The persona 4 forum might be better for game specific questions.

As stated i'd post this in the forums, but in general it doesn't matter if you max all social links on the first play thru, it would be very difficult and leave almost no room for error.

Typically its far easier on a 2nd playthru as stats carry over.

So I've beat both the original and golden version when it released on ps2, and beat all the other persona games.

First of all, your best option is to try and finish the dungeon as soon as you get the option to, this can be difficult for new players as the strategies don't seem clear at first but here is a quick rundown.

1: Try to get a surprise attack at every option, this will insure maximum damage as long as you are taking advantage of their turn around points.
2: Always try to get a critical hit. Almost every enemy has a weakness, and exploiting them can make health and sp consumption a lot easier to manage.
3: Be sure to use the right characters, equipment, and personas for the job. Most early dungeons will have a common elemental weakness, you can usually tell after the first few encounters, be sure to build on your characters strengths with the right equipment, and just because a persona has a higher level does not immediately mean it is more powerful.
4: Do not save consumables indefinitely, but don't use them prematurely. If your character is low on sp, but you have another character that is almost full and has an elemental advantage, just use that character and save the consumable for later in the dungeon. Same with healing items, most characters get an ability to heal, and Yukiko has an absurd amount of sp.
5: Try to complete a dungeon in as short an amount of time as possible. The more time it takes you to complete the less time you have for everything else.
6: Do not, I repeat, do not go into the dungeon only during story missions. If you are able to complete the dungeon in 1-3 days, use some of that extra time to run through the dungeon again. I recommend being twice the level it took you to beat the previous dungeon before starting the next one. After a certain store point after completing a dungeon a new dungeon boss will spawn that will give a unique weapon that can help in the next dungeon after that one.

Beating a dungeon sooner will give you time to progress social links and complete side quests as well, so there are obvious benefits to moving faster. However, you should try to engage in every fight if possible, grinding lvls is a part of the game, and is necessary to progress through those dungeons in a shorter time in game.

Social links are a very important aspect, but keep in mind that certain ones require a certain level of experience in knowledge, understanding, courage, expression, and charisma, reading books, taking on certain jobs, and some odd tasks can help with increasing these traits.

Weather should be taken into account for what you do as well, social links cannot be progressed on a rainy day. You can use these days to dungeon dive, or you can use them to read, as reading or studying while it is raining will count as twice instead of once. Keep in mind though, raining during the day does not mean it will rain at night, so keep an eye on the forecast.

This being a time management game means that completing as much as possible in the shortest amount of time is paramount to getting the best ending, so be sure to use your time wisely, but also keep in mind it may take more than one play-through to accomplish if you aren't doing it with a step by step walk-through.

It goes without saying that everyone has their own play-style and how to, you will eventually find something that works best. I personally do not use any other persona besides Izanagi, especially after they added in the stat increase cards and lvl up cards.

Genuinely I try to do the links the first day so I can start progressing my teammates links cause you can’t progress them during investigations and while rescue operations are underway.

The same is said for dojima because he’s trying to find them while they are in the tv.

The strength link is a good link to do because strength personas tend to learn hard hitting physical type moves which are essential for killing gold hands for easy xp due to the fact they resist all but physical.

I’ve tried progressing the fox as fast as possible but it’s impossible but it’s impossible to go past rank 2 before kanji is abducted and if you want to progress the fox any earlier you need to rescue kanji because you need to talk to chie to complete the foxes third request and she won’t spawn during a rescue operation.

Yeah as said better do all social links in ng+ it will be much easier.

Well not skip fights, if you see any shadows in your way fight with them, if not boss will destroy you and send you to grind, so it's not make sense skipping shadows.

Especially rely your hope on golden hands. It's a most big farm material, if you kill a lot of them you will farm 100 000+ money and 40 000 what fox ask will be nothing to restore. And also you gain 10x bonus exp, on Kanji's dungeon one golden if i remember it's 1500 exp or more.

Don't do mistake always strike backs of shadows, especially golden hands you need fully player advantage. Best way to kill golden hands in start it's All-out attack and crits. Even killing 1 golden hands it's a big succes.

Автор сообщения: RampantVamp

So I've beat both the original and golden version when it released on ps2, and beat all the other persona games.

First of all, your best option is to try and finish the dungeon as soon as you get the option to, this can be difficult for new players as the strategies don't seem clear at first but here is a quick rundown.......

Yeah so most of those things, I've been trying to do already. I never skip enemies in RPG's except when I feel like I am threatened to loose the battle. Most of the time, I try to cover the whole floor and then progress to the next for maximum EXP / money/ Personas etc per floor. Since I can plant things in my garden, I have some tomatoes to get SP.

My current strategy (feel free to critique it btw) is as follows:

When it comes to enemies, I try to use mostly attacks that use HP instead of SP with 3 of 4 characters and then multi-heal with Yukiko in order to get back the HP that I've lost with the attacks.
I obviously try to get as many shuffle - times as I can , with as many sweeps as I can. It seems like Persona 4 is one of those RPG's where buffs seem to actually matter, or at least in the early game, since ailment spells that confuse all enemies do actually work pretty well so far and they often lead to enemies attacking themselves which is actually pretty funny to watch.


Another thing:
It seems like "quitting" the dungeon (not going out of the TV world but the dungeon) is also really important, since I get too many Personas and they fill up my list. So what I do is every 2nd or 3rd floor that I ascend, I quit the dungeon, register all the new Pokém- I mean - Personas that I've caught so far, try to fuse some that I find useful and continue on the current floor that I've exited the dungeon.

When it comes to the golden hands, I feel like the best strategy would be to spam elemental items since they seem to give a 100% 50DMG flat- damage. However, I don't have enough money to just buy those in bulk so far.

My fox is at level 4 atm so I "only" need to pay around 20.000 to heal my party.

I am at the stripcl... I mean....gentlemens establishment atm. Which means I am near Rise Kujikawa which makes me really nervous because this means the hunt for the Hardcorse Risette fan - trophy will begin.

My question now are two things:
1. Money. Is there anything that I need to consider? How can I get rich quick? I will need a lot of it, it seems, since I need to buy elemental items in bulks
2. The Risette- trophy will be a pain, and what I've learned so far is to not let her social link get past lvl 1 until many of her "basic" lines are completed, which seem to be on overleveld enemies or sth.

But what about my OTHER teammates? It seems like I am not even allowed to let THEM level up too much in the social links, since they get the ability to sort of auto-reverse status effects pretty soon and that would lead to Rise not commenting on their current state- affection (and that point is it seems lvl 5 which is ridiculously close, as they are all at lvl 4 atm except for Kanji). Please don't tell me that I need to basically play with lvl 4 teammates because of that. This would be so counter- intuitive to what I would normally do and It would honestly be nonsense .

I hope that someone could also answer me that one.

Автор сообщения: MadLifeMonkeh

Автор сообщения: RampantVamp

So I've beat both the original and golden version when it released on ps2, and beat all the other persona games.

First of all, your best option is to try and finish the dungeon as soon as you get the option to, this can be difficult for new players as the strategies don't seem clear at first but here is a quick rundown.......

Yeah so most of those things, I've been trying to do already. I never skip enemies in RPG's except when I feel like I am threatened to loose the battle. Most of the time, I try to cover the whole floor and then progress to the next for maximum EXP / money/ Personas etc per floor. Since I can plant things in my garden, I have some tomatoes to get SP.

My current strategy (feel free to critique it btw) is as follows:

When it comes to enemies, I try to use mostly attacks that use HP instead of SP with 3 of 4 characters and then multi-heal with Yukiko in order to get back the HP that I've lost with the attacks.
I obviously try to get as many shuffle - times as I can , with as many sweeps as I can. It seems like Persona 4 is one of those RPG's where buffs seem to actually matter, or at least in the early game, since ailment spells that confuse all enemies do actually work pretty well so far and they often lead to enemies attacking themselves which is actually pretty funny to watch.


Another thing:
It seems like "quitting" the dungeon (not going out of the TV world but the dungeon) is also really important, since I get too many Personas and they fill up my list. So what I do is every 2nd or 3rd floor that I ascend, I quit the dungeon, register all the new Pokém- I mean - Personas that I've caught so far, try to fuse some that I find useful and continue on the current floor that I've exited the dungeon.

When it comes to the golden hands, I feel like the best strategy would be to spam elemental items since they seem to give a 100% 50DMG flat- damage. However, I don't have enough money to just buy those in bulk so far.

My fox is at level 4 atm so I "only" need to pay around 20.000 to heal my party.

I am at the stripcl... I mean....gentlemens establishment atm. Which means I am near Rise Kujikawa which makes me really nervous because this means the hunt for the Hardcorse Risette fan - trophy will begin.

My question now are two things:
1. Money. Is there anything that I need to consider? How can I get rich quick? I will need a lot of it, it seems, since I need to buy elemental items in bulks
2. The Risette- trophy will be a pain, and what I've learned so far is to not let her social link get past lvl 1 until many of her "basic" lines are completed, which seem to be on overleveld enemies or sth.

But what about my OTHER teammates? It seems like I am not even allowed to let THEM level up too much in the social links, since they get the ability to sort of auto-reverse status effects pretty soon and that would lead to Rise not commenting on their current state- affection (and that point is it seems lvl 5 which is ridiculously close, as they are all at lvl 4 atm except for Kanji). Please don't tell me that I need to basically play with lvl 4 teammates because of that. This would be so counter- intuitive to what I would normally do and It would honestly be nonsense .

I hope that someone could also answer me that one.

Money is stupid easy to get by dungeon diving, going for the double, triple, quadruple, or best the max money card after a big fight makes a huge difference, but if you devote all your wealth to those short lived consumables this can lead to an over dependency later in the game you go. They wont be as effective in the higher tier dungeons and eventually your members will will out damage them. Some of the item drops are very good to sell, and for the most part that is there only function, so don't feel pressured to keep every piece of scrap or garbage you collect in the hopes that it will serve some function eventually, because it probably wont. Selling old and unneeded equipment is a good practice too, as it stands you only have 2 more party members who will need any in the future. Rise doesn't need them.

As far as Rise goes, basically its not that you shouldn't get her social link lvled before a certain story threshold, its that you can't. Her Social link takes the longest to get started, but when it does it is definitely worth progressing it. She takes the role of Teddy, but way better. By progressing her social link this can lead to getting more and more information on enemies, strengths and weaknesses can eventually be known without testing it with hits. As far as lvling her stats per fight, she requires alot more exp than everyone else, so it really isn't worth waiting, especially since most of her social link abilities aren't going to be ones you sacrifice for something else.

(Side note: There are not to many fights that promote physical attacks over elemental attacks. I would leave one or two characters to that particular niche, like Chie or Kanji as they are the physical types. The longer a fight drags, the more damage you take, the more sp you use on healing. Yukiko does have a ridiculously high sp count, but it will run out when you need it the most. Nothing is worse than being halfway through a floor, then having to warp out and do the whole floor again.)

The risette trophy basiclly need new game plus if u wanna chill it, or pretty hardcore approach if u want to do it in 1 run. The easy way is to use x party members in regular game and then y party members the 2nd time. If u want all achievments u have to beat the game twice anyway.