I really hope fusions are different In P5

[Locuust]

I'm too stubborn in trying to figure out all my fusions by hand looking at that chart that is both helpful and poorly laid out for someone half blind like me. In the end I gave in and used the calculator. So much easier. The problem is, which game designer thought this was a good idea? Or maybe I'm lacking context and there is some lore around? Either way from purely a gameplay perspective it's needlessly complex and certainly hasn't aged well.

I found myself chuckling last night when I realized that Disgaea and this game are like polar opposites. In Disgaea figuring out how to unlock all but the most obscure units is pretty easy. In this game you have lovely little additions like your S.link level ups on fusions breaking your chosen triple fusions.... -_- because of the great idea that the third ingredient was chosen by level instead of the third option you picked in the UI. /sigh.

Not saying it's an awful game or anything, but this is not a high point for the series imo. Let's just hope the story carries it. I've spent too much time idling on fusions.

[XenoEvil]

Most people just make use of whatever they can get out of fusion. If it is something different from what they have, then fuse it and register it and see what else can made. No one bothers to look up how to fuse to get a specific persona unless it is their endgame persona or for margaret's request.

[Spectre7]

ive been using this site:
https://aqiu384.github.io/megaten-fusion-tool/p4g/personas

[Locuust]

lol, right. The game can't have an aspect I don't like because the problem is with me. There's clearly no one else doing so and all those guides are merely thought exercises on how I, and anyone else fool enough to follow them, is "doing it wrong".

/sarcasm off

Yup, I'm using that link now. What I meant by calculator. Though it's more like just a search engine of a database someone pre-populated. Probably started out as output from a script and was corrected by hand from there.

*Edit* Oh, btw, pro-tip for the link above from an idiot that took too long to notice - When pull the persona you're looking for a recipe for it is indeed nice that it sorts things by cost. However I failed to notice that 1) there was multiple pages (page links at the top instead of the bottom), and 2) If you're trying to find the fastest way to fuse the skill from Persona A onto B. Then just enter a filter for Persona A's name at the top. Once I realized that I cut out a lot of intermediate steps. Though you still have to do some wrangling if you're pulling up to the max of 5 transferred skills.

Another tip to save money - If you have a bunch of high level skills that you want to transfer to multiple personas, inherit them on to one persona, use triple same arcana fusion to move them down to a lower level persona in that arcana, and then not wince every time you have to buy another copy of said persona from the compendium. Well, maybe not as much. You can take it pretty low level but don't go to far down or you'll end up having to up rank or use intermediate fusions just to use it again.

Oops, just realized I was using a different site -
https://arantius.github.io/persona-fusion-calculator/4golden.html#/list/name

Checked out the above real quick. Definitely got more info and is better organized. But if you're just wanting fusions my link might be quicker to get at what you want. Ymmv. One thing I did notice about the site I was using is that their calculated cost for fusions seemed to be off a bit. I mean they're super bloated from the few I checked. Hopefully they still function to give you a relative cost comparison? I'd have to look at it more sometime.

[DLON]

I think the Persona series should never have have had a RNG system for Fusions.

Like, there should've been some type of game mechanics that helps guide you to the Personas you want to fuse. I should not have to experiment and waste my time for hours trying to get what I want, nor should I have to look up online guides. Look at how many people have to rely on guides to get the Personas they want. In my opinion, that's bad game design. It's BS.

There should've been some sort of "Persona Cookbook" given to you by the Velvet Room attendant or Igor, that offers Persona "recipes". Maybe you can get more recipes by leveling up and getting stronger, thus "unlocking" knowledge on how to fuse more powerful Personas, in the book you got.

Random experimentation wastes the player's time, and is just frustrating.

[mdesaleah]

P5 has the same fusion system.

You get used to it. Its not that hard to learn.

[Locuust]

Well there really isn't any RNG unless you're talking about some of the forecast events like skill change. The actual fusions are deterministic (aside from triple fusions depending on current level rather than base level on recipes, but still uses baselevel for the actual fusion result). It's just a pain to determine what works. There is the search function but that only show's you what's possible with the personas in your inventory. Like you said unless you want to spend a bunch of time adding and dismissing personas until what you want pops up.... That would take either a ton of money or a lot of reloading.

Yes, a Persona Cookbook. At the minimum it should be something filled out in time by successfully fusing things. Though, honestly that's a time sink as you said. But ideally, if you really have to gate it at all, it should be something that populates in step with the story progression. I mean you're already limited by character level and the personas you have available.

It's all kinda silly because the search function is basically what we're asking for if it wasn't for the fact that it's filtered by what you currently have in your inventory.

[mdesaleah]

Originally posted by Locuust:

Well there really isn't any RNG unless you're talking about some of the forecast events like skill change. The actual fusions are deterministic (aside from triple fusions depending on current level rather than base level on recipes, but still uses baselevel for the actual fusion result). It's just a pain to determine what works. There is the search function but that only show's you what's possible with the personas in your inventory. Like you said unless you want to spend a bunch of time adding and dismissing personas until what you want pops up.... That would take either a ton of money or a lot of reloading.

Yes, a Persona Cookbook. At the minimum it should be something filled out in time by successfully fusing things. Though, honestly that's a time sink as you said. But ideally, if you really have to gate it at all, it should be something that populates in step with the story progression. I mean you're already limited by character level and the personas you have available.

It's all kinda silly because the search function is basically what we're asking for if it wasn't for the fact that it's filtered by what you currently have in your inventory.

The cookbook idea actually already exists.

Thats what Registering your Persona does. It allows you to summon them at any point with enough money.

Although you said for initial fusion, so that doesnt exist. I think for difficulty reasons since it would make it too easy.

[Locuust]

Originally posted by mdesaleah:

P5 has the same fusion system.

You get used to it. Its not that hard to learn.

Yeah, double fusions are pretty straight forward. Triple fusions are a pain and you can't totally avoid them as some arcana's seem to arbitrarily require them. It's because it's hard sometimes to get the persona you want to be third in the recipe because it depends on current level rather than base. I learned real quick that registering personas you've leveled is a double edged sword that either forces you to re-fuse a vanilla level of them or go farm one that doesn't have any added skills. I know the later maters for the RNG of things like skill change or if you're trying to get a skill upgrade in the dungeon. This is of course at odds with the time management portion of the game.

That's too bad that P5 has the same system. Oh well.

[Locuust]

Originally posted by mdesaleah:

The cookbook idea actually already exists.

Thats what Registering your Persona does. It allows you to summon them at any point with enough money.

Although you said for initial fusion, so that doesnt exist. I think for difficulty reasons since it would make it too easy.

Nah, that's not a fusion cookbook. That's just a save function for personas you've already fused or farmed. And as I said above it can bite you in the rear as you can have a leveled persona prevent you from doing a particular triple fusion. If you can refuse it, you have the added skills/skill card (I know you can get the cards from the shop in the other city), don't mind the stat drop from losing sweep bonuses, and the inherited skills won't be a problem... then it's all good.

*edit* err.. To be fair the stat drop doesn't happen unless you manually register the base leveled persona over you're saved one. Still this system is filled with inconvenience.

[DLON]

The "cookbook" I mentioned wouldn't have to make it too easy if implemented correctly. They could give us specific requirements for each Persona. Requirement that we can unlock naturally as we play, such as being a certain level, or having a Persona with a certain skill. The only thing the "cookbook" would have to do, is eliminate guesswork.

Like, instead of your having to try out random fusions, hoping you'll get what you want, they could've done it in this way, for example:

Let's say you want to fuse Persona X. Well, you find the name of that Persona in the "cookbook", and it says something like this:

"To summon this Persona, you'll need to to be level 35, and fuse a Persona of the Fool Arcana that possesses a skill X, with a Persona of the Moon Arcana that possesses skill Y."

Something like that.

[Locuust]

Originally posted by DLON:

The "cookbook" I mentioned wouldn't have to make it too easy if implemented correctly. They could give us specific requirements for each Persona. Requirement that we can unlock naturally as we play, such as being a certain level, or having a Persona with a certain skill. The only thing the "cookbook" would have to do, is eliminate guesswork.

Like, instead of your having to try out random fusions, hoping you'll get what you want, they could've done it in this way, for example:

Let's say you want to fuse Persona X. Well, you find the name of that Persona in the "cookbook", and it says something like this:

"To summon this Persona, you'll need to to be level 35, and fuse a Persona of the Fool Arcana that possesses a skill X, with a Persona of the Moon Arcana that possesses skill Y."

Something like that.

Well, I get what you mean. It would be the simple solution to have static recipes for each persona, but the current system does give you some flexibility. Maybe too much. If you want a certain skillset on a persona you navigate the maze of possible arcana cominations to see if you can take skills from one or more personas and have it inherited by the final one. This is simplified once you get later in the game and have unlocked more/all the skill cards. Iirc skill cards weren't in the original P4? It's a golden thing? Anyways, if it was static recipes you may/would be limited in what skills could be inherited by personas.

If they were going to add skill cards I wish they'd allow you to register skills on your personas from the get go instead of them being just RNG drops in the dungeon.

[Locuust]

I'm really confused on this one... I managed to get 5 skills gathered onto persona's I wanted to inherit onto a final fusion. Every source Persona has a full skill list. I do the fusion, I get 5 inheritance slots, but two of the skills don't show up in the list. 3 x 8 = 24 skill slots. Removing the duplicates there are 20 unique skills on these three personas. Only 17 skills are in the list. The missing three are all electric skills (only using 2). At first I thought greeeeeaat, this final persona can't use this element. Despite the fact that it doesn't have a weakness to it and it already has one element. I figured I'd be safe as I'd seen people talking about even quad element personas. To verify that I completed the fusion, but ironically when the skill change event fired it changed a random skill to Zio. Didn't even have to bother with a skill card. It's not that it can't accept that element. So are specific skills/ranks no good then? Some weird limitation that it can only display 17 skills? I mean why 17? The fact that the missing 3 are electric spells seems like too much of a coincidence. But why are some electric spells fine and not others? So arbitrary...

[Binary]

Personas have a 'type' which affects what kind of skills they can inherit, and in the PS2 version it decided what type of skills you had a higher chance of getting since you didn't get to just choose like here
Skill cards and changes ignore those restrictions though

[Locuust]

Originally posted by Judge Atlas:

Personas have a 'type' which affects what kind of skills they can inherit, and in the PS2 version it decided what type of skills you had a higher chance of getting since you didn't get to just choose like here
Skill cards and changes ignore those restrictions though

Well I sorta expected that from the old posts I saw, but I imagine there's no way to know of the 'type' or what skills are on it's naughty list? Well unless someone compiled that somewhere? But, yeah, now that you mention it, I knew cards were a new thing in Golden, and so is the selection of inherited skills, so it makes sense they'd be constrained by some of the old mechanics (less they overhaul them and break things/saves). But there must of been some really patient guys that figured out what skills worked or not when it was RNG based.

One strange thing I noticed is the variability of inherited skill slots. I'm mostly seen 4 slots when both personas in a double fusion have full skill lists, but then I got the one above with five. The only thing I can figure is that the rules are once again different for Triple fusions.

[Freekill]

I agree the fusion system is quite buggy, the 17 case happened to me, seems like some limitation in fusion list, could be memory limit?

As for the objective, what are you trying to get? I found out (on my PS2 games) that usually when I want something specific, you could mix and match with personas of the same arcana, for example, 2 Death arcana could yeld a Death arcana of lower level, and triple fusing them usually yelds a higher tier of the Death arcana. Keyword usually.

Or maybe you need a specific persona with specific skills? That is going to take a while until you get to farm lategame skillcards, then every build gets way easier to make.