I recently bought this off of PSN, and I have some questions I thought you guys might help answer.

1. Is there no compendium like the one in Persona 4? So if I fuse Personas, I will never be able to get them back?

2. I'm not quite sure if I follow how the whole Tartarus system is. Yesterday I reached the 4th floor on Block 1, then called it a day.Today when I entered, I got placed on the 2nd floor. Luckily I was placed near the stairs, but am I stupid not to fight the same enemys again and miss out on some XP and potential treasure chests?

3. Is there really no way to control your party in battle, instead of just you?

I'd appreciate it if someone could help me out here.

1. you unlock the compendium eventually, second or third month i believe

2. tartarus is weird. unless youre following a 100% guide, dont worry about it. you can use the teleporter on the first floor to tp to any boss floor, so you should be trying to atleast get to one of those everytime you go, possibly multiple.

3. nope, pnly p3p and p4 has controllable allies. either mess with full assault/knockdown or just dont worry about it and let mitsuru use marin karin when she shuld be dia-ing your ass

Thanks a bunch for the quick answers! Sucks that you can't control your party though :(

it gives a sense of tension to battle and adds a bit of love/hate with the dating sim mechanic

oh, yukari, youre so terrible in battle. I'm going to give you shitty gifts

also yuko (i think thats her name, the gym coach tanned girl) is the gf of choice

What I use to do in Tartarus was immediately run for the floor with the boss on it, skip every fight and just get to the stairs. I activated the teleporter when I reached the floor and returned to the entrance and saved. Then I did all of my fighting and exploring. That way when I felt I was ready, I could just jump to where the boss was without having to work my way through all of the floors with less sp to reach him.
 
At least that's what I did. Whether it's actually useful and/or a good way to go about it is another thing. I just liked getting the next teleporter active as soon as possible.

Your party can be hand-held into doing what you want them to do if you start to understand how they "think". I seem to recall that there's an option in the tactics list to make them focus on putting enemies down so you can get an all-out attack. Also, if you want someone to toss your half-hp MC a dia during the round, it's worth the 3 seconds it takes to set them to "support" before you take your turn.

First thing to remember though is that while they aren't too bright, they WILL take the hint of what the enemy is weak to if:

1) You scan the enemy to reveal its properties. They'll remember these forever for that enemy and act more or less accordingly.

2) You or one of them chances upon a weakness. They'll remember it for at least the rest of the fight. This is useful for boss fights when scanning won't reveal this information.

The same goes for enemy strengths. If Yukari fires an arrow, and it bounces right back in her stupid face, she at least has the good sense not to try it again. Even so, I remember P3 more than P4 the MC did most of my knock-downs just to avoid relying on party members. I also found it was worth going easy on new enemies long enough to get full scans in just to smarten up my team, even if I knew at a glance how to handle the enemy (hey, look, a big red table juggling flaming silverware. What could that possibly be weak against?)

@fRAWRst: @GentlemanlyGentleman: @siln: Wow, thanks for all the tips guys!

One more question though, what's the difference between "Priority: defeat shadows" and "Priority: explore" when you issue commands when your running around the dungeons? No matter which one I choose, they still stick with me?

You can have your group split up. They will explore the area, with an obvious more emphasis on battles if you choose defeat shadows.

Note that you will be alone in battle while they are exploring, unless you run next to them and fight with them.

I barley used it

@fRAWRst:No way. Shit gets real creepy when you hit 10 with Yuko.

@YI_Orange: I do not remember anything but tanned booty in my face

@fRAWRst:

yeah, rushing to the next portal points then teleporting back down to save is a good way to go. After that you can take the time to train, complete the side quests (it is worth keeping on top of them all). Also be aware of the fact that on a regular monthly basis there will be a challenge to overcome, generally if your party is good enough to clear up to the next barrier/document box in the tower, they should be competent enough for the full moon.

For quickly ascending I tend to use the split up option, the party when split up are actually extremely good at evading fights so you can generally reach a floor, dispatch them to explore and very shortly they announce they have found the stairs, allowing you to immediately teleport up the stairway without having to move at all. It gets risky if you go for a stroll though, being alone and ambushed, especially if you are carrying the wrong persona for that fight is pretty lethal.

I also highly recommend making the most of any tartarus visit, in persona 3 returning to the main hall fully restores them, however eventually the team members will start to tire, when that happens they weaken and upon returning to the main hall they will just walk out. When it came to training and trying to do side missions, especially some of the gold hand monster ones >.< I would push everyone to breaking point, swapping out party members as they tire until there is nobody left.

Usually pushing the party to breaking point leaves them too worn out to go the following day, but it means that you make the most of your time there, which means you can get by with only 2-3 visits a month to do everything. Rest you can focus on S-Links :)

It is more punishing than Persona 4, you have some control in battle in that you can assign tactics, such as support, focus on knockdown, assault your target, etc. Though they do sometimes do dumb things :/ Still an enjoyable game though.

It is definitely worth keeping on top of all the side missions though, they also provide a good guideline for your progress. Whenever Tartarus expands try to reach as high as you can go, so long as you do that you should be okay once the full moon hits. And have a backup save a few days or so before, just in case it turns out you aren't quite prepared for what awaits and need to swap things around. Never happened to me and I did pretty bad on my first playthrough so it is not as bad as it sounds, but I imagine it could be possible to trap yourself in a corner where you have to fight a story boss but have the wrong persona on hand, or not leveled up enough, etc.

You should be fine, but dosn't hurt to be prepared just in case :)

Oh, and unlike Persona 4, there is no choosing between friendship or lover route, so if you want to max all S-Links you have to go the route of having several affairs going at once. Consequences aren't too dramatic for juggling it all, any mis-steps that reverse the S-Link (turns the card upside down and prevents you from raising it till you fix it) are not too painful, I think you just have to go the shrine and pray about them and all is forgiven, S-Link goes back to normal?

Anyway, kind of far more thrown in here than you asked about, but I hope some of it helps :)

@GentlemanlyGentleman said:

What I use to do in Tartarus was immediately run for the floor with the boss on it, skip every fight and just get to the stairs. I activated the teleporter when I reached the floor and returned to the entrance and saved. Then I did all of my fighting and exploring. That way when I felt I was ready, I could just jump to where the boss was without having to work my way through all of the floors with less sp to reach him. At least that's what I did. Whether it's actually useful and/or a good way to go about it is another thing. I just liked getting the next teleporter active as soon as possible.

Exactly what I figured out when I played the game. Regular enemies don't seem to give all that much xp anyways, at least until you start getting 3 or higher green leaf cards to multiply xp, so I wouldn't fight anything that wasn't a glowy red enemy on my initial climb up.

Also know that if the main character delivers the final blow in a fight or you win in an all out attack you're guaranteed to get a shuffle time. Means more opportunities to get those green leaf cards, which means less grinding necessary.

What I use to do in Tartarus was immediately run for the floor with the boss on it, skip every fight and just get to the stairs. I activated the teleporter when I reached the floor and returned to the entrance and saved. Then I did all of my fighting and exploring. That way when I felt I was ready, I could just jump to where the boss was without having to work my way through all of the floors with less sp to reach him.  At least that's what I did. Whether it's actually useful and/or a good way to go about it is another thing. I just liked getting the next teleporter active as soon as possible.

@YI_Orange: THEN LETS GET TO FUCKING

@IBurningStar said:

@GentlemanlyGentleman said:

What I use to do in Tartarus was immediately run for the floor with the boss on it, skip every fight and just get to the stairs. I activated the teleporter when I reached the floor and returned to the entrance and saved. Then I did all of my fighting and exploring. That way when I felt I was ready, I could just jump to where the boss was without having to work my way through all of the floors with less sp to reach him. At least that's what I did. Whether it's actually useful and/or a good way to go about it is another thing. I just liked getting the next teleporter active as soon as possible.

This is how you play P3. All other methods lead to frustration and failure.

I realized pretty early on that this is absolutely the smartest technique, and yet whenever I see a shadow, the only thing on my mind is hot XP and I run up and stab it. Then I die and lose half an hour of progress and throw something at the wall.

I usually tried to set aside two hours or so a day to get to the next boss floor or barrier, level grind, save the lost people, Elizabeth quests, etc., then just spent the rest of my time building social links. So i ended up visiting Tartarus about twice a month (game time). Just don't go back every night, Tartarus can get very frustrating after a while. Also you can spend your nights working at the cafe to boost your charm & courage or study for academics. That way you don't have to spend time during the day on that stuff & focus on ranking up your links. Pretty much my advice is do as much of Tartarus as you can in one sitting & make sure you get to the barrier BEFORE each full moon.

So I should act accordingly to full moons? Is that what the "Next:" number thing is? With Persona 4, the whole rainy day thing was a good indication that I should get into the television to tear shit up.