i need a way to NOT one shot

[DanThePaniniMan]

i am doing a playthrough with a guide and just realized that i need a mandrake before i leave komoshida's castle, but im already at the point where all my fire attacks will one shot a mandrake

[Houseki Yarisuke]

You can probably fuse to make a mandrake. That would be better anyway, since you'll get more skills that way.

[GODKaiserOs]

if not with fusion you can use a molotov cocktail item to do 50 fire damage.

[Sex]

make the game harder

[Steel]

Put the game on Hard. Not Merciless, Hard.
If you're already on Hard then look into modding and get the enemy HP mod.

[Overeagerdragon]

fuse 2 persona of the arcana leveled directly ABOVE mandrake... the way fusion works is if you fuse 2 persona's of the same arcana you get a persona of the same arcana tiered directly below the highest one... so if you take the persona's of the arcana tiered directly above mandrake you SHOULD get mandrake...

[obama drone strike]

easiest course of action would be to set difficulty to hard. I found the amount of damage I was doing on hard was pretty equal to the amount of damage i did on normal in P5 vanilla.

[faultyhook]

Use a fire item that does 50 damage. (Molotov Cocktail) If you have done the palace already, just keep playing. You'll find a mandrake in the first floors of a certain story related area.
Keep at it dude!

[Tiasmoon]

You can fuse lower personas. Dont have to capture them. Easiest method is as this post describes:

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

fuse 2 persona of the arcana leveled directly ABOVE mandrake... the way fusion works is if you fuse 2 persona's of the same arcana you get a persona of the same arcana tiered directly below the highest one... so if you take the persona's of the arcana tiered directly above mandrake you SHOULD get mandrake...

Thats not the only way, but the rules for regular fusion are.. weird. This one is most predictable.

Also, Mandrakes will appear in Mementos (after first castle) too.

[archonsod]

Crits will also down an enemy. If you've got any attacks with a high crit chance you can give them a try, if not spraying it with bullets might get you one.

[Arifufu]

easy bro, use Lucky Punch with apt pupil, Lucky punch is miniscule physical damage with high chance of critical, apt pupil will help u to do critical even further, use that skill on yourr persona with the highest Luck u will get mandrake easily, ohh also put your difficulty to hard and not merciless as merciless will triple damage your critical hit while hard will only reduce your damage to 0,8x w/o triple damage when land a critical hit