[ Guide ] Persona 3 Reload – Best Tips on Level Up Fast and Efficiently

The journey to the max level in Persona 3 Reload, as with any game, can be a tedious and exhausting process. However, with the right approach, you wouldn’t take long to level up your characters and might even have plenty of spare time left before even arriving at the end game of Persona 3 Reload.

Here, we have some tips on ways to level up efficiently in Persona 3 Reload.

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Progress at Your Own Pace First

It is a rather common tendency to want to focus on grinding levels even in the earlier parts of the game. While doing so might give you some slight advantage for being over-leveled, this would not last long, especially when a new party member joins you and ends up being higher level anyway. Instead, try to progress the game at your own pace and enjoy your journey rather than going overboard with level grinds.

Make the Most Out of Tartarus Exploration

That said, if you still insist on doing some level grind, then you would need to make the most out of your stay at Tartarus. Persona 3 Reload now gives you more incentives to stay around longer in Tartarus to obtain better rewards from Major Arcana cards. During the Shuffle Time, there’s a chance that you could pick Major Arcana cards to gain better bonuses such as the likes of increased damage for All-Out Attack, double item loot amount, boosted stats for Persona and your characters, and so on.

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Depending on how many slots you may have to store the Major Arcana cards, the bonus you obtained will also be a lot higher, especially after triggering Arcana Burst once all the cards are collected based on your maximum slots. This will give you better effects for standard cards, including the amount of EXP you can gain as well as better Skill Cards. These effects will last indefinitely during exploration but will reset once you exit Tartarus, so you would need to make the most out of it.

There is also the case of triggering Arcana Burst as soon as possible. This might be a lot easier when you don’t have many slots for the Major Arcana cards, but if you have plenty of them, then it’s much better to just pick any of those cards up during Shuffle Time, even if you might not need the effects. The idea here is to trigger the Arcana Burst for the increased bonus rewards, in order to yield to best grinding results.

To unlock more Major Arcana cards and slots, you would need to complete a series of Moand Passage challenges that you can only encounter when you are close to the border floor of each block. So the further you progress, it become more essential to focus on the grind for better rewards.

Doing Solo Run, No Seriously…

The idea of doing a solo run is a risky one, but it is also an extremely effective way to gain level and grow stronger, benefiting your party in the long run. The reason is that every EXP that you accumulate is shared among party members, thus making progression slower if you aim for to everyone have equal levels. Solo runs can yield you double, triple, or even more EXP. That being said, you are still going to share some EXP with Fuuka regardless, as she is your Navigator and is pretty much locked in place and unremovable.

Since there is a risk of initiating solo runs, careful preparation is crucial. There are plenty of things you would need to pay attention to, including ways to gain the best rewards.

Equipment

The best gears can be found either from Officer Kurosawa or through crafting rare ones in Shinshoudo Antiques, which oftentimes are stronger. As for the accessories, you can only equip one, but we have two recommendations, which are Avaricious Ring and Amiritite Necklace. The Avaricious Ring grants you 15% more EXP, so it becomes an extremely solid choice for leveling grinding. Only equip the Avaricious Ring if you are confident with your skills.

If you are not confident with your skills, then the Amiritite Necklace is a literal godsend as it makes you immune to any ailment. Getting debilitated by ailments in a solo run can be greatly fatal as you have no options to recover for several turns especially when you have no allies to support you. In solo runs, you will always be the punching bag, so unless you have a strong Persona with great resistance to ailments, the Amiritite Necklace is highly recommended.

Persona

Possessing a strong Persona will play another big factor in having a smooth solo run. It can be difficult to find the right Persona for the job, especially when you also have to take into consideration what block of Tartarus you have chosen as your grinding spot. The variety of Shadows and their attributes can also be either doom to you or the opposite. A recommended Persona for solo runs would be Siegfried, a Physical-type Persona with a focus on Slash damage, a very strong one at that. He also has high endurance and can completely negate any Slash damage. Note that Siegfried is weak to Dark, so it is crucial to pay attention to whatever element the opponent Shadow possesses.

If you are going for Siegfried, the upper Harabah block seems to be one of the best grinding spots for the Persona. There are almost no Shadows that use Dark elements in the block and most of them are pretty weak against Physical damage. Siegfried is by no means among the best Persona in the game, but it is okay if you want to invest in increasing his stats further, especially Strength and Endurance. You can do so by simply leveling him up or using Incense Cards, which can be obtained from various sources. A sure way to collect Incense Cards is through some trading at the antique shop.

Another cool aspect about Siegfried is that you can gain access to a Fusion Spell called Scarlet Havoc, which allows you to deal a devastating amount of Physical damage with a high Critical Rate that can also be further strengthened with Charge skills. This Fusion Spell can be very helpful while grinding. You would need to have unlocked Mithras to gain access to the Scarlet Havoc Fusion Spell, but there’s a good chance that you have already unlocked him since he is a low-level Persona found in the early parts of the game.

Focus on Strong or Rare Shadows

Certain types of Shadows can yield better EXP, namely the Strong and Rare Shadows. Strong Shadows are marked with a red aura and can be rather troublesome, but they provide a good amount of EXP. The Rare Shadows are the ones you might want to be aggressive towards as they exist to drop better rewards and EXP. They are not dangerous per se, but they are sly ones as they have high endurance and evasion stats. This makes each turn against them crucial as they could escape if you can’t decimate in two or three turns, resulting in 0 EXP gained. This is also why Siegfried is a recommended Persona as he is rather effective against them, normally able to destroy the Shadows within one or two turns.

There is also another new type of Shadow known as the Greedy Shadow. These Shadows are essentially a big Golden Hand monster. They are far weaker than other Shadows but are also extremely difficult to track down if Fuuka has no Tartarus Search support skill. Otherwise, the Greedy Shadow can only be tracked by picking the right route between left and right, and it is completely RNG. The Greedy Shadow not only yields much higher EXP but also a lot of loot.

Does Fortune Telling Even Help?

Before venturing into Tartarus, you can get a blessing from the fortune teller at Club Escapade. There are several options from the fortune teller such as increasing the chance of encountering Rare Shadows, boosting the charge speed of your Theurgy Skill, and so on. It is rather easy to forget that this facility exists, but are they any useful? The short answer is yes, but it is no big deal if you forget to stop by it. The thing is, encountering Rare Shadows is heavily dependent on luck and there are moments when you may encounter them back to back or come across a floor that is crowded with them, and this is without taking any blessing into the equation.

The best way to increase the frequency of encountering Rare Shadows is just by simply revisiting every floor that you’ve already mapped. For example, after you have cleared out 10-15 floors, you can simply use the teleporter to revisit each floor and pay attention to the minimap to see if any Rare or Strong Shadows have spawned. If there’s none, then simply use the shortcut to jump to the next floor. You can rinse and repeat the process, which sounds like a tedious chore, but it does save you a lot of time.

Chase After Level 88

The max level cap of Persona 3 Reload is level 99, but all you really need to reach is level 88 as this is where you can already reach godhood status in the game. The reason is simple, level 88 is where you can cook up the strongest Fusion Spell in the game called Armageddon, which can deal a massive almighty damage of 9 999. This one skill can pretty much wipe out almost any enemy in the game instantly, but at the cost of draining your HP and SP down to 1, leaving your character vulnerable. But it doesn’t matter as most of the battles will be over at this point.

How do you unlock the Armageddon skill exactly? First, you would need to have Satan and Helel registered as your Persona. If you are unsure how to unlock them, you can read our guide on ways to unlock every Persona. Essentially, you can start fusing Satan at around level 80, while Helel can be fused at level 88, hence why level 88 is all you need to chase. Important note for Helel, is that he is the ultimate Persona of the Star Arcana, so it is necessary for you to have maxed out Hayase’s Social Link. What exactly is the point of having such a strong skill anyway? Set aside how you can essentially become almost unstoppable, this skill is the best ticket to farm Reaper.

In case you are unfamiliar with the name, Reaper is the strongest Shadow in Persona 3 Reload and you can encounter it on any Tartarus floor if you stay around for long enough. They are extremely deadly and can wreck you even if you have a maxed-out powerful Persona, so you would need strategies and patience to come out on top. Sure, it is more fun to plan out a strategy against the Reaper, but this is a guide for grinding levels so go ahead and unleash Armageddon to decimate it to gain as much EXP as possible.

Reaper can grant you over 400 thousand EXP. Essentially, you would instantly jump to the max level from level 88, and even better yet, you could bring your entire party. One or two more fights with the Reaper is enough the max out the level of your party, and you could just rotate the members each fight.

Besides farming the Reaper, the game also provides you with a feature called Grand Clock, which you can trigger by using Twilight Fragment when opening a chest. This happens randomly, but when you do manage to access it, you can pick two party members for them to catch up with your level instantly after the next fight. For example, if you are already level 99 and there are still two party members at level 30, they can instantly reach level 99 after the next fight through the Grand Clock. In other words, EXP doesn’t matter at this point.

Maxed Level, What’s Next?

Reaching the max level does not necessarily mean that you are at the peak of your potential because you can still cock up some of the strongest Persona with the right fusion combination, gaining the best skills and stats. Specifically for the stats, you can max all of them by using either Incense Cards, picking specific Major Arcana cards with stat increasing effects, or by playing some arcade game at Paulownia Mall. You have plenty of time to do so as this level-up tactic can be achieved as soon as you gain access to the Harabah upper floor and have Siegfried unlocked. Of course, there are many other possible strategies, but for us, this has been an effective strategy that works.

Persona 3 Reload

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Atlus

Release Date: 2024-02-02

Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Dive into the Dark Hour and awaken the depths of your heart. Persona 3 Reload is a captivating reimagining of the genre-defining RPG, reborn for the modern era with cutting-edge graphics and gameplay.