Debilitate) effect.

Reaper only appear once per playthrough, so it’s not considered a good method to farm EXP.

P4G Reaper

P4G Reaper will appear in TV world by opening small treasure chests. If you continuously opened small treasure chests for 20 times, you will hear a rattling sound of steel chains and howls. You will also be prompted that the next chest you open has immense danger when you try to open it. Unlocking a golden chest or defeating a golden hand will reset this counter to a random number. This means you might face Reaper on your next small chest even if you haven’t opened any small chest at all.

The P4G Reaper will nullify any light and dark attacks and won’t resist any other elements. However, it will abuse Mahamaon and Mamudoon in later stage of fight, so you must either kill it quick or hoard a huge amount of Homunculus. Due to this nature, it is strongly recommended to reach Level 85 before fighting Reaper. Casting ATK buff for all allies and DEF debuff on Reaper is still the recommended course of action.

Teddie and Yosuke are not recommended because they cannot cast Power/Mind Charge which double the next attack. While Naoto can cast Mind Charge, she unfortunately doesn’t have Severe-tier attack skills. Her signature insta-kill skills are also useless against Reaper. The recommended team build is:

P3RE Reaper

Reaper in P3RE will appear in Tartarus if you stay on a floor for too long. Reaper will appear much quicker if the floor is dark. Fuuka Yamagishi will inform you its presence. It is recommended to challenge it from at least Level 85 for all allies and after Fuuka has awakened her ultimate Persona Juno so that her Theurgy can cast Charge and Concentrate on all allies. It has two moves per turn and it can use elemental skills to target your team weaknesses, use ailments to disrupt your turns and use supportive skills. On the first turn, Reaper can use four moves. It doesn’t have weakness and doesn’t resist any elements. It’s not immune to ailments but can’t be insta-killed. Similar to P4G Reaper, it will abuse Mahamaon and Mamudoon in late stage of fight.

Before fight, make sure all allies – including navigator Fuuka – have fully charged their Theurgies. You also need to load your Startup Persona to boost ATK/DEF/AGI/Crit stats. You also need to learn Ambush from computer program so that you can always trigger chance encounter before fight – in other words, S.E.E.S. advantage. As you enter the fight, use Fuuka’s Theurgy to cast Charge and Concentrate. Then cast Debilitate on Reaper. The rest of the party will abuse their Theurgies in their turns. If you are on Normal or even lower difficulty, this strategy should end the Reaper fight in one or two turns.

Note that the Tier-Q of Cups Tarot card can sometimes cast Auto Charge/Concentrate for all allies on next fight. This is a substitute option if Fuuka didn’t fully charge her Theurgy and if you are lucky to pick this card.

If you escaped the battle (e.g.: using Trafuri) from Reaper, the Reaper will still chase you. On top of that, Reaper will chase you all the way down even through stairs, making the Tartarus exceedingly dangerous to explore. The reaper will cancel the pursuit if you reached border floor, or if you used teleporters to translocate, or if you asked Fuuka Yamagishi to help you escape to the first floor.

If the Reaper appeared on a floor with Monad Doors, entering and exiting the Monad Door will cause Reaper to disappear and prevent it from appear again on the current floor until you leave the current floor.

Protagonist can Abuse Armageddon

The “Armageddon” Theurgy has a fixed damage of 9999 regardless of any situations that may affect actual damage. Since Reaper has a fixed HP at 8000, you can instead simply abuse this Theurgy to kill Reaper in only one shot. However, should you wish to do so, it is strongly recommended to load a Persona with “Victory Cry” (e.g.: Orpheus Telos) before using Armageddon in order to recover your HP and SP after Reaper is killed, or otherwise you will have to use lots of SP medicines to recover and prepare for your next fight.

With this strategy, there is no recommended level for your allies. Just make sure you can trigger S.E.E.S advantage. You can farm Reaper anytime once you have a Persona with “Victory Cry” passive and fully charged your Theurgy. In other words, this is the perfect strategy to boost all of your allies to Level 99 quickly in NG+, because it is virtually impossible to fuse the Orpheus Telos (requires maximizing all Social Links) Persona in the first playthrough.

After any battle, if you are given an option to pull a Cups Tarot card that fully charges Theurgy gauge, make sure to pull that card in order to be ready to farm Reaper immediately.

P3P Reaper

Reaper in P3P will appear in Tartarus if you stay on a floor for too long. Unlike P3RE, a dark floor won’t accelerate Reaper to spawn. The most significant factor of Reaper spawning time is the size of the floor. You may have to wait at most 12 minutes for Reaper to spawn. Also, Reaper can appear in any date, so Mitsuru Kirijo will inform you its presence, even before Fuuka Yamagishi joined S.E.E.S.. It has two moves per turn and it can use elemental skills to target your team weaknesses. It is strong against all elements except Almighty. Therefore, you will need to use Elemental Break skill in order to maximize your damage for your teammates. Junpei Iori, Aigis and Shinjiro Aragaki are unrecommended because they are Physical Skill DPSes. There is no skill that can remove physical resistances. Ken Amada is unrecommended because he does not have Elec Amp skill to amplify Electricity damage. Akihiko Sanada has Elec Amp but no Elec Break, so you need a Persona with Elec Break.

Similar to P5R Reaper, you can force P3P Reaper to use Concentrate + Megidolaon on every turn if you have casted Tetrakarn or Makarakarn. However, unlike P5R, it is hard to maintain Heat Riser buff on all teammates and Debilitate debuff on Reaper, so this strategy is virtually unviable on higher difficulties, since Concentrate + Megidolaon may immediately annihilate your team.

Similar to P3RE, the protagonist can abuse Armageddon to defeat Reaper. However, P3P Reaper does not produce significant amount of experience, so it’s not a reliable way to farm EXP. If you’re playing in NG+, use Monad to farm EXP instead.

Ultimate Boss Fight

In Persona series, the ultimate boss is the attendant of the Velvet Room. They are significantly stronger than the Reaper. Generally speaking, you are must evolve your teammates’ Personas so that they can evade magic attacks that address their weaknesses.

You can only win them once per playthrough. Make sure to save to a different slot before the fight so that you can try various strategies. Even if you fail, return to the save can recover the items you’ve used during battle.

P5R: Caroline and Justine

The deadline of this fight is Dec.22th, and they only appear in NG+ Mementos.
This fight consists of six phases. Each phase consists of six turns. If you failed to deal 2000 damage toward them in each phase, they will immediately knock down your whole team and deal a deadly all-out attack to end the fight.

For the sake of dealing enough damage, you are strongly recommended to bring your teammates to the Jazz club to increase their stats. You can also visit the church if you have chosen to forget amplifier passive skills before.
It’s strongly recommended to bring Futaba Sakura to the jazz club on Sunday in order to learn “Support Plus 1, 2, 3” (Allow her to cast random debuff on enemies during “Moral Support” skill) and “Support Rate Up” (Increase the probability for her to activate “Moral Support” skill). You need to bring her to jazz club for four times.
On Aug.14th and Nov.13th, bringing a teammate to Jazz Club can make them learn “Marakunda” so that they can temporarily reduce the defense of the twins. On Dec.11th, bringing a teammate to Jazz Club can make them learn “Debilitate” so that they can temporarily reduce all stats of someone.
It’s strongly recommended to maximize the Star confidant in order to swap any teammates in any turns so that you will gain more flexibilities in the fight.

The turn order of this fight is based on story order instead of Persona agility. Therefore, Joker always goes first and Crow always goes last.

P5R: Lavenza

The deadline of this fight is Feb.1st, and she only appear in NG+ Mementos in the third semester.
This fight consists of four phases. Each phase consists of eight turns. You must deal 5000 damage to her within each phase, or otherwise she will knock down your whole team and end the fight.
Lavenza will not skip phase, but does not work like the twins did. If you managed to deal significantly sufficient damage in one turn so that you are already one phase ahead, she will still use one turn in this new phase then go to the next one. Due to this nature, you are strongly encouraged to bring a calculator to count the damage you have dealt to Lavenza.
Note that she will have two moves per turn on Phase I, II and III, and three moves per turn on Phase IV.

You can follow the same methods as the Twins’ fight to build your teammates (especially including your navigator, Oracle; she plays a great role in randomness in this fight so build her well).
On Jan.15th, bringing a teammate to Jazz Club can make them learn “Ali Dance” so that they will have a very good chance of evading attacks.

The turn order of this fight is based on the Personas’ agilities of your teammates, but Joker always goes first regardless of his agility.

Each phase has roughly 35% HP Damage Cap, meaning that you cannot deal more than 7000 HP damage to her in one phase and skip phases. However, multi-hit skills (e.g.: Yoshitsune’s “Hassou Tobi”, Izanagi-no-Okami (Picaro)’s “Myriad of Truths”) can ignore this limit.
If you managed to deal sufficient damage to skip phase, Lavenza will have one actions for each phase on her turn. For example, if you managed to deal more than 10K HP from Phase II, Lavenza will have one action in Phase III and have one action in Phase IV. And then it’s your turn.

P4G: Margaret

To fight Margaret, you must fulfill the following conditions:

You can fight Margaret in the same fashion to Reaper. Similar to Reaper, she is immune to Light and Dark attacks at all times. However, because she can swap Personas, her affinity can change over time. She is explicitly resistant to Almighty attacks, so do not use All-Out Attacks even if you managed to knock her down with Critical Hits.

There is no traps which Margaret will end the fight like the Twins and Lavenza would. In other words, she is probably the easiest ultimate boss in Persona series.

P3RE: Elizabeth

To fight Elizabeth, you need to receive the 101st quest: “Defeat the Ultimate Adversary” after Jan.6th, 2010. NG+ is not required, so you can fight her in your first playthrough, albeit it is virtually impossible to win. The deadline of this quest is Jan.31st, 2010. After you received this quest, enter the final room in the Monad Passage alone. In other words, your only teammate is your navigator: Fuuka Yamagishi.

Elizabeth has specific traps. If you didn’t manage to circumvent it, she will use Diarahan to completely heal herself and use Megidolaon which deals 9999 damage on you. When that happens, she will nullify all elements.

Elizabeth always attack in order, so you can predict her move and use a proper Persona without falling into the trap.

The normal guide for Elizabeth fight is still work-in-progress. You can check the “One-Shot Kill” guide.

One-Shot Kill Elizabeth

Some players figured out a way to one-shot kill Elizabeth. This requires building DLC Personas properly.
The Persona we will use is Goemon (This Persona has unique passive skill “Ice Driver”):

Fully charge Fuuka’s and your Theurgy before the fight. You need to load a proper Startup Persona in order to buff your ATK/DEF/AGI before the fight so that Fuuka’s Theurgy will definitely Charge and Concentrate you.
Once you entered the fight, use Fuuka’s Theurgy to Charge and Concentrate your next attack. Then use “Debilitate” to reduce Elizabeth’s stats.
In your next turn, use your Theurgy “King and I”. This should deal more than 20000 damage on Elizabeth. This is lethal enough to kill Elizabeth.

P3RE: Joker

To fight Joker, you need to enter the deepest part of Monad Passage in Episode Aigis. Unlike Elizabeth, you can bring your teammates with you to fight Joker. Similar to Elizabeth, you need to follow rules. Otherwise, Joker will switch to Satanael and spam Sinful Shell on your team to deal 9999 damage. Losing to Joker is considered a Game Over.

Joker has two moves per turn. Once his HP is reduced to half, he will use “Will of Rebellion” and he can use three moves per turn onwards. He also abuses Dekaja and Heat Riser, making him tough and hard to hit.

The guide for Joker fight is currently work-in-progress.

P3P: Elizabeth/Theodore

To fight Elizabeth or Theodore, you need to receive the 55th quest “Defeat the Ultimate Opponent” after Jan.1st, 2010. NG+ is not required, so you can fight them in your first playthrough. The deadline of this quest is Jan.31st, 2010. After you received the quest, enter the top floor of Monad alone. Please note that there are no duplex portals in P3P Monad, so you need to climb the floors on your own. You can disassemble the team once you talk to Elizabeth/Theodore, so you can simply let your teammates spread out to find stairs for you so that you can climb faster.

Although I will use “they/them/their/theirs/themselves” in the following paragraphs, you will only fight either Elizabeth or Theodore. You won’t fight both of them simultaneously.

They have specific traps. If you didn’t manage to circumvent it, they will use Diarahan to completely heal themselves and use Megidolaon which deals 9999 damage on you. When that happens, she will nullify all elements.

They always attack in the following order, so you can predict their moves and use a proper Persona without falling into the trap:

This order is cycled. Thus, you can predict what is their next move any time. Note that they might use physical attacks twice in their turn.

I recommend you prepare following Personas:

I recommend you prepare the following items and equipments:

Battle Walkthrough

Follow this order:

Once you managed to deal 10000 HP damage, they will use Diarahan to completely heal themselves. And the cycle will resume. After the heal, use your calculator to accumulate all damage you have dealt. Once you have dealt 10001 HP damage or more, use Armageddon fusion spell immediately in order to claim your victory.

They have Almighty resistances, so it is very inefficient use Almighty skills on them.

P5R Challenge Battles

In P5R, there are challenge battles which give pretty good rewards base on your score. The higher score you’ve got, the more reward you will earn. There are three rewards per battle. You need to reach required scores in order to get them. The reward is once-only and you can’t earn them again even if you are in a new playthrough. Keep this in mind because some rewards are treasures and they can’t be carried over to NG+, so you should sell them or they are lost for naught.
This guide will only talk about the Full Moon and Foggy Day since they are the hardest and the most special.

In Challenge Battles, the order of turns are based by story order instead of agility. So Joker always goes first and Violet always goes last.

It is strongly recommended to switch to Merciless difficulty for Challenge Battles. It’s because Technical damage increases as the difficulty increases.

After fighting Challenge Battles, your team will recover HP/SP to previous state. However, the items you have used will not be recovered. So use your items wisely. Try to let your teammates wear certain accessories and use skills instead.

Full Moon

In Full Moon Challenge Battle, you will fight Makoto Yuki (a.k.a. S.E.E.S. Boy, the P3 Protagonist). In both Level 50 and Level ??? difficulties, bonus score requirements are the same:

You will earn the following rewards:

Score PointsDifficultyRewardEffect
25,000Level 50Treasure: Silver MoonCan be sold in Untouchable for 200,000 Yen.
50,000Level 50Skill Card: EndureSurvive a fatal blow with 1HP remaining.
60,000Level 50Accessory: Ardhanari BandGrants wearer “Blazing Hell” skill to deal severe Fire damage on all foes.
150,000Level ???Treasure: Gold MoonCan be sold in Untouchable for 1,000,000 Yen.
250,000Level ???Skill Card: Drain FireRecover HP from incoming Fire damage.
360,000Level ???Accessory: Magic MisangaGrants wearer “Spell Master” skill to reduce any Magic skill SP cost by half.
Reward list for Full Moon Challenge Battle

Recommended Personas for Joker:

Recommended Team:

Battle Walkthrough:

Foggy Day

In Foggy Day Challenge Battle, you will fight Yu Narukami (a.k.a. Investigation Team Boy, the P4 Protagonist). In both Level 50 and Level ??? difficulties, bonus score requirements are the same:

You will earn the following rewards:

Score PointsDifficultyRewardEffect
300,000Level 50Treasure: Silver MistCan be sold in Untouchable for 200,000 Yen.
800,000Level 50Skill Card: Ali DanceFoes’ accuracy is reduced by half.
1,200,000Level 50Accessory: Thunder CharmGrants wearer “Wild Thunder” skill to deal severe Electricity damage on all foes.
1,000,000Level ???Treasure: Gold MistCan be sold in Untouchable for 1,000,000 Yen.
1,700,000Level ???Skill Card: Drain ElecRecover HP from incoming Electricity damage.
2,500,000Level ???Accessory: Bravery SashGrant wearer “Arms Master” skill to reduce any Physical skill HP cost by half.
Reward list for Foggy Day Challenge Battle

Recommended Personas for Joker:

Recommended Team:

Battle Walkthrough (Rage Technician Method):

Battle Walkthrough (Physical Technician Method):

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