As an avid Persona 5 player with over 200 hours logged, I’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs of the game’s complex persona system and how to effectively level up my personas for maximum performance. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll share my top tips and strategies.
Table of Contents
Know Your Persona Stats
The first step is understanding what stats you need to focus on for each persona. The key ones are:
- Strength – Increases physical attack power
- Magic – Increases magical attack power
- Endurance – Increases HP
- Agility – Increases evasion
- Luck – Increases critical rate
For attacking personas, prioritize Strength or Magic depending on whether you want a physical or magical damage dealer. For supporting personas, boost Endurance and Luck.
Fuse Higher Level Personas
The most efficient way to level up personas is through fusion. When fusing two or more personas, the resulting persona’s level will be somewhere in between the fused personas’ levels.
- For example, fusing a level 10 and level 15 persona will likely result in a level 12 or 13 persona.
This allows you to skip grinding levels and quickly obtain higher level personas.
Max Out Confidants
Completing Confidant stories not only unlocks unique abilities, but also gives experience bonuses when fusing personas related to that Confidant. This applies to:
- The Death Confidant for the Death arcana
- The Faith Confidant for the Judgement arcana
- The Consultant Confidant for the Justice arcana
Max these out as early as possible to take advantage of these fusion bonuses.
Use the Gallows
The Velvet Room’s Gallows system lets you sacrifice a persona to boost the stats and experience of another persona.
Some tips for effectively using the Gallows:
- Sacrifice personas with skills you want to transfer
- Save scum in case the transfer fails
- Target bonus experience days for a bigger XP boost
With some luck and patience, you can rapidly strengthen your main personas.
Buy Skill Cards
Skill Cards can be purchased from electric stores and used to teach personas new abilities without leveling up. This is extremely useful for transferrable support skills like:
- Salvation (full party heal)
- Spell Master (reduce SP cost)
- Arms Master (reduce HP cost)
- Ali Dance (boost evasion)
Having these skills makes battles much easier.
Prioritize Battles That Give High XP
Not all battles give the same amount of XP. To level efficiently, target enemies and quests that give bonus experience such as:
- Red shadow enemies
- Requests with XP boosting conditions cleared
- Mementos area bosses
- Reaper farming
Avoid grinding weak enemies that give little XP. Focus your effort on battles that accelerate persona growth.
Assist with Lockdown Mode
During alert phases when a palace or Mementos is under lockdown, all party members earn boosted experience. Make sure to tag along for lockdown battles to quickly gain a few levels.
Use Incense Items
There are various consumable incense items that can provide experience boosts for a limited number of battles. Examples include Houzuki Incense, Kougaon Incense, and Royal Jelly. Use these when farming tough enemies or before major boss fights.
Recover Lost Experience
If you happen to lose a battle and your main persona dies, you can recover the lost experience by visiting the church confessional. This is very useful if you lost a level or two to avoid having to re-grind those levels.
New Game+ Benefits
In New Game+ cycles, all of your personas, social stats, and confidant ranks carry over. This makes power-leveling personas even easier. With advanced fusions unlocked and maxed confidant bonuses, you can create overpowered personas much quicker than the first playthrough.
