What am I doing wrong in combat?

[Gri-C]

I started the game on normal difficulty and even though I am still pretty much at the beginning I already have massive problems. I almost died in the fight against Yosukes persona, which is one of the very first fights. Then in the Yukiko dungeon I simply hit a wall. I wasn't able to get past the 3rd floor. You probably accidently screw up your stats in the the sections between the dungeons but come on, Yukikos dungeon is the first major one, so I feel like i didnt even have much chances to make wrong decisions...

Also the battles look like they dont offer a lot of opportunities to mess up:
I enter a battle, try every element skill I have on every enemy and as soon as I find the weakness, I try to use it against them over and over. By the way, the fact that I have to "trial and error" my way through all enemies is not fun either. When my health is getting low, I heal up. What else can I do? What am I missing? I also dont see the point of the "guard" command as I dont know which party member my enemy attacks and if I guard, I cannot deal damage this round.

By the way, I switched down to easy difficulty, and then there seems to be no challenge at all any more. Most enemies are just one hits.

So please help me! What am I doing wrong? There has to be something about the battles I got totally wrong, otherwise I should be able to beat more than 2 of the 8 (!) floors in the first dungeon on normal.

[Vendedor de Órgãos]

Stick with Izanagi for a while until you unlock all his skills. His stats are okay during the first dungeon. Try to hit the shadows from behind to get a preemptive strike. If you are having trouble, grind a little in the first floor for some XP. You should stock some sodas bought from those machines in Inaba, they are very helpful until you meet the fox and start gardening. One extra tip: Slime is the first persona to learn RESIST PHYSICAL.

[Vendedor de Órgãos]

About combat, yeah, guard is pretty useless. You will only need to use it against Shadow Yosuke, Shadow Teddie and against one of the last bosses. But weaknesses are very important to get All Out Attacks and shuffle time (extra xp, money, regain some HP and SP, Personas...). Try to get personas with agi, bufu, garu and dia skills from shuffle time in this dungeon.

[ｃｏｏｌｄｏｗｎ]

Anything specific? About shadow yosuke, that battle is just guarding when he charges an attack, basically. & the third floor in yukiko's castle? is that shadow chie? I think yosuke is kind of an annoyance in that fight since he's weak to that boss. Its good to block with characters if you need to protect them from getting knocked down. And another thing thats important, especially in boss fights is boosting your stats, unlike other rpg's its actually really important. Its harder to do when you have so little sp, but it makes a good difference.

Just try to stick with persona skills, the regular attack is pretty weak, really only use that to chip away at enemies. You want to exploit the enemies weakness, If that character doesn't have the right element, you can buy 1 use items that deal damage and can knock down enemies. This is pretty much what you want to work towards in a battle, get all them knocked down. Stay near full health, because you don't want to get one-shot by enemies.

You can try leveling up. I think around lv 15 or so is good for the main boss of yukiko's castle. You can also customize your difficulty in the difficulty select at any point.

[L.3.N.Z.]

Originally posted by 「ＤａｎｋＰｈｉｌ」:

Anything specific? About shadow yosuke, that battle is just guarding when he charges an attack, basically. & the third floor in yukiko's castle? is that shadow chie? I think yosuke is kind of an annoyance in that fight since he's weak to that boss. Its good to block with characters if you need to protect them from getting knocked down. And another thing thats important, especially in boss fights is boosting your stats, unlike other rpg's its actually really important. Its harder to do when you have so little sp, but it makes a good difference.

Just try to stick with persona skills, the regular attack is pretty weak, really only use that to chip away at enemies. You want to exploit the enemies weakness, If that character doesn't have the right element, you can buy 1 use items that deal damage and can knock down enemies. This is pretty much what you want to work towards in a battle, get all them knocked down. Stay near full health, because you don't want to get one-shot by enemies.

You can try leveling up. I think around lv 15 or so is good for the main boss of yukiko's castle. You can also customize your difficulty in the difficulty select at any point.

And even customize xp drops from encounters. I didn't tho.

[Freekill]

Pretty dumb question, but you are using all out attack?

Other than that, guarding is rarely useful unless you got a gut feeling that one of your party is gonna get crit-zapped.

Also, other than all out attack, you COULD stun an downed enemy by hitting it again, but sometimes is not worth it.

Usually the game punches your face in constantly in the early game, after the second dungeon you kinda get a breather, is when mostly you getting the hang of it and abusing One More all the time, try reducing enemy numbers from the start by doing that.

[Gri-C]

Originally posted by Freekill:

Pretty dumb question, but you are using all out attack?

Other than that, guarding is rarely useful unless you got a gut feeling that one of your party is gonna get crit-zapped.

Also, other than all out attack, you COULD stun an downed enemy by hitting it again, but sometimes is not worth it.

Usually the game punches your face in constantly in the early game, after the second dungeon you kinda get a breather, is when mostly you getting the hang of it and abusing One More all the time, try reducing enemy numbers from the start by doing that.

Whenever I had the chance to use it I did since theres no disadvantages in using it, right?

[Gri-C]

Originally posted by 「ＤａｎｋＰｈｉｌ」:

Anything specific? About shadow yosuke, that battle is just guarding when he charges an attack, basically. & the third floor in yukiko's castle? is that shadow chie? I think yosuke is kind of an annoyance in that fight since he's weak to that boss. Its good to block with characters if you need to protect them from getting knocked down. And another thing thats important, especially in boss fights is boosting your stats, unlike other rpg's its actually really important. Its harder to do when you have so little sp, but it makes a good difference.

Just try to stick with persona skills, the regular attack is pretty weak, really only use that to chip away at enemies. You want to exploit the enemies weakness, If that character doesn't have the right element, you can buy 1 use items that deal damage and can knock down enemies. This is pretty much what you want to work towards in a battle, get all them knocked down. Stay near full health, because you don't want to get one-shot by enemies.

You can try leveling up. I think around lv 15 or so is good for the main boss of yukiko's castle. You can also customize your difficulty in the difficulty select at any point.

Right, I forgot about shadow chie! I beat this dungeon too on normal. So I guess Yukikos castle is actually the second major dungeon of the game, if you consider the Yosuke one a tutorial. But yeah, I got stuck in Yukikos castle floor 3.

By boosting my stats you mean using skills, that improve defense/attack/evasion for X rounds? Or do you mean boosting the stats of my personas? If so how do I do that? I mean theres a chance to get cards in shuffle time, that increase certain stats. Should I always choose those?

You also suggested leveling up to lvl. 15 for the Yukiko dungeon. This might be a stupid question, but where can i grind levels? In Pokemon for example I can just go back to previous areas and beat grass Pokemon until I level up enough if necessary. But in Persona 4 it seems the only way to level up is to play the dungeons themselves. However, if there isn't a way to exit the dungeon when I'm low on HP/SP to heal up and return with no kind of penalty (like time progressing, running out of items to leave the dungeon,...) I see now way to grind for levels.

[Gri-C]

Originally posted by Vendedor de Lolis:

Stick with Izanagi for a while until you unlock all his skills. His stats are okay during the first dungeon. Try to hit the shadows from behind to get a preemptive strike. If you are having trouble, grind a little in the first floor for some XP. You should stock some sodas bought from those machines in Inaba, they are very helpful until you meet the fox and start gardening. One extra tip: Slime is the first persona to learn RESIST PHYSICAL.

How do I grind the first floor though? Looked to me like enemies don't respawn once beaten. Also what if i run out of HP/SP? Should I just stockpile sodas to be able to grind since leaving the dungeon requires an item too?

[GeassV]

There is no disadvantages use all out attack in persona games, if you struggle get xp you can change ( xp won to normal or more ) to get more xp.

by boosting stats mean using skill sukukaja, tarukaja or similiar to yourself or your party member and always debuff enemies or boss. For shuffle mode do not get bonus stats for your persona ( i do not recommend this for first playtrough or get this bonus if you like your persona, example : izanagi or pixie )

do not stick with izanagi if by mean to get all his skills, because all persona have limited skills always fusion persona to get more stronger persona

[delta]

Guard is for when a boss is charging up an attack that will do a lot of damage.

[Silent Proti]

Originally posted by MC Gri-C:

How do I grind the first floor though? Looked to me like enemies don't respawn once beaten. Also what if i run out of HP/SP? Should I just stockpile sodas to be able to grind since leaving the dungeon requires an item too?

Go to the next floor and go back down, the enemies will respawn. Stockpile sodas by all means. Also you should look into battle customization menu, changing enemy hit damage and your's should help.

[Gri-C]

Originally posted by Silent Proti:

Originally posted by MC Gri-C:

How do I grind the first floor though? Looked to me like enemies don't respawn once beaten. Also what if i run out of HP/SP? Should I just stockpile sodas to be able to grind since leaving the dungeon requires an item too?

Go to the next floor and go back down, the enemies will respawn. Stockpile sodas by all means. Also you should look into battle customization menu, changing enemy hit damage and your's should help.

Alright, thanks! I will keep that in mind for the upcoming dungeons!

[Idiotperson]

I beat shadow yukiko on level like ten or something how should I feel

[ｃｏｏｌｄｏｗｎ]

Originally posted by MC Gri-C:

Originally posted by 「ＤａｎｋＰｈｉｌ」:

Anything specific? About shadow yosuke, that battle is just guarding when he charges an attack, basically. & the third floor in yukiko's castle? is that shadow chie? I think yosuke is kind of an annoyance in that fight since he's weak to that boss. Its good to block with characters if you need to protect them from getting knocked down. And another thing thats important, especially in boss fights is boosting your stats, unlike other rpg's its actually really important. Its harder to do when you have so little sp, but it makes a good difference.

Just try to stick with persona skills, the regular attack is pretty weak, really only use that to chip away at enemies. You want to exploit the enemies weakness, If that character doesn't have the right element, you can buy 1 use items that deal damage and can knock down enemies. This is pretty much what you want to work towards in a battle, get all them knocked down. Stay near full health, because you don't want to get one-shot by enemies.

You can try leveling up. I think around lv 15 or so is good for the main boss of yukiko's castle. You can also customize your difficulty in the difficulty select at any point.

Right, I forgot about shadow chie! I beat this dungeon too on normal. So I guess Yukikos castle is actually the second major dungeon of the game, if you consider the Yosuke one a tutorial. But yeah, I got stuck in Yukikos castle floor 3.

By boosting my stats you mean using skills, that improve defense/attack/evasion for X rounds? Or do you mean boosting the stats of my personas? If so how do I do that? I mean theres a chance to get cards in shuffle time, that increase certain stats. Should I always choose those?

You also suggested leveling up to lvl. 15 for the Yukiko dungeon. This might be a stupid question, but where can i grind levels? In Pokemon for example I can just go back to previous areas and beat grass Pokemon until I level up enough if necessary. But in Persona 4 it seems the only way to level up is to play the dungeons themselves. However, if there isn't a way to exit the dungeon when I'm low on HP/SP to heal up and return with no kind of penalty (like time progressing, running out of items to leave the dungeon,...) I see now way to grind for levels.

Yeah, by stat boosting, I mean the various -aja skills you can cast on your party in battle that last 3 turns. You shouldn't worry about stat gains thru level ups cause it's just random & doesn't really make a difference.

You can get more out of your visits if you try to save sp wherever you can. Cause it's basically over if you have no sp, might as well just leave then. (You'll also get a social link that'll give you extra sp for a cost later on. But it's like, a lot of money to buy.)
You can get away with being low level if you have the right personas.