On a personal quest to create an invincible Black Frost... this is the closest I've gotten:
Some things I've learned about fusion from this ridiculous endeavor:
- It will do you zero good to give skills you want to pass to multiple ingredients in hopes of "increasing your chances" of that skill getting picked. Having Repel Elec on two of the personas you are fusing does not double the chances of Repel Elec making the cut on your final persona. In my case, though, I can sort of cheat by having one ingredient with Null Wind, one with Repel Wind, and one with Absorb Wind. I'm happy with any of these all the same, but since they're technically not the same exact skills, I have a higher chance of at least one "anti-Wind" skill showing up.
- Similarly, having multiples of the same skill on your ingredient personas does not contribute towards increasing the total "skill pool" size that determines how many total skills your persona will inherit. That is, if your persona is only going to inherit 3 skills and you want to bump that number up to 4 by giving more skills to your ingredients, you have to give them unique skills.
- The above rule also applies for skills that your resulting persona already has in its basic pre-fusion form. Jack Frost and King Frost have the Ice Boost and Bufula skills just like Black Frost, but as far as the game is concerned, those skills aren't even added to the pool. It's not like the game includes Ice Boost and Bufula in the pool then "re-selects" for that slot in the event Ice Boost or Bufula gets selected. So you can't use this technique to increase the size of the skill pool for free. Still, this can be useful if skills like Ice Boost and Bufula are ranked higher than shitty bottom-tier skills that your resulting persona always tries to go for first during the random selection process.
- Unless you want a particular one, you should weed out as many bottom-tier skills from your ingredients as possible. The skill selection process always goes for these bottom-tier skills first, and with disturbing frequency. Even a Fool persona like Black Frost, who ostensibly should have an equal affinity for all types of skills, wants stuff like Zio and Poisma a lot more than Repel Elec. Having a higher-tier skill like Bufudyne on an ingredient in place of Zio significantly increases the chances of Repel Elec getting picked in the long run.
I could write a thesis paper on this shit!
This guy also got made, slightly easier to pull off. Fully offensive focused as opposed to the defense-focused guy above.
This one is also a cool alternative to the first build in a "all 5 of the skills are actually useful" kind of way:
On a personal quest to create an invincible Black Frost... this is the closest I've gotten:
Some things I've learned about fusion from this ridiculous endeavor:
- It will do you zero good to give skills you want to pass to multiple ingredients in hopes of "increasing your chances" of that skill getting picked. Having Repel Elec on two of the personas you are fusing does not double the chances of Repel Elec making the cut on your final persona. In my case, though, I can sort of cheat by having one ingredient with Null Wind, one with Repel Wind, and one with Absorb Wind. I'm happy with any of these all the same, but since they're technically not the same exact skills, I have a higher chance of at least one "anti-Wind" skill showing up.
- Similarly, having multiples of the same skill on your ingredient personas does not contribute towards increasing the total "skill pool" size that determines how many total skills your persona will inherit. That is, if your persona is only going to inherit 3 skills and you want to bump that number up to 4 by giving more skills to your ingredients, you have to give them unique skills.
- The above rule also applies for skills that your resulting persona already has in its basic pre-fusion form. Jack Frost and King Frost have the Ice Boost and Bufula skills just like Black Frost, but as far as the game is concerned, those skills aren't even added to the pool. It's not like the game includes Ice Boost and Bufula in the pool then "re-selects" for that slot in the event Ice Boost or Bufula gets selected. So you can't use this technique to increase the size of the skill pool for free. Still, this can be useful if skills like Ice Boost and Bufula are ranked higher than shitty bottom-tier skills that your resulting persona always tries to go for first during the random selection process.
- Unless you want a particular one, you should weed out as many bottom-tier skills from your ingredients as possible. The skill selection process always goes for these bottom-tier skills first, and with disturbing frequency. Even a Fool persona like Black Frost, who ostensibly should have an equal affinity for all types of skills, wants stuff like Zio and Poisma a lot more than Repel Elec. Having a higher-tier skill like Bufudyne on an ingredient in place of Zio significantly increases the chances of Repel Elec getting picked in the long run.
I could write a thesis paper on this shit!
This guy also got made, slightly easier to pull off. Fully offensive focused as opposed to the defense-focused guy above.
This one is also a cool alternative to the first build in a "all 5 of the skills are actually useful" kind of way:
You kind of reignited my love for Persona 4 in general. It's the one game that made me love RPGs again. If I ever get some decent video recording device, I'll show you my sweet drums cover of A New World Fool! :lol
- It will do you zero good to give skills you want to pass to multiple ingredients in hopes of "increasing your chances" of that skill getting picked. Having Repel Elec on two of the personas you are fusing does not double the chances of Repel Elec making the cut on your final persona.
I feel bad because I can't remember the name of the Persona I made with Invigorate early in the game, but I do remember it taking a loooooooooooong time to get it.
I suppose it's my fault for trying to "exploit" the game/calendar to get a rare skill, but still. I know I want that skill, the developers know I want that skill... so why make it difficult? :lol
But I do understand why you guys would enjoy it. I will say, I felt bad for the fact that I enjoyed watching the Endurance Run episodes where they just fused Personas for an hour. I know I should have just skipped them, but I was captivated for some reason.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I said this ages ago, but I wouldn't mind if they just had a penalty for people who wanted to save the time and select the skills they want. Although, if they let you pay for skills, then you'd just replace grinding the fusions with grinding for money or whatever widget they'd use as currency. You just can't beat the system, can you? :lol
I feel bad because I can't remember the name of the Persona I made with Invigorate early in the game, but I do remember it taking a loooooooooooong time to get it.
I suppose it's my fault for trying to "exploit" the game/calendar to get a rare skill, but still. I know I want that skill, the developers know I want that skill... so why make it difficult? :lol
Picking what abilities you get rather then randomizing it sounds great and all but not if they're going to let you pick what you want out of the Skill Change fusing days! Though since this could take hours to get the right skill out of the pool you're changing from, Invigorate seems a bit weak. If you're going to exploit, might as well go all the way with Kawain's Tetrakarn (level 24) which is a high level skill that can turn into the Repels, the high level physical skills, and lots of strong passives. Unless you're talking about Sarasvati (level 17, learns Invigorate 2) but she learns that skill naturally at level 19.
Mo the Hawk said:
It will do you zero good to give skills you want to pass to multiple ingredients in hopes of "increasing your chances" of that skill getting picked. Having Repel Elec on two of the personas you are fusing does not double the chances of Repel Elec making the cut on your final persona.
Technically, it might still do you some good. If that's how the fusing works, if another Persona has Repel Elec, at least it's Repel Elec and not some trash ability that will show up persistently in your attempts to fuse. Might be as good as doubling your chances!
Maybe it wasn't Invigorate - it was the skill that gave you full MP after every battle, which I wanted to just save time for S-linking and hanging out with Riiiiise. Now I feel bad because I spent over 120 hours with the damn game and can't remember any specific details about the gameplay or my Persona deck. :lol
Maybe it wasn't Invigorate - it was the skill that gave you full MP after every battle, which I wanted to just save time for S-linking and hanging out with Riiiiise. Now I feel bad because I spent over 120 hours with the damn game and can't remember any specific details about the gameplay or my Persona deck. :lol
I'm once again almost about to kill him, and then all my party members instead of Regulus get inflicted with Ghastly Wail. FUUUU
So I spend a turn trying to revive them because I'm too scared to attack aggressively and he takes advantage of that so he goes back to his armour. FUUUU
So I'm there trying to beat his armour for the fourth time in the same battle as he whittles down my main characters Soul Points. I'm outta SP restorative items. I'm about to kill him, but the moment he uses a bomb against me I'm gone. And then I see a hell magatama in my inventory...
BAM! Armour gone, it's bear-pile on the enemy! YES!
So yeah, that battle was pretty epic. Thanks for the tips!
lol, I thought exactly the same when I saw that scene. I wonder if there's a way to change the outcome of the festival (maybe by having higher stats / social links) or it's always fixed.
lol, I thought exactly the same when I saw that scene. I wonder if there's a way to change the outcome of the festival (maybe by having higher stats / social links) or it's always fixed.
I still think Shadow Teddie was the best boss in the game. Not the hardest, by far, but it was definitely the coolest looking one. The fact that it came on the heels of Rise's stripper demon made it even better.
), but I wanna ask... can I still maximise my social links? I'm rank 9 with Naoto. She's the only one I haven't boned in my party yet and I would really like to do that before tackling the final dungeon.
I didn't even start Temperance till like September or October..I did the day care once and was like the other jobs are better so I didn't start the link.
After finishing FFXIII and resuming my 2nd P4 playthrough, it just occurred to me how easy it is to like all the main characters in P4. They're all, well, likable. You have to put in a lot of effort to like anybody in FFXIII, but you just naturally like all the main cast of P4. :lol
Play on easy. It barely changes the actual difficulty of the game, but the most noticeable difference is that "you" (as in the main character) can die 10 times and not get a game over screen. I think I never had to use it, but the save points in dungeons are very sparse and you don't want to lose a couple of hours of progress just because you get hit by an instant death spell.
After finishing FFXIII and resuming my 2nd P4 playthrough, it just occurred to me how easy it is to like all the main characters in P4. They're all, well, likable. You have to put in a lot of effort to like anybody in FFXIII, but you just naturally like all the main cast of P4. :lol
Damn right! P4's cast is the best since FF6. Although nothing can top FF13's battle system but they could take some lessons on characters from Persona series.
I'm ready to enter the last dungeon in the game now and I heard that when you finish it the game fast forwards to the ending, is it like the other dungeons where once you get to the boss you can save, exit then do whatever you want and go back to the boss later or should I not try the dungeon until the last few days.
Also is there any reward or change to the ending depending on my social links? I've maxed out Nanako, Dojima, the fox and all party members but Kanji so I was wondering whether I should use the time I have left to max out Kanji (I don't use him in battle so the battle enhancements aren't an issue to me) or to just get a few ranks up in every social link and even start a few I haven't gotten yet (I think Hanged Man and Tower are the two social links I've yet to even begin).
For some reason, this game never did it for me. I am a massive fan of all things SMT and I loved Persona 3/Fes but for some reason this game doesn't click with me. I find the story really boring and the characters were kind of boring for me after Persona 3. I appreciate the improvements to the system and all that but the scenario never caught me.
Still saying that, when I see the game on my shelf unfinished it makes me want to play it again, maybe after Strange Journey is finished haha!
After finishing FFXIII and resuming my 2nd P4 playthrough, it just occurred to me how easy it is to like all the main characters in P4. They're all, well, likable. You have to put in a lot of effort to like anybody in FFXIII, but you just naturally like all the main cast of P4. :lol
I'm ready to enter the last dungeon in the game now and I heard that when you finish it the game fast forwards to the ending, is it like the other dungeons where once you get to the boss you can save, exit then do whatever you want and go back to the boss later or should I not try the dungeon until the last few days.
Here's the thing about this dungeon. Yes, you can hit the save point right before the boss, then exit and do S.Links or whatever up until the deadline just like the other ones. But...
- The layout of the dungeon is split into two, so you can't actually warp directly back to the save point next to the boss. You have to trek across two floors first. Not that big of a deal, but don't use the option to warp to Magatsu Mandala World 6 or whatever it's called. That'll just put you farther away. Start from Magatsu Inaba.
- The deadline date for this dungeon is never explicitly stated. Characters will drop a lot of lines like "before the end of the year," but that doesn't mean December 31st is the deadline. It's a few days before that. You'll know when the people in town start to really freak out. Or if you just want to know straight out, the very last day you can finish the dungeon is:
December 24th
. Don't spoil yourself, though! You get a scene that's pretty cool to watch if you miss the deadline, anyway.
- There's another "sub-deadline." If you finish the dungeon on any day before the official deadline, the game will fast-forward in time to the night of the deadline date, where you'll take part in a bonus scene and get a special item. Spoilers:
You get to invite a girlfriend of your choosing over to your place to spend Christmas Eve together.
If you absolutely positively need to finish one last social link and need this extra day to do it, that's still totally OK. The deadline date is also the only date where making a Yoshitsune gives him an awesome bonus skill. It's either Debilitate or Arms Master, I forget which. So consider that, too.
Also is there any reward or change to the ending depending on my social links? I've maxed out Nanako, Dojima, the fox and all party members but Kanji so I was wondering whether I should use the time I have left to max out Kanji (I don't use him in battle so the battle enhancements aren't an issue to me) or to just get a few ranks up in every social link and even start a few I haven't gotten yet (I think Hanged Man and Tower are the two social links I've yet to even begin).
You don't get some super secret awesome special ending if you have all S.Links maxed, if that's what you're asking. There will be a specific moment during the final boss fight where who you have Max S.Links with will matter, but they won't affect the battle itself.
If you're absolutely positive you're gonna permanently sideline Kanji, don't bother with the S.Link. You never know, though! If you bring him with you on some tougher fights, he'll grow levels pretty quickly and get caught up to speed with the rest of the team. I'm a guy who is paranoid about party members getting knocked down, so the zero-weakness team of Kanji, Yosuke and Chie made up my boss-killing force after I maxed out all their links, while I focused on making healing/buffing personas without weaknesses.
Hanged Man S.Link is tough to follow through on, mainly because of the kid's schedule. Check some online guides to check which days he is available on. You might not have enough time left to get far into the Link, but you should at least start it. You need maxed-out Understanding in order to take the job that starts the Tower link. If you have enough, go for it, just to get it started. No one finishes Tower on first playthrough, though, unless they read books a ton instead of the other room jobs to get Understanding high enough to start the link early.
Play on easy. It barely changes the actual difficulty of the game, but the most noticeable difference is that "you" (as in the main character) can die 10 times and not get a game over screen. I think I never had to use it, but the save points in dungeons are very sparse and you don't want to lose a couple of hours of progress just because you get hit by an instant death spell.
You never need to lose more than ten to fifteen minutes of progress when you die. Whenever you use a Goho M or Traesto to leave the dungeon, you can resume at that exact floor when you return. On top of that, running through an entire dungeon while avoiding enemies only takes 5~10 minutes.
After finishing FFXIII and resuming my 2nd P4 playthrough, it just occurred to me how easy it is to like all the main characters in P4. They're all, well, likable. You have to put in a lot of effort to like anybody in FFXIII, but you just naturally like all the main cast of P4. :lol
Here's the thing about this dungeon. Yes, you can hit the save point right before the boss, then exit and do S.Links or whatever up until the deadline just like the other ones. But...
- The layout of the dungeon is split into two, so you can't actually warp directly back to the save point next to the boss. You have to trek across two floors first. Not that big of a deal, but don't use the option to warp to Magatsu Mandala World 6 or whatever it's called. That'll just put you farther away. Start from Magatsu Inaba.
- The deadline date for this dungeon is never explicitly stated. Characters will drop a lot of lines like "before the end of the year," but that doesn't mean December 31st is the deadline. It's a few days before that. You'll know when the people in town start to really freak out. Or if you just want to know straight out, the very last day you can finish the dungeon is:
December 24th
. Don't spoil yourself, though! You get a scene that's pretty cool to watch if you miss the deadline, anyway.
- There's another "sub-deadline." If you finish the dungeon on any day before the official deadline, the game will fast-forward in time to the night of the deadline date, where you'll take part in a bonus scene and get a special item. Spoilers:
You get to invite a girlfriend of your choosing over to your place to spend Christmas Eve together.
If you absolutely positively need to finish one last social link and need this extra day to do it, that's still totally OK. The deadline date is also the only date where making a Yoshitsune gives him an awesome bonus skill. It's either Debilitate or Arms Master, I forget which. So consider that, too.
You don't get some super secret awesome special ending if you have all S.Links maxed, if that's what you're asking. There will be a specific moment during the final boss fight where who you have Max S.Links with will matter, but they won't affect the battle itself.
If you're absolutely positive you're gonna permanently sideline Kanji, don't bother with the S.Link. You never know, though! If you bring him with you on some tougher fights, he'll grow levels pretty quickly and get caught up to speed with the rest of the team. I'm a guy who is paranoid about party members getting knocked down, so the zero-weakness team of Kanji, Yosuke and Chie made up my boss-killing force after I maxed out all their links, while I focused on making healing/buffing personas without weaknesses.
Hanged Man S.Link is tough to follow through on, mainly because of the kid's schedule. Check some online guides to check which days he is available on. You might not have enough time left to get far into the Link, but you should at least start it. You need maxed-out Understanding in order to take the job that starts the Tower link. If you have enough, go for it, just to get it started. No one finishes Tower on first playthrough, though, unless they read books a ton instead of the other room jobs to get Understanding high enough to start the link early.
Thanks for the advice, I think I'll max Kanji and then just work on the other social links I have left and not bother starting the other two, I've been at rank 4 of understanding for what must have been a month of making paper cranes every night.
One last thing, I noticed that a lot of the multiple fusions I can make (Not triangle fusions, the ones after that) are Personas that are, like, level 80 and I'm only level 57. Am I under levelled massively or are these meant for the new game plus or something?
