It was back to more grinding in Tartarus in Persona 3 tonight, since I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for the next full moon event. Along the way I picked up a few more new persona, including an ice specialist, so I’m just missing a wind specialist now.

I took a shot at the floor 85 boss, but it started out horribly, with Akihiko missing a whole bunch of times, and the AE electric attack kept knocking Yukari and Mitsuru out. I spent way too many revival beads trying to keep them alive, but eventually gave up on them and kept going with just me and Akihiko gradually wearing it down, since we were pretty much immune to electric attacks.

And then after that was even more grinding, to try and get Mitsuru some levels since she’s been falling behind a bit. I also completed a couple more of Elizabeth’s quests, though the fusions necessary cost me a pretty penny. It’s only going to get more expensive, though…

Back in Persona 3, I gave the floor 72 boss a shot but got crushed quickly on the first attempt, as usual. I tried again, using the tactic of keeping all but one knocked down and having everyone else focus on the remaining one, when I discovered that Akihiko and Junpei were basically useless in this fight, doing hardly any damage or not doing anything at all. Although I was tempted to reset and get Mitsuru, Yukari and I managed to keep going and gradually wore them down, though it was a looong fight. After that I snuck up to the 85th floor, where the next boss is, but stopped there for the night, finally ending this game day that’s been split over four sessions now.

The group went on vacation, where more was learned about the incident ten years ago and Yukari’s family history. At the beach, Junpei initiated Operation Babe Hunt, where we successively got shot down by various groups of girls on the beach, including a transvestite. During that we discovered Aigis, a cyborg created to fight shadows by Mitsuru’s father’s company, and she joined the group. Disturbingly enough, the messages I get when I talk to her imply that I can become ‘closer’ to her.

And there were a couple more cutscenes with the three weirdos that also operate during the Dark Hour, and they’re apparently not so happy with our plans to destroy the tower and end it…

Tonight was, again, primarily more experimentation with fusions in Persona 3. I think I’ve got a decent set now though: a Narcissus with AE versions of all four elemental attacks and charm, a Hua Po fire attack specialist, and a new Oberon that specializes in electric attacks and recovery spells. I can’t really get at the higher versions of the other element types yet though, so I’m keeping Lilim around for those.

And then a brief run through a few floors of Tartarus to test them out turned out fairly well, including finding a couple good weapon upgrades for Yukari and Akihiko. That’ll lessen the sting of the time and equipment lost a couple days ago.

And in other news, the Rush album DLC for Rock Band that I was waiting for has been delayed by up to a couple weeks, potentially. There must be some kind of major problem that’ll require a game patch, or something…

Today’s Rock Band release (a full Rush album) has been delayed somewhat, so I was back to fooling around in Persona 3 today.

I didn’t really get much done, though. I need to redo my set of personas to make sure I’ve got all of the attack types covered in the most powerful form possible, make sure I’ve got the right healing and recovery spells, match up with the social links I’m working on, cover as many defenses for enemy attacks as possible, and so on. My Lilim has served well, with all four elemental attacks on it, but it doesn’t have the more powerful versions available now and I’m starting to see more enemies without any elemental weaknesses.

It’s tough though, because getting the combination of skills you want on a persona often requires fusing lower personas. But…it’s random which skills from the personas get combined (you can keep retrying before committing the fusion, at least), some skills don’t show up until the persona gains some levels, which depends on how strong the social links are, some skills can’t be merged at all depending on the types being merged, it costs a fair bit to buy the personas for fusing, and so on, which makes getting what you want rather tricky. I can specialize more narrowly, rather than trying to get multiple skills onto a single persona, but there’s a limited number of persona slots, too. It’s going to take a fair bit of experimentation.

So far I’ve got a Titan that covers all three physical attack types very well. Now I’m trying to get a Take-Mikazuchi that adds another element to the electrical attacks it has natively, but haven’t found a good combination for it yet.

My Persona 3 session tonight was cut off earlier than expected. I figured I’d get in some exploration of the newly opened block before the vacation started, and made my way up to the first boss floor. The enemies in this block are definitely a lot tougher; it took a while to learn all of their weaknesses and appropriate tactics to use on them, and there are still a few that put up rough fights.

But, on one of the trips up, I got careless and used an AE wind attack. Yup, against enemies that I had forgotten can reflect wind. All three hits were reflected back on me and I died instantly at the very start of the fight. I probably didn’t really lose that much time, since I’d been saving between trips up and this was probably the third or fourth trip, but I lost some really good equipment I’d found on a special floor on that trip, and I was too pissed off to continue any further tonight.

I took a shot at the floor 59 boss in Persona 3, but got wiped out pretty quickly since I didn’t have enough revives or health to withstand the AE attacks, so I did a bit more grinding in Tartarus. Soon after, I saw a cutscene of a mysterious group of assassins that operate during the dark hour, and then headed back to Tartarus and finally beat the boss.

There was still plenty of time to kill before the next full moon event, so I built up social links, maxing out the swim team and student council, and gained enough Academics skill to guarantee acing the exams coming up. I’m also now considered to be officially dating Yuko, which prevents me from building social links with any other girlfriends until I max her out, but none of the others are available yet anyway.

The full moon event arrived, taking place in a ‘love hotel’, and it was annoying because I lost the first boss fight, requiring reloading and redoing a whole bunch of cutscenes. The fight was actually going very well, but an unlucky few rounds of AE fear effects and attacks put me into one of those downward spirals of always trying to recover. It went fine on the second attempt, including a second boss fight after that.

Afterwards there was an explanation of the explosion incident ten years ago that seems to have created the shadows and Tartarus, though it doesn’t really change anything about what to do about it. And now, having aced the exams, we’re off on vacation for a week. Though it’s to a location that will undoubtedly touch upon that initial incident…

And of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone and couldn’t resist a bit more Persona 3 tonight…

I tackled the newly opened Tartarus areas and made it up to floor 59 boss without too much trouble; the new enemies aren’t all that much tougher than the previous ones. I also completed a few more requests for Elizabeth, including another ‘date’ to one of the stations, joined the photo club and got a new social link for it, and raised a few others.

I also ran across a dog name Koromaru that I already know is going to wind up joining us at one point. Yes, as a party member.

I felt like I was already prepared enough for the next full moon event in Persona 3, but it was still 16 days away, so I popped back into Tartarus a few times just to grind some more cash and xp, complete a bunch of Elizabeth’s requests, and fuse some more personas. With newer equipment, my teammates look a bit ridiculous now, with Yukari in a bikini top and holding a toy bow, and Junpei with a bat with a bunch of nails in it.

Otherwise, I worked on some more social links, raising them with Yoku, Kenji, the swim team, and the little girl at the shrine (not creepy at all!), and gaining a new one with an annoying fat kid named Nozomi. I raised his a bunch of times while I had a matching persona, and he has a weird story involving some kind of cult, a dead brother, this adult he pissed off, and of course a love of food. Turns out I shouldn’t have bothered with him for now since he counts as a non-school link I could have worked on in the summer instead, focusing on school ones for now, but oh well.

The full moon event arrived, where we discovered that the students who had gone missing recently had been trapped in the school, and we rescued them during the dark hour. The boss fight was pretty trivial, which was good because there were an awful lot of cutscenes that would have had to be repeated if I’d failed… After beating the event, one of the missing girls (Fuuka) joined us, I got the Knock Down tactic, and can now fuse personas into weapons.

I couldn’t enter Tartarus again for a while, so I just worked on social links and stats in the meantime, gaining two new social links with a monk in the nightclub and the mysterious boy (Pharos) who’s been showing up at the Dark Hour sometimes. I might actually max out a few of them like the student council and swim team sometime soon.