Use lucifer with dormina (recommend using daniel hsiao lucifer build) and just spam dormina and hit technicals. I haven't died since and it makes it more playable
@Menchi Animates so I have a tip for that so in the beginning of merciless the game is really hard but what I would suggest for the beginning is to press R2 and square one after another (assuming ur playing on PlayStation) so ur dodging and attacking at the same time then also equip an item that helps increase ur showtime gauge to fill up. This helped me a lot during the beginning but trust once you get Lucifer and build him in a specific way merciless is gonna be easy.
@Menchi Animates so my Lucifer build was that he had, blazing hell, morning star, concentrate, fire boost, but what you really want on him Is angelic grace, which triples evasion against every single element, that you get from meta tron then also give him Alice’s Spell master which cuts SP consumption in half, so he will just be an insane beast.
Also to save time for grinding Incenses in Merciless, I would recommend sticking to 3 party members you will use for most of the time and throw your stat incenses into them. Personally I mostly use Makoto, Sophia, and Zenkichi so making them stronger will allow them to do more damage, tank more hits, dodge more, etc. Additionally I would also recommend investing some HP and Guard Incenses to Futaba so she doesn't instantly die in hacking battles(she probably will still insta die though but it's better than nothing). Edit: For people struggling in hacking battles, there is a way to cheese hacking battles. To do this, clear on the shadows on the screen as fast as possible, once all the shadows are gone have Joker or Sophia charge up their gun attack(4th master arts passive), don't release the charged shot, and watch as shadows don't respawn and Futaba will eventually complete the hack.
I beat the Reaper on merciless a few days ago, here's my tips for merciless which made it so much easier: 1. Focus on technical damage where possible. Put technical adept (increased technical damage) skill on your physical, gun, psy, nuke and wind personas along with their amp and boost upgrades, you'll do a lot of damage that will make the fights so much quicker. For example, Alice is weak to wind and fire, set her on fire, buff your atk, debuff her defence, then switch to wind attacks, you'll have technical damage on top of weakness damage, plus technical adept with wind boost and amp, I was doing about 2K - 2.5K damage per spell cast, pretty much showtime level damage per cast. It still takes a bit of time since bosses have like 75,000 HP but it's the fastest way that I know of to dispatch bosses. 2. Put Soul Thief on your Thunder, Fire and Ice Personas along with Shock Boost, Burn Boost and Freeze Boost respectively, with ailment boost on top of that. Soul Thief gives you MP back when you inflict status effects on enemies, and with that setup I was GAINING MP when casting those magic. When I had this setup I never used a single MP item ever again for the rest of my run (except Demiurge for obvious reasons). 3. Look up Rozalin's guide on how to max out Persona stats, you may think that's overkill and would make the game too easy, trust me it won't, this difficulty will kick your ass and you'll need all the help you can get. 4. Use the Grand Crystal accessory, which gives you a rare chance to have skills and magic not use HP or MP. It actually happens often enough that it's worth equipping it.
@@is_0078 ua-cam.com/video/ebveWXb_2lU/v-deo.html Watch Rozalin’s guide here, it’ll explain everything and tell you what steps to take, it’ll only confuse you if I try to explain it through text so watching this video will be much clearer and easier to understand.
For anyone having SP problems, the key is to get personas that have skills that can be used after Joker uses one of his attack combos, these skills can target weak points and as long as you utilize Joker’s gun special + Follow Up attack or auto attack combos, you can cast skills that don’t cost SP and clear through enemies without using SP. This is more important on Merciless because enemies have way more health compared to Hard mode, so you want to save your SP for healing skills/revival skills or on skills that buff or debuff enemies.
That being said, skills used out of combos are weaker than their SP-using counterparts. It is still very helpful though, especially on a Persona such as Alice who can cast a Mudo Boosted Mamudoon for free whenever you want. Other important combos are Metatron casting Debilitate, Siegfried casting Heat Riser, Mara casting Charge, Alice casting Concentrate, and any Persona that can combo into a healing move for free (I believe Sarasvati can cast Mediarama but I'm not certain)
Yeah typically I use those combo skills for whittling down the enemy shield gauge, meanwhile having a concentrate activated passively, then if the enemy is going to do something really nasty I whip out a spell to instantly break their shield and cancel their move. After that its back to the combos. Takes a while but i was able to beat all of the EX bosses without needing any SP items or anything Dont ask why I did that. Its the mind gremlins saying ''You might need those 200+ SP items someday....even though you already did the merciless reaper''
another tip that would help out in damage is give soul thief to ur fire, ice and lightning personas and make sure they have ailment boost or burn/freeze/shock boost. then have ur other elements have technical adept. it increases ur damage a lot when they get hit with the ailment from fire/ice/lightning
me who did everything on easy first playthrough: eh I can do merciless it won't be that bad also me in the tutorial of merciless: oh god help edit: IM AT LVL 99 WITH MULTIPLE 99 LVL PERSONAS AND LVL 80 BOND WITH MAXED OUT OTHER CHARACTERS AND ITS STILL SUPER HARD I SUCK
Started my Merciless playthrough yesterday and now I’m currently on Akira’s Jail. Merciless is honestly not that difficult if you have the right personas maxed out and Joker in the 90’s I’d say that the only difficult part about Merciless is probably the Hacking sections and the 1v1 Joker fight in Kyoto but then again, Alice’s die for me ability makes hacking easy af and Black frosts Diamond dust makes 90% of the bosses easy af also. (Assuming you have the right passives skills on them)
i am currently in Merciless Sendai, no real issues yet, but i prepared accordingly, leveled up to 90 and did a 4 hour fusion session before entering merciless, my tips for merciless: do the accumulated power loop to max your persona stats; get alices Spellmaster ability; get a somewhat specialized persona for each element and add a utility skill (buff/debuff/CC) based on "unused" skillslots, get Thor with Soulthief and Wage War(and spellmaster) to remove the pressure from SP management for most of the game than combine it with a Forneus/Kali Psyspell for massive damage, technicals are far more important in merciless so exploit them as hard as you can: when fighting alice, you can hit her with wind weakness or you could hit her with fire and burn her, than spam wind skills for weakness + technicals damage
For merciless, you might need max stats personas with all the good skills and passives. For me, normal NG is just an all melee / All out Attack run and merciless NG+ is just like SMT / Persona run with buffs/debuffs and skills spamming for weaknesses. A friend of mine went with barebone team on NG+ and got one shotted by Bicorn and he tried his hardest for 40 minutes before he went back to his save and farm and build personas for 10 hours lmao.
Im still on my 1st playthrough in hard mode... It really take time for me because all enemy even the normal one kinda strong... Right now im farming on sp items and money to get a stronger persona
Absolutely use skills that can make enemies sleep. (i.e. dormina and lullaby) This will make Futaba's hacking easier and large shadows and dire shadows can also be put to sleep, opening up for huge amounts of technical damage. (2k with technical adept without hitting weaknesses) Also, a maxed-out Seth is surprisingly good for the final boss fight and a charged up riot gun with technical adept is the best way to get higher damage ceilings.
My input: keep an ailment build with Soul Thief in your repertoire (heck, this applies for NG as well) and get Spell Master, Debilitate, Heat Riser, and Salvation ASAP; that last one (I think?) should help if your teammates keep dropping like flies even after buffs+debuffs.
For persona points to lvl up personas just do a max stat persona fusion loop, not only do you start creating personas with all max stats but you get a metric ton of points. I’ve only created about 4-5 max stat personas while spending a couple hundred thousand points per loop (not in the first few cycles) but I have 24 million persona points.
So i have only 2 trophies left. I started Ng+ on merciless difficulty it's kinda hurts, i able to reach second jail but i can not even slay direshadow so i can farm max bond but it doesn't happen because i don't have Lucifer persona and some others. I thought i could go platinum with 1 playthrough but apparently this won't happen. If i start Ng+ the game doesn't even give me exp points. What should I do than ?
I have a team built around doing technicals, i managed to kill 2nd las boss phase 2 in like under 5 minutes and never got close to running out of SP thanks to spell master, also I do around like 1500 damage thanks to technicals
I'm at the end of game beat the reaper and all that what is this accessory hes talking about that nulls all attacks except almighty at? Is it from a drop or something caused can't find anything like that anywhere
for hacking battles, have lucifer with morning star and inherit spell master (from alice), lullaby, ailment boost and soul thief (if you have any luck incenses use them on lucifer as well). Just spam lullaby on foes and use morning star to take them out to deal some technical damage alongside. Soul thief will drain sp used from using lullaby and spell master means you only use 25 sp for morning star.
Grinding on the dire shadow snake king as we speak on merciless and can't say its difficult just bring panther Yusuke and Sophia with you and have black frost on deck and you won't even have to use your SP items
Good hints, if i ever do this though im going to try to limit encounters as much as i can when advancing, not worth the excess sp to fight more than required, being defense pierced sounds pretty cheap tbh (anytime damage isnt absorbed or nullified). might just study the speedrun guides and do a couple more runs on easy for supplies, and definitely will not do merciless more than once if i do it at all (why would you need multiple orbs or hate yourself that much??). Appreciate the hints regardless though might as well just beeline the routing and spam morning star for 90% of the game from what ive studied so far, just have to learn routes first is all. I love this game as a switch player, but that mode looks way too crazy for me to go in without cheese strats
I did quite a bit of grinding before starting Merciless. I got so many game overs from the starting tutorial. But once I got past that, the game was somewhat comfortable. It was still stressful, but I wasn't getting game overs in two seconds.
I myself have completed P5S & defeated the Reaper on Merciless. These are my tips: 1. Be expected to spam attacks on all enemies (they kill you so quickly on this difficulty, so don't hesitate to use HP/SP to perform Persona attacks constantly). 2. Value your SP (more than your HP even), as SP items are rarer than HP items and defeating enemies drain ur SP. Don't hesitate to leave the jail if ur running low on SP. Also, prioritize cooking foods that give SP, or even gives status boosts like Heat Riser, Matarukaja, or cures status ailments. Save up your Selected Coffee Beans for making Master Curry, as they're really hard to get. Even in Sophie's Shop, you only get to buy 1 every 3-4 Jail visits. 3. Spend wisely on Incense in Sophie's Shop (it drains your wallet really quickly). Be sure to watch out when there's discount on Incense (in which will cost ¥ 80k per incense instead of the normal price of ¥ 200k, ensure you maximize the Sophie's Shop BOND skill to save money in the long run). Also, use Incense to max all stats on all characters (except Futaba, who u should only buff up EN) before using on Joker's personas, in which u can use Persona points to increase stats instead. 4. When playing in Merciless, if u find yourself struggling through a Jail, go to a previous Jail to farm items, XP and money to be more prepared. (If u struggle in Alice's/Shibuya Jail however, it's recommended u go back to non-Merciless game, especially if u previously played on Easy/Safety, in which u should try playing on Normal/Hard before even trying Merciless). 5. Make use of enemy weaknesses, Null & Repel & Technical attacks, which will let u deal way more damage to enemies & make use of SP better. Also reduces the need of items like Revival Beads, SP & HP items. 6. Be sure to save at checkpoints every now & then, u never know when the next fight might actually be fatal. Also, if u plan on doing A Thief's Challenge on Merciless, just know that shadows are hyper sensitive (as compared to lower difficulties like Normal/Hard) and will raise the security level the moment they even detect ur presence (especially the Dog shadows, who can detect from a range). Mostly would recommend gunning the shadows from a distance using long range weapons that allow u to freely target without target lock like with Ann & Yusuke. Especially Okinawa Jail is the hardest to do A Theif's Challenge on, due to it having very few checkpoints, and corridors with shadows that appear & disappear. 7. Ensure Joker is equipped with a wide range of skills, covering all Magic attacks (Fire, Ice, Elec, Wind, Nuke, Psy, Bless, Curse) and also Physical attacks (Gun & Phys). While any personas is fine, would mostly recommend Yoshitsune, Metatron, either Black or King Frost, at least 1 of Mara/Cerberus & Lucifer (who can only be fused on Merciless). I got Kali for Psy skills, Trumpeter for Nuke & Wind, Seth for Curse & Gun, Thor for Elec. U can also use Skill cards to obtain skills otherwise not obtainable (or even better skills) for Personas. 8. The Reaper is a GODLY difficult boss. Would recommend maxing all stats for all characters (also stock up HP/SP, Revival items) before even accepting Knocking on Death's Door request. U may go to either Shibuya, Sendai & Okinawa Jails to farm items, Persona points & Incense to improve stats of all characters & personas. For Shibuya, Sendai, Okinawa & Osaka, u can clear all shadows in the Jail, increase the security levels via the spotlights to respawn all enemies (just be careful not to increase to 100%, cuz u will leave the jail instead). All other jails require Expired Perfume from Osaka to do the same.
i myself am currently on a hardmode NG+ to prepare for my merciless run, in my first run i was kinda overleveled as in, i was using jack frost and lilim (and various other sapporo personae/shadows) to fight mad rabbit alice, and i was just past level 50 when i finally went and fought the boss of sapporo, and about level 80 when i finally got to fighting japanese ironman konoe, and, i started my NG plus at level 97 i have a feeling it wont work for me this time round, som im grinding on maxing out zenkichi's stats (moslty HP, SP, ST, MA and EN) and jokers (mostly HP and SP, with fusion for making max stat personas) i also aim to have my whole party including the ones i dont use as often, at around level 90 before i even consider merciless
Yeah when you unlock Merciless mode the tutorial page tells you that battle rewards are greatly increased but you can't change back difficulty once you selected merciless
i know i'm late but my joker is at level 48 (Rest are in low to mid 40's) in the (Spoilers) akria konoe jail and i want to find a good way to grind do you know any areas or methods i could use to get a bunch of exp.
Farming in the previous jail to the one is a good point. Also doing requests and beating the Dire Shadows can really help as well. Also don't forget the bond skills for more exp after battles
@@CGInferno I know it can't during the playthrough of that file, but after a merciless mode run is done and it gives you the option to do another new game + on that file, can I change it back?
i mostly use yoshitsune and lucifer with nocturnal flash, dizzy boost, ailment boost and technical adept, gotta say merciless is pretty doable for me...
I unlocked ng+, but I'm not prepared for merciless, and I don't think I can go back into my save file, can someone tell me if I can get back to my save file or not Edit: nvm, and for anyone wondering, to continue playing on ur save flie after unlocking ng+, just hit "start without new game +"
I was originally going to go straight into merciless from normal but having heard about everyone else's experience with the mode I'll think I'll go normal to hard and then merciless. I'm not a highly skilled player by any stretch of the imagination so I'll need all the advantages I can get.
Yeah. For some stupid reason I challenged myself to do Merciless without really using items. Maybe 500SP per character and I actually managed to beat the EX battles without items. THEN i got to the Merciless Reaper (today) and OH MY GOD. Took a whole bloody hour and I had to use 6 revives and 9 of those disgusting cod liver SP items. Only a little bit ago did I see a vid on youtube of someone killing the reaper in 15 minutes by using Thunder reign and Ice Age etc a tonne and using Soul Foods. Boy do I feel stupid now. Why hoarde my 200+ SP foods that I made and 100+ revives? God knows.
Managed to beat the Reaper on Merciless recently. I did not know what I was up against when I started Merciless and went with what I had after beating Reaper on Normal. Granted, I actually had a good set of personas already and was level 85 but literally no plan and it was a pain. It gets easier though thankfully. also I did literally no exploits, no maxing out personas (I grineded my ass off for a max 99 Yoshitsune) and technical all the way. Kept using the Roland Medal from start to finish. Also don't forget to max out Futaba's HP and Endurance. She is fragile as fuck and made me fail like 5 times.
I thought the game was very easy so I done new game plus BTW I barely improved the shop so when a pixe 2 shots me im convinced its nearly impossible I didn't even do a 4th of the bitcorn mini bosses health before I died
Okay imma say this once *Inhale* USE INSTA-KILLS METATRON WITH MAHAMAON AND HAMA BOOST ALICE WITH DIE FOR ME THEY CAN ONE-SHOT MID-BOSSES, PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING OTHER THAN BOSSES AND DIRE SHADOWS ARE ONE-SHOTTABLE U S E T H E M (And black frost with soul-thief and ailment boost, that's also pretty fuckin good)
I never been a good gamer, even though I love games my hand-eye coordination is too bad to be skilled (also screws me at driving) but damn, I was excited to play this mode but after getting stuck in the first tutorial for an hour it's too much, not for me
Honestly, don’t overthink it. Get Joker to level 90 and fuse the needed Personas for Lucifer beforehand. It’s really not as difficult as people make it out to be. You’ll definitely die during the opening mission. But you will adjust to the BS pretty quickly. And it becomes easier as you go, because of the incenses. The biggest problem is the ridiculous amount of time it takes to chip away boss health.
I can't believe it's a trophy, and I'm a sucker to get platinum trophy, it's also the last one to get Edit: good luck getting that trophy (achievement for steam players) if you want to get platinum
Screw this mode lol. I just wanted the trophy so i started the game on merciless mode then shut the game off before it saved and tricked the game to giving me the trophy for it. 😂 so no thanks.. ill stick to normal modes..😂
@@briceknighton5053 I think they mean they started a new game plus on merciless then quit when the game gave them the trophy, because you only need to start a merciless run to get the trophy.
lol I found an exploit where if you leave a jail and come back you refill all your hp and sp so if you get a check point you basically have infinite hp and sp if that's where your going
this is for people in hard mode/normal/easy if you leave a jail and come back it respawns all the enemy's in the jail meaning free grinding for exp/bond points
Leaving a jail gives you all hp and so back. That is normal and you are told you should if you run out of SP or HP. The enemies respawning is also normal.
The only REAL bS part about Merciless is the Futaba defense objectives, a trash mob can easily kill her and if she dies you have to go back to last checkpoint, but I can imagine that busted accessory on her making it very trivial
Me, at level 96, with all of the best Personae in the game with all stats maxed out, getting one-shot by the tutorial Bicorn.
Same man. I’ve been suck in the starting area for hour
Use lucifer with dormina (recommend using daniel hsiao lucifer build) and just spam dormina and hit technicals. I haven't died since and it makes it more playable
@@_woori can only get that after that bicorn tho
@@PeteMoroder you can play normal new game +, get the Lucifer build and start Merciless
@@SpeedyDorito must the entire game be finished again? Or once you get lucifer you can save and restart in merciless with lucifer?
got clapped by a Pixie using Zio the first second I started Merciless. There is definitely no mercy.
Merciless mode: Every fight is a boss fight
Its not THAT hard
Boss fight for me is more easy
@@pwndkake3980 yes it is
No its worse
Every fight= boss fight
Actual boss= playtime of your first game
I just got one shot by the tutorial mini boss on merciless, take me back to normal difficulty please!
@@Fabio-ql5yf I just went back to my previous save, the one before i started NG+ on merciless and started it again on Hard
@@jackjohnson8305 does that help with the experience gain by chance?
@Menchi Animates so I have a tip for that so in the beginning of merciless the game is really hard but what I would suggest for the beginning is to press R2 and square one after another (assuming ur playing on PlayStation) so ur dodging and attacking at the same time then also equip an item that helps increase ur showtime gauge to fill up. This helped me a lot during the beginning but trust once you get Lucifer and build him in a specific way merciless is gonna be easy.
@Menchi Animates so my Lucifer build was that he had, blazing hell, morning star, concentrate, fire boost, but what you really want on him Is angelic grace, which triples evasion against every single element, that you get from meta tron then also give him Alice’s Spell master which cuts SP consumption in half, so he will just be an insane beast.
@@PunchinBag01 divine grace doubles healing skills; are you by chance referring to angelic grace?
Also to save time for grinding Incenses in Merciless, I would recommend sticking to 3 party members you will use for most of the time and throw your stat incenses into them. Personally I mostly use Makoto, Sophia, and Zenkichi so making them stronger will allow them to do more damage, tank more hits, dodge more, etc.
Additionally I would also recommend investing some HP and Guard Incenses to Futaba so she doesn't instantly die in hacking battles(she probably will still insta die though but it's better than nothing).
Edit: For people struggling in hacking battles, there is a way to cheese hacking battles. To do this, clear on the shadows on the screen as fast as possible, once all the shadows are gone have Joker or Sophia charge up their gun attack(4th master arts passive), don't release the charged shot, and watch as shadows don't respawn and Futaba will eventually complete the hack.
I use wolf and Sophie too but I also use Mona for heals
Is this an exploit? Gonna run NG+ tomorrow so I might try this
I'm going to try this tactic.
You are a mad genius my friend
Alice Spell Master + Die For Me also works as an easier alternative.
I beat the Reaper on merciless a few days ago, here's my tips for merciless which made it so much easier:
1. Focus on technical damage where possible. Put technical adept (increased technical damage) skill on your physical, gun, psy, nuke and wind personas along with their amp and boost upgrades, you'll do a lot of damage that will make the fights so much quicker. For example, Alice is weak to wind and fire, set her on fire, buff your atk, debuff her defence, then switch to wind attacks, you'll have technical damage on top of weakness damage, plus technical adept with wind boost and amp, I was doing about 2K - 2.5K damage per spell cast, pretty much showtime level damage per cast. It still takes a bit of time since bosses have like 75,000 HP but it's the fastest way that I know of to dispatch bosses.
2. Put Soul Thief on your Thunder, Fire and Ice Personas along with Shock Boost, Burn Boost and Freeze Boost respectively, with ailment boost on top of that. Soul Thief gives you MP back when you inflict status effects on enemies, and with that setup I was GAINING MP when casting those magic. When I had this setup I never used a single MP item ever again for the rest of my run (except Demiurge for obvious reasons).
3. Look up Rozalin's guide on how to max out Persona stats, you may think that's overkill and would make the game too easy, trust me it won't, this difficulty will kick your ass and you'll need all the help you can get.
4. Use the Grand Crystal accessory, which gives you a rare chance to have skills and magic not use HP or MP. It actually happens often enough that it's worth equipping it.
How to max persona stat?
@@is_0078 ua-cam.com/video/ebveWXb_2lU/v-deo.html Watch Rozalin’s guide here, it’ll explain everything and tell you what steps to take, it’ll only confuse you if I try to explain it through text so watching this video will be much clearer and easier to understand.
For anyone having SP problems, the key is to get personas that have skills that can be used after Joker uses one of his attack combos, these skills can target weak points and as long as you utilize Joker’s gun special + Follow Up attack or auto attack combos, you can cast skills that don’t cost SP and clear through enemies without using SP. This is more important on Merciless because enemies have way more health compared to Hard mode, so you want to save your SP for healing skills/revival skills or on skills that buff or debuff enemies.
That being said, skills used out of combos are weaker than their SP-using counterparts. It is still very helpful though, especially on a Persona such as Alice who can cast a Mudo Boosted Mamudoon for free whenever you want. Other important combos are Metatron casting Debilitate, Siegfried casting Heat Riser, Mara casting Charge, Alice casting Concentrate, and any Persona that can combo into a healing move for free (I believe Sarasvati can cast Mediarama but I'm not certain)
Yeah typically I use those combo skills for whittling down the enemy shield gauge, meanwhile having a concentrate activated passively, then if the enemy is going to do something really nasty I whip out a spell to instantly break their shield and cancel their move. After that its back to the combos.
Takes a while but i was able to beat all of the EX bosses without needing any SP items or anything
Dont ask why I did that. Its the mind gremlins saying ''You might need those 200+ SP items someday....even though you already did the merciless reaper''
I spammed the hell out of his follow up
Yeah, also u can keep using SP Incense to increase the SP of all characters.
Me in regular persona games: bro merciless is like my safe mode, so easy
Me in this game: bro when tf did pixie with zio one shot?
Same like megidolaon but 9999 xD
I have to say This game is Harder that I was exepecting but is good to have a challenge.
another tip that would help out in damage is give soul thief to ur fire, ice and lightning personas and make sure they have ailment boost or burn/freeze/shock boost. then have ur other elements have technical adept. it increases ur damage a lot when they get hit with the ailment from fire/ice/lightning
Sp isn't a problem as long as ur using the velvet room to ur advantage. Definitely want to fuse skills like spell master, an ailment and soul theif.
Its so satisfying to see your low SP go up when you spam Wage War on a bunch of enemies
Grand crystal and impish corsage is great for spamming in NG+.
Yup exactly!
After playing through Merciless, Hard is a cakewalk.
Reaper on Hard is cake to me at that point. I can't say the same for the Merciless since I've seen him call his Dire Shadow friends for backup.
Honestly.
me who did everything on easy first playthrough: eh I can do merciless it won't be that bad
also me in the tutorial of merciless: oh god help
edit: IM AT LVL 99 WITH MULTIPLE 99 LVL PERSONAS AND LVL 80 BOND WITH MAXED OUT OTHER CHARACTERS AND ITS STILL SUPER HARD I SUCK
Your Skills and passive skills for your personas also matter.
Started my Merciless playthrough yesterday and now I’m currently on Akira’s Jail. Merciless is honestly not that difficult if you have the right personas maxed out and Joker in the 90’s I’d say that the only difficult part about Merciless is probably the Hacking sections and the 1v1 Joker fight in Kyoto but then again, Alice’s die for me ability makes hacking easy af and Black frosts Diamond dust makes 90% of the bosses easy af also. (Assuming you have the right passives skills on them)
i am currently in Merciless Sendai, no real issues yet, but i prepared accordingly, leveled up to 90 and did a 4 hour fusion session before entering merciless, my tips for merciless: do the accumulated power loop to max your persona stats; get alices Spellmaster ability; get a somewhat specialized persona for each element and add a utility skill (buff/debuff/CC) based on "unused" skillslots, get Thor with Soulthief and Wage War(and spellmaster) to remove the pressure from SP management for most of the game than combine it with a Forneus/Kali Psyspell for massive damage, technicals are far more important in merciless so exploit them as hard as you can: when fighting alice, you can hit her with wind weakness or you could hit her with fire and burn her, than spam wind skills for weakness + technicals damage
Dude after seeing this I feel like I messed up so badly before doing merciless mode
For merciless, you might need max stats personas with all the good skills and passives. For me, normal NG is just an all melee / All out Attack run and merciless NG+ is just like SMT / Persona run with buffs/debuffs and skills spamming for weaknesses.
A friend of mine went with barebone team on NG+ and got one shotted by Bicorn and he tried his hardest for 40 minutes before he went back to his save and farm and build personas for 10 hours lmao.
Lol agreed. Max stats and having the best skills and passives on the best personas is a must if you’re gana tackle Merciless.
Im still on my 1st playthrough in hard mode... It really take time for me because all enemy even the normal one kinda strong... Right now im farming on sp items and money to get a stronger persona
Absolutely use skills that can make enemies sleep. (i.e. dormina and lullaby) This will make Futaba's hacking easier and large shadows and dire shadows can also be put to sleep, opening up for huge amounts of technical damage. (2k with technical adept without hitting weaknesses)
Also, a maxed-out Seth is surprisingly good for the final boss fight and a charged up riot gun with technical adept is the best way to get higher damage ceilings.
My input: keep an ailment build with Soul Thief in your repertoire (heck, this applies for NG as well) and get Spell Master, Debilitate, Heat Riser, and Salvation ASAP; that last one (I think?) should help if your teammates keep dropping like flies even after buffs+debuffs.
Hey you remember me right? I still appreciate you helping me giving me notes through on Discord.
Yup still remember you lol
For persona points to lvl up personas just do a max stat persona fusion loop, not only do you start creating personas with all max stats but you get a metric ton of points. I’ve only created about 4-5 max stat personas while spending a couple hundred thousand points per loop (not in the first few cycles) but I have 24 million persona points.
The UA-camr Rozalin made a video on it so just follow his guide
So i have only 2 trophies left. I started Ng+ on merciless difficulty it's kinda hurts, i able to reach second jail but i can not even slay direshadow so i can farm max bond but it doesn't happen because i don't have Lucifer persona and some others. I thought i could go platinum with 1 playthrough but apparently this won't happen. If i start Ng+ the game doesn't even give me exp points. What should I do than ?
If i start a game on ng+ and dont put it on merciless and then master that save file will i be able to make a ng+ merciless with that save file
I have a team built around doing technicals, i managed to kill 2nd las boss phase 2 in like under 5 minutes and never got close to running out of SP thanks to spell master, also I do around like 1500 damage thanks to technicals
I'm at the end of game beat the reaper and all that what is this accessory hes talking about that nulls all attacks except almighty at? Is it from a drop or something caused can't find anything like that anywhere
That accessory you get it on NG+ Merciless when u beat the reaper
@@CGInferno oof rip that idea then I was gonna use it for merciless mode
@@Monokumastan LOL
for hacking battles, have lucifer with morning star and inherit spell master (from alice), lullaby, ailment boost and soul thief (if you have any luck incenses use them on lucifer as well). Just spam lullaby on foes and use morning star to take them out to deal some technical damage alongside. Soul thief will drain sp used from using lullaby and spell master means you only use 25 sp for morning star.
So quick question what carries over into new game +?
Everything except some quest items
Can you new game plus twice? I did a NG+ easy run to get Lucifer and was wondering if I could do a NG++ to get my bond skills done
Yes
Grinding on the dire shadow snake king as we speak on merciless and can't say its difficult just bring panther Yusuke and Sophia with you and have black frost on deck and you won't even have to use your SP items
honestly merciless is sooooo hard I think ima just say no to it
Good hints, if i ever do this though im going to try to limit encounters as much as i can when advancing, not worth the excess sp to fight more than required, being defense pierced sounds pretty cheap tbh (anytime damage isnt absorbed or nullified).
might just study the speedrun guides and do a couple more runs on easy for supplies, and definitely will not do merciless more than once if i do it at all (why would you need multiple orbs or hate yourself that much??). Appreciate the hints regardless though
might as well just beeline the routing and spam morning star for 90% of the game from what ive studied so far, just have to learn routes first is all. I love this game as a switch player, but that mode looks way too crazy for me to go in without cheese strats
I did quite a bit of grinding before starting Merciless. I got so many game overs from the starting tutorial. But once I got past that, the game was somewhat comfortable. It was still stressful, but I wasn't getting game overs in two seconds.
If I make a new game plus on normal do I get less bond xp or the same as merciless?
You get less
@@CGInferno Do dire shadows respawn in ng+ normal?
@@xxp3rezxx105 no
I personally use Deus Feather (the one revive per battle). It helps lots, especially if futaba wasted final guard on you or a teammate.
I myself have completed P5S & defeated the Reaper on Merciless. These are my tips:
1. Be expected to spam attacks on all enemies (they kill you so quickly on this difficulty, so don't hesitate to use HP/SP to perform Persona attacks constantly).
2. Value your SP (more than your HP even), as SP items are rarer than HP items and defeating enemies drain ur SP. Don't hesitate to leave the jail if ur running low on SP. Also, prioritize cooking foods that give SP, or even gives status boosts like Heat Riser, Matarukaja, or cures status ailments. Save up your Selected Coffee Beans for making Master Curry, as they're really hard to get. Even in Sophie's Shop, you only get to buy 1 every 3-4 Jail visits.
3. Spend wisely on Incense in Sophie's Shop (it drains your wallet really quickly). Be sure to watch out when there's discount on Incense (in which will cost ¥ 80k per incense instead of the normal price of ¥ 200k, ensure you maximize the Sophie's Shop BOND skill to save money in the long run). Also, use Incense to max all stats on all characters (except Futaba, who u should only buff up EN) before using on Joker's personas, in which u can use Persona points to increase stats instead.
4. When playing in Merciless, if u find yourself struggling through a Jail, go to a previous Jail to farm items, XP and money to be more prepared. (If u struggle in Alice's/Shibuya Jail however, it's recommended u go back to non-Merciless game, especially if u previously played on Easy/Safety, in which u should try playing on Normal/Hard before even trying Merciless).
5. Make use of enemy weaknesses, Null & Repel & Technical attacks, which will let u deal way more damage to enemies & make use of SP better. Also reduces the need of items like Revival Beads, SP & HP items.
6. Be sure to save at checkpoints every now & then, u never know when the next fight might actually be fatal. Also, if u plan on doing A Thief's Challenge on Merciless, just know that shadows are hyper sensitive (as compared to lower difficulties like Normal/Hard) and will raise the security level the moment they even detect ur presence (especially the Dog shadows, who can detect from a range). Mostly would recommend gunning the shadows from a distance using long range weapons that allow u to freely target without target lock like with Ann & Yusuke. Especially Okinawa Jail is the hardest to do A Theif's Challenge on, due to it having very few checkpoints, and corridors with shadows that appear & disappear.
7. Ensure Joker is equipped with a wide range of skills, covering all Magic attacks (Fire, Ice, Elec, Wind, Nuke, Psy, Bless, Curse) and also Physical attacks (Gun & Phys). While any personas is fine, would mostly recommend Yoshitsune, Metatron, either Black or King Frost, at least 1 of Mara/Cerberus & Lucifer (who can only be fused on Merciless). I got Kali for Psy skills, Trumpeter for Nuke & Wind, Seth for Curse & Gun, Thor for Elec. U can also use Skill cards to obtain skills otherwise not obtainable (or even better skills) for Personas.
8. The Reaper is a GODLY difficult boss. Would recommend maxing all stats for all characters (also stock up HP/SP, Revival items) before even accepting Knocking on Death's Door request. U may go to either Shibuya, Sendai & Okinawa Jails to farm items, Persona points & Incense to improve stats of all characters & personas. For Shibuya, Sendai, Okinawa & Osaka, u can clear all shadows in the Jail, increase the security levels via the spotlights to respawn all enemies (just be careful not to increase to 100%, cuz u will leave the jail instead). All other jails require Expired Perfume from Osaka to do the same.
Do you recommend getting to 99 before starting merciless?
Not really. Cause at the end of the day you can still die with ease. It all depends on how your persona setup is really
i myself am currently on a hardmode NG+ to prepare for my merciless run, in my first run i was kinda overleveled as in, i was using jack frost and lilim (and various other sapporo personae/shadows) to fight mad rabbit alice, and i was just past level 50 when i finally went and fought the boss of sapporo, and about level 80 when i finally got to fighting japanese ironman konoe, and, i started my NG plus at level 97 i have a feeling it wont work for me this time round, som im grinding on maxing out zenkichi's stats (moslty HP, SP, ST, MA and EN) and jokers (mostly HP and SP, with fusion for making max stat personas) i also aim to have my whole party including the ones i dont use as often, at around level 90 before i even consider merciless
Wait so In Merciless mode you get more EXP than in the other modes?
Yeah when you unlock Merciless mode the tutorial page tells you that battle rewards are greatly increased but you can't change back difficulty once you selected merciless
More bond exp, more exp, more yen, better drop from all battles and better skill cards from treasure demons
can i change difficulty from merciless to normal after beating the first jail or second jail
Nope
Nope lol. You can't change the difficulty when on merciless.
i know i'm late but my joker is at level 48 (Rest are in low to mid 40's) in the (Spoilers)
akria konoe jail and i want to find a good way to grind do you know any areas or methods i could use to get a bunch of exp.
Farming in the previous jail to the one is a good point. Also doing requests and beating the Dire Shadows can really help as well. Also don't forget the bond skills for more exp after battles
@@CGInferno Thank you i will try this.
so when I beat the game to start another new game + run, can I change the settings back to normal?
If you pick Merciless you can't change difficulty
@@CGInferno I know it can't during the playthrough of that file, but after a merciless mode run is done and it gives you the option to do another new game + on that file, can I change it back?
Yeah
i mostly use yoshitsune and lucifer with nocturnal flash, dizzy boost, ailment boost and technical adept, gotta say merciless is pretty doable for me...
Can you re fight the fire shadow on the same save file after the first time
Only merciless
I just finished my first normal walkthrough. I don't even know if I want the merciless one.
Same
I unlocked ng+, but I'm not prepared for merciless, and I don't think I can go back into my save file, can someone tell me if I can get back to my save file or not
Edit: nvm, and for anyone wondering, to continue playing on ur save flie after unlocking ng+, just hit "start without new game +"
I was originally going to go straight into merciless from normal but having heard about everyone else's experience with the mode I'll think I'll go normal to hard and then merciless. I'm not a highly skilled player by any stretch of the imagination so I'll need all the advantages I can get.
Smart keep going bro
Also in new game plus you keep all items and everything so get as much sp items as you can before you go on merciless also do all requests gl
I beat the bicorn by hitting it once and retreating that took me too long
Yeah, late game or merci enemies and bosses feel like dmg sponges. Have to go thru so much sp. I found crit build decent
Yeah, as far as i know, Koei games are pretty notorious to have enemies be damage sponges on the highest difficulties.
Yeah. For some stupid reason I challenged myself to do Merciless without really using items.
Maybe 500SP per character and I actually managed to beat the EX battles without items. THEN i got to the Merciless Reaper (today) and OH MY GOD.
Took a whole bloody hour and I had to use 6 revives and 9 of those disgusting cod liver SP items.
Only a little bit ago did I see a vid on youtube of someone killing the reaper in 15 minutes by using Thunder reign and Ice Age etc a tonne and using Soul Foods.
Boy do I feel stupid now. Why hoarde my 200+ SP foods that I made and 100+ revives? God knows.
One tip for all of you: use tecnichal hits as much as you can, you'll shred through the KO bars of the enemy
Merciless is so difficult, every battle is stressful. how did you get the severe skills and amp skills and thanks for the tips
Most have them when leveling up. The game even allows you to change skills which is very lenient
@@CGInferno ok thanks for the help
Does anybody know if there is ng++ or higher
Nope
Managed to beat the Reaper on Merciless recently. I did not know what I was up against when I started Merciless and went with what I had after beating Reaper on Normal. Granted, I actually had a good set of personas already and was level 85 but literally no plan and it was a pain. It gets easier though thankfully.
also I did literally no exploits, no maxing out personas (I grineded my ass off for a max 99 Yoshitsune) and technical all the way. Kept using the Roland Medal from start to finish. Also don't forget to max out Futaba's HP and Endurance. She is fragile as fuck and made me fail like 5 times.
Man, I'm get fucked up and I'm on the 3rd jail
I actually thought he just said to give up at 0:19
Me and my party are getting fucked up while we're at level 99. Despite that I appreciate the challenge
I'm level 90 and have Metatron fused and every and any enemy can kill me in 1 hit. What am I doing wrong?
Ensure you have max stats and resistances covered against the enemy
Also having enduring soul helps
I’m trying to get through that Bicorn with a level 72 Siegfried I guess I’m still pretty underleveled for this 😂
Yep
I think Atlus was tired of people beating the reaper when it had the flu.
I thought the game was very easy so I done new game plus BTW I barely improved the shop so when a pixe 2 shots me im convinced its nearly impossible I didn't even do a 4th of the bitcorn mini bosses health before I died
Level 91 with a maxed seth and got two shoted by a pixie in the first battle, have to start the whole thing again🤦♂️
Okay imma say this once
*Inhale*
USE INSTA-KILLS
METATRON WITH MAHAMAON AND HAMA BOOST
ALICE WITH DIE FOR ME
THEY CAN ONE-SHOT MID-BOSSES, PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING OTHER THAN BOSSES AND DIRE SHADOWS ARE ONE-SHOTTABLE
U S E T H E M
(And black frost with soul-thief and ailment boost, that's also pretty fuckin good)
i feel like i lost something after i finished the game. Oh man i hope they will port Persona 5 to pc oneday
Merciless is easy.... *with Morning star, Dazzler, Ailment boost, and Soul Thief.*
Damn that's a nice accent you got
Thanks lol
fr his accent is cool
I never been a good gamer, even though I love games my hand-eye coordination is too bad to be skilled (also screws me at driving) but damn, I was excited to play this mode but after getting stuck in the first tutorial for an hour it's too much, not for me
Honestly, don’t overthink it. Get Joker to level 90 and fuse the needed Personas for Lucifer beforehand. It’s really not as difficult as people make it out to be. You’ll definitely die during the opening mission. But you will adjust to the BS pretty quickly. And it becomes easier as you go, because of the incenses. The biggest problem is the ridiculous amount of time it takes to chip away boss health.
Merciless is too hard without cheesing
Dear God why did I start merciless at level 75
Well I can only wonder what your going through
@@carlosturris9935 pain
This is the only Persona game I have tried where Merciless is actually merciless, Persona 5 Royal merciless is a joke
I can't believe it's a trophy, and I'm a sucker to get platinum trophy, it's also the last one to get
Edit: good luck getting that trophy (achievement for steam players) if you want to get platinum
You dont need to finish the game in merciless to get the trophy. Just start the game in merciless and the trophy will pop out.
@@silentvision3able sadly I already finished the whole thing in normal so I have to do it in new game+
Screw this mode lol. I just wanted the trophy so i started the game on merciless mode then shut the game off before it saved and tricked the game to giving me the trophy for it. 😂 so no thanks.. ill stick to normal modes..😂
How did you start out on merciful
@@briceknighton5053 I think they mean they started a new game plus on merciless then quit when the game gave them the trophy, because you only need to start a merciless run to get the trophy.
@@ThatSamoanKid pretty much. 👌😅
Honestly this mode is easy to me so far
lol I found an exploit where if you leave a jail and come back you refill all your hp and sp so if you get a check point you basically have infinite hp and sp if that's where your going
for got to say this but this is for free with no draw backs as leaving jails is fine
this is for people in hard mode/normal/easy if you leave a jail and come back it respawns all the enemy's in the jail meaning free grinding for exp/bond points
Leaving a jail gives you all hp and so back. That is normal and you are told you should if you run out of SP or HP. The enemies respawning is also normal.
It’s not an exploit. He explains in the video that there is no drawbacks when you leave the dungeon.
ok my mistake sorry
Welp I accidentally saved over my mastered completion so... rip 70+ hours down the drain
Look at deez nerds maxing out the stats of there personas wait there maxing out the personas well I guess I won't be beating pixes for a while
This really does not seem like it's worth the effort, overly difficult but not a fair difficulty just bullshit
The only REAL bS part about Merciless is the Futaba defense objectives, a trash mob can easily kill her and if she dies you have to go back to last checkpoint, but I can imagine that busted accessory on her making it very trivial
It is called metciless mode