This guide will cover everything there is to know about Hollow Forest in Persona 4. We will discuss the process of gaining access to the Persona 4 Golden Hollow Forest dungeon.
There are going to be spoilers in this Hollow Forest guide so I’ll only say this once SPOILER ALERT. Other than that we will also take a look at the unique entrances, unique traits, floor maps, enemies and strategies to take out Boss and mini-boss.
Persona 4 Golden Hollow Forest
You will need to push Aeon Social Link with Marie before December ends, to its max i.e. to rank 10 and only then you will get access to this exclusive bonus Hollow Forest dungeon in Persona 4 Golden.
When you wish Happy Birthday to Margret, the Empress Social link after going to Central Shopping District in the Velvet room on 2nd January, you will come to know that Marie is nowhere to be found and Margret will let you know that she will look for her.
You will get an update on Marie from Margret on 11th Feb until the Ski Trip in winter next month. She will call on the mornings of every Wednesday.
When on the ski trip, you and your friends will be stuck in a cabin and the TV will pull you in. It is actually Margret that orchestrated this and she will tell you why.
All of you will decide to come back here and rescue Marie the following day. Now you will go back to the dungeon every day through the Cabin’s TV after school.
The Entrance
This part is pretty simple; you have the option to heal your teammates using an amount of course from the fox present there.
You will also find a blue butterfly save point along with the usual door to the Velvet Room. If you want to add members to your party, this is where you will do it, you will not get the chance again.
Diadra Metalworks and the Shiroku Store will take care of any items you need or want to sell before going into Hollow Forest in P4 Golden.
You can access them by telling Rise that you need to shop and then choosing the TV stack when you’re in the staging Hub. You won’t be taking anything along with you in the dungeon though.
Hollow Forest Dungeon
Hollow Forest is an annoying dungeon that is special in its own way. This part will give you can idea of how it is going to be:
There will be nothing in your inventory for a while when you enter into the dungeon and you will have to fill your inventory up from the battles you win that includes weapons, armor ad any other items. When you go back to the staging area, all of this will come back.
For now on your SP will be halved for every fight, except the first one and you will get a SP recovery Bonus after each fight which will depend on your potential SP. The remaining of the SP will be halved after the recovery is applied.
Stones will help you get SP back, if you have these stones stored, they will significantly increase your SP regaining ability, so it’s best to stock up on elemental “Break” items and SP-restoring items.
The amount of the restored SP will become greater after every successive turn in battle. The enemies are fairly easy to defeat so it won’t be much of a problem.
Every party member can have a weakness which may be exposed by losing all of the equipment while entering the dungeon, so when you find armor from the chest or mini-boss fights, give that specific armor to a member that needs it the most.
You will be able to earn money inside the forest using Gold Hand’s dungeon’s version called Isolated Hand as you won’t have any outside cash in here.
You would not be able to take this money with you outside of the dungeon no matter how much you collect.
Your account will return to its previous state as it was before entering the dungeon. If you want to grind for some experience, this dungeon could be the worst place for it as you would not have enough SP and the enemies don’t give you a lot of experience.
In order to get back to the reentrance your task would be to find Branch items so that you can return and save, heal and other things. You will find then easily here.
You will find this part very annoying because I did as well, it was that when you get to the first, fourth and seventh Floor, you will see that the enemies don’t even have shadows that you can see.
Your SP is already being halved and you don’t have your armor and weapons and every single fight is unexpected and random and then you have no shadows visible.
Enemies
You will find the following enemies in the dungeon:
- Calm Machine
- Clear Sky Musha
- Cursed Woman’s Pot
- Emaciated Garcy
- Execution Sword
- Gauntlet Hand
- Harmonious Giant
- Indignant Machine
- Isolated Hand
- Lawless Fuzz
- Lying Hablerie
- Praying Nyogo
- Praying Papillon
- Reverent Table
- Snowfall Musha
- Spectral Raven
- Stone Panzer
- Stupendous Relic
- Superstitious Okina
- Wheeled Bambino
Along with the following mini-bosses and bosses:
- Gorgeous King
- Heaven’s Giant
- Kusumi-no-Okami
- Marie-San
Defeating all these mini-bosses is pretty easy as each have a weakness and the right strategy can help you take them out easily.
- For Gorgeous King all you have to do is use physical attack as he is resistant to all other elements and even repels light and Dark.
- Heaven’s giant can take care of your physical attacks. Defeating this boss will need the use of your Break items that you worked hard to collect in the preceding floors.
- Marie is a little tricky as she uses Hot Lightning that can send two of your mates to dizzy town for some time. You would need to heal quite a lot when fighting her. Your best strategy would be to use single-target -dyne Skills.
- Kusumi-no-Okami is very easy to defeat if you know that his weakness is your Almighty.
