With exams almost here in Persona 3, I tried a bit of an experiment and focused on raising my Academics stat exclusively as much as I could before the exams started, by keeping in Great shape and using the shrine. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to gain another rank and I didn’t get the top marks, so I reverted to an earlier save so I could broaden my focus again.

With the barrier gone, I returned to Tartarus, first stopping off at the Velvet Room to fuse a new persona. Partly to start filling out the list of them now that I have the Compendium available, and partly to free up space for new ones I find.

The enemies in this new block are tougher, of course, requiring me to spend more SP on persona attacks and healing. Still, I managed to get up to floor 25 and beat the boss there, largely with the same technique I used before of keeping two of them knocked down while we whittled away at the remaining one. After that I managed to sneak all the way up to floor 36 where the next boss is, but I’m not sure I’m ready for it. It’s the last floor of the block though, so I’m well prepared for the end of this moon cycle and can just focus on grinding xp and getting ready for it now.

Along the way I also picked up another rank in both Charm and Courage, the latter thanks to karaoke again. I’ve also got an idea about how I can gain even more Academics skill, by exploiting the reload of saves and using the bathroom to get Great status so I can use both the shrine and late-night studying, so maybe I’ll ace those exams after all. It’s worked for one day’s cycle; it’s just rather tedious to do all that reloading…

And although there’s a one year time limit, I’m about one and a half months in and it’s taken 10 hours of play, so at this rate it’s still going to be a pretty lengthy game.