Persona 4 Golden: Tips for Newer Players

As standard in most RPGs, it’s not always fights and dungeon crawling – Persona really wants you to focus on your social life as well, whether it to be hanging out with your friends, maintaining your academic grades, and even having to work a few places to get money. Here are a few things you should remember while you’re out an about:

1. Passing Time : If you haven’t realized already, Golden is broken up throughout an entire year, and you only have that year to essentially complete all you want. Days are broken up into three sections, Morning, Afternoon/School, and Evening, where you as a player (except in scripted days) have free reign to do whatever the game allows you to do. However, you should prioritize doing certain events that either raise your social stats (Courage, Knowledge, Expression, Understanding and Diligence), and Social Links, which I will get into in the next section. Social Stats are an essential thing to work on, and is necessary to progress in Social Links and as well as unlock certain dialogue choices. Although there are many actions that can help you increase certain stats (such as studying at night to gain Knowledge points, reading certain books, or working at certain jobs or certain activities) – the most efficient way to gain points in at least three of these stats in by doing the Aiya Diner Beef Bowl Challenge on rainy days, which can prove to save plenty of time, and gives you that time that would be spent on raising those stats individually to be spent on other activities.
2. Social Links and You : Social Links are a system introduced from Persona 3 onwards that allows the protagonist to create bonds (represented by Tarot cards) with certain NPCs, which grants access to side stories, mostly dealing with personal struggles, which you can help with. Each social link is branched out from Rank 1 all the way to Rank 10, with ten being the max level. Compared to Persona 5, where completing a social link would provide extra gameplay elements, Persona 4 Golden’s Social Links are mostly only there to be granted access to create the Ultimate Pokemon Persona of that Social Link, and to have extra content to look at.As you progress with these Social Links, there might be times where you need to respond to the stuff they say to you. Depending on how you respond, the Links may be pleased with your answer, and will grant you bonus “music notes” that will pop over their heads. Collect enough of these music notes in one session will make the person want to immediately progress with the next rank next time you seek them out – instead of having to spend time with them first to collect the “music notes” that you missed out on.

   Most importantly, make sure you have a corresponding Persona that matches with a Link’s Arcana!
   For example, having a Devil Arcana Persona in your repitoire as you progress through the Devil Social Link for example will grant you even more bonus music notes – which will make them more likely to want to progress through their social link without having to spend extra days hanging out with them beforehand.

   

Of course, let’s now delve into some tips for the dungeon crawler sections of the game:

• Don’t be afraid to turn the difficulty down! Play how you want!
  • Although the game’s combat definitely allows plenty of time for players to think about their next move, some enemies, especially in the later dungeons with multi-target spells, might give you a hard time, and can even be what can make you lose progress down the line – especially if you forget to save. The magic of Persona 4 Golden’s difficulty options is that it can be tailored to exactly how you want it to be. Want the feeling of a challenge without sacrificing Gold and EXP gains? Want a even bigger challenge by dealing less damage, and taking more in return? Change it all within the settings menu!

  

• Prioritize your health over others!
  Most arguably, the least favorite thing that most people will probably mention about the Persona games is the fact that if you, the protagonist, falls in battle even with other party members still alive, it will be an instant game over! In the event when you have to either risk your teammate or the protagonist falling, risk the former instead! You can always revive them when necessary as you cannot revive yourself! (at least in harder difficulties)
• Be careful when opening too many chests!
  • In all dungeons, opening too many chests (over 21) will spawn a chest that the game will explain to you that it contains something dangerous inside. It will also rattle and make a sound of swinging chains. Of course, listen to it! It’ll spawn an enemy that will give you a battle that you definitely will not win! Save it for late game! Note: Exiting a dungeon floor or going up a new one, or finding another chest will reset that “dangerous enemy” counter back down to 0!

  

  • Lastly, fuse, fuse, fuse!
• As much as how cool some Persona designs look, you’ll find yourself struggling in later dungeons if you do not fuse them into stronger personas! Don’t get attached, fuse up your skills, priortize attack spells along with buffs/debuffs skills, fuse Personas with arcanas that you have a high S. Link rank with to provide them with more EXP per fusion, which can make learning new skills from their skill list take less time than just grinding normally!Not sure which Persona fusion gives what? Use this online fusion calculator: https://arantius.github.io/persona-fusion-calculator/4golden.html#/list/name

  

Credit to Maragi (ace defective)

Extra Tips

– Once you’ve cleared a dungeon, you can go back to the boss’s room for a new boss fight and pick up a good weapon afterward. Defeating this new boss also nets you courage points. Even the very first “dungeon” (the liquor store) has a weapon to be picked up, without any battle.
– Once you’ve unlocked the Hermit social link, try to max this one out asap. It grants a bonus to SP recovery with each rank. This will greatly increase the time you can spend around in the dungeon. As a result, it makes it much easier to clear dungeons in a single day.
– The smith does not stock up on new inventory automatically. You unlock new equipment in the store by selling him certain number of material drops acquired from the dungeons.
– Keep in mind that the opportunities and time frame you have to level up the Justice and Hierophant social links are limited. Deadline for these two are earlier than others.