I mentioned in my Persona 5 review that the game is hard. However, it’s not just battles that crank up the difficulty. In fact, the biggest challenge Persona 5 has to offer is clearing the game while seeing all the content. Without a walkthrough, you might find yourself reaching the end of the game while missing entire confidants!

If you want to see as much content as possible, you are going to need to know how to effectively use your time. Just follow these 15 tips and you will be maxing your stats and topping off your confidant ranks in no time.

Save Habitually

It is so easy to screw up in Persona 5. Maybe you spent a day doing the wrong activity. Maybe you weren’t prepared for a dive into the meta-verse. Maybe you just chose the wrong answers during a social hangout. Whatever your eventual downfall may be, you can avoid a lot of heartache by saving often and rotating your save-slots. Yes, make use of all 16 save slots because an innocent overwrite could screw up your playthrough so badly that you will need to start all over. Also, don’t feel bad about save-scumming. Shin Megami Tensei games are practically built for it.

Prioritize Money

Money is by far the most important resource in Persona 5. Money buys you weapons, armor, accessories, and items, but it also allows you to take friends out to expensive hangouts, study at the diner, recall personas from your compendium, and is even needed for some side-quests and confidants. The more content you see, the more you will find yourself on the edge of being completely broke. So when negotiating with demons, make sure to extort them for money whenever possible.

Work Every Job Multiple Times

In general, part-time jobs may not seem like a great way to spend your time. All they get you is some money and a small stat increase. You can generally make more money or raise your stats quicker doing other activities. Regardless, you still want to work every part-time job multiple times, since doing so is a requirement for unlocking certain confidants and side-quests. Once you unlock a confidant, its basically safe to stop working that job.

Clean Your Room

Cleaning your room may appear to grant no benefit, but in reality many activities are locked until you prove you can be responsible and tidy up. Once your room is clean, you never have to clean it again, so you might as well get it out of the way at the beginning of the game, when you have few other choices for spending time.

Participate in Stat Raising Activities that Use No Time

Persona 5 is primarily a time management game. Luckily, there are several time-free methods to raise your stats, freeing up the rest of your schedule for demon hunting and dates. Every Sunday, you can drink juice at the juice bar to raise one of your stats. Using plant nutrients on the plant in your room lets you raise your kindness once every 16 days. Answering questions in class correctly gives you boosts to your knowledge (you can use the “Thieves Guild” internet function to see how other players answered). Finally, always have an unread book on you, since reading on the subway also takes no time and gives you massive boosts to your stats, depending on the book you read.

Prioritize Confidants that Have Secondary Benefits

Another good way to save time is to raise your social stats while performing another activity. Several confidants raise your stats when you spend time with them. The Death confidant raises your guts, while the Sun confidant raises your charm. Similarly, you can earn points in the Hierophant confidant while brewing coffee, which will let you regain SP in dungeons.

Unlock the Temperance Arcana As Soon As Possible

Perhaps the best confidant to invest a lot of time in is the Temperance confidant. Boosting ranks here will let you use time that is otherwise locked out as free time. This includes class time and “tired” time after coming home from a meta-verse dive. It will also allow you to do two activities at once during certain nights.

Always Bring Matching Personas to Social Meetups

Raising your confidant ranks works on a sort of point system. Every correct answer you give during a social hangout gives you one or two points toward the next rank-up. Bringing a persona that matches the confidant’s arcana, however, increases all points gained by one. Doing this and answering all prompts correctly will allow you to raise most confidants six or seven ranks without ever having to devote time toward secondary hangouts.

Reach the End of a Palace in One Night, Even If You Have to Run

Time doesn’t pass while inside palaces. It only passes if you leave. Thus, the best way to efficiently use your time is to push as far as the game will let you during each palace run. Most palaces can be completed in two or three nights if you really push your hardest. In fact, if you plan on doing a 100% run through, the first palace will need to be completed in one night with very few restorative items. On the upside, you always have to leave a palace before fighting the palace’s boss. So if you find yourself near the end and near death, it’s better to run and make it to the end than to waste a whole day on recovering, since you’ll get a full party heal right before the boss anyway.

Stack Mementos Requests

One of the biggest time sinks in Persona 5 is the randomly generated Mementos dungeon. Here you’ll fulfill many side-missions, which will increase certain confidant ranks and open up new activities for you. The problem is diving into Mementos takes a day of your time. So the most efficient way to tackle these side-quests is to let them stack up. This allows you to tackle multiple side-quests in one Mementos run, taking up only a single day of your time.

Don’t Ignore Melee Attacks

SP tends to be the limiting resource in dungeon runs. As long as you can hit an enemy’s weak point, battles will be over quick, but to do so you need to use SP for elemental skills. Most players will wait until their SP is out to use melee attacks, since it’s their only option, but you should be doing this in reverse. Use melee attacks when you first enter a dungeon, because the enemies are lower level and easily defeated. Then, when enemies start getting more difficult, switch to your SP skills for a boost of power that should last you to the end of your dungeon run.

Make Use of Technical Hits

Hitting an enemy’s weakness or scoring a critical hit will knock them down, but there is a third way to knock down enemies: the “technical hit.” Technical hits involve using certain combinations of skills in sequence. For example, inflicting the freeze status effect on an enemy and then targeting it with a physical attack will shatter it, scoring you a technical hit. Wind skills fan the flame of a target that is burning, scoring a technical hit. Nuclear and Psi elements always score technical hits on enemies inflicted with physical and mental status ailments respectively. Figuring out which combinations of skills cause technical hits will allow you to knock down even enemies with elemental resistances.

Fuse Personas to Learn Weaknesses

It might seem like a gamble to randomly use skills on enemies hoping to find their weakness, but there is another way. Head to the Velvet Room and attempt to fuse Personas to create the enemy you are going to face. Putting a Persona in your lineup reveals all of that Persona’s strengths and weaknesses. Now you’ll know exactly what skills to use when you face it as an enemy.

Download Free Item Packs

Atlus has made several “item packs” available to players via DLC. These item packs are completely free and give you valuable restorative items, including a Soma which will completely restore your party. Download these packs before starting your game. The Soma alone will save you an entire night while trying to complete the first dungeon.

Play Multiple Times for 100% Completion

Finally, think very hard if you want to go for a 100% run. Doing so requires you to adhere to a strict schedule and participate in rampant save-scumming. Half the fun of Persona 5 is tackling your daily life however you like. It gives the game a sort of “open world” feel even though the core plot is still mostly linear. Following the 100% schedule completely removes this feeling of freedom and can otherwise ruin an incredible RPG. Personally, I suggest playing through normally once and then attempting a 100% run on a New Game + where your inherited skills will make dungeon diving much easier. However, if you still want to brave the 100% route on your first go, you can find a full day by day schedule here.

Need more help? Check out our answers to your frequently asked Persona 5 questions.