Companions

Every Investigation Team Social Link ends on the same day, 27 November, but they open on wildly different ones, from 16 April to 21 October. So the party members here are ordered by the date their bond becomes available, because the scarce resource in this game is not power, it is afternoons.

That framing changes what counts as urgent. A bond that opens in April has more than seven months of calendar behind it and is in no danger. A bond that opens on 21 October has about five weeks, is gated behind two maxed social stats, and is the one most people finish a playthrough without completing. This is a scheduling guide rather than a tier list, and nothing below is ranked by combat usefulness.

The bond calendar at a glance

Read the last column before you plan anything. Four of these seven simply do not happen on a rainy day, and rain in Inaba is frequent enough that a week of it can quietly cost you two ranks.

April: the two that open first

Yosuke Hanamura, Magician, 4/16

The first Social Link in the game and the only one that needs nothing from you to begin. It starts on its own on 16 April, the day Yosuke's Persona awakens as Jiraiya, and from then on he is available on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

Two things about his link are worth doing deliberately. Keep a Persona of the Magician arcana equipped when you meet him and every conversation pays more, with Jack Frost the easiest one to have on hand. And on 6/22 there is a one-off conversation where recommending ganmodoki pays a bonus point, doubled if you are holding a Magician Persona at the time. Our Yosuke social link guide has the full dialogue tables with point values for both cases.

Chie Satonaka, Chariot, 4/18

Two days later, and again automatic. Chie is on the school roof on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Saturdays she is at the south end of the shopping district, in front of Daidara. She is the one worth starting with if you intend to max a link early, because her availability is generous and her dialogue is forgiving.

What is not forgiving is her stat requirement, and it is the reason people stall on her: she needs Courage Rank 3 before you can meet her at rank 2, and Courage Rank 4 before you can hang out at rank 7. Both of those are early enough that a player who has ignored Courage entirely will be blocked in May. Our Chie guide covers her dialogue choices.

May and June: the middle of the calendar

Yukiko Amagi opens automatically on 17 May and is the most available person on this list: every weekday except Friday, in classroom 1F, plus the bookstore at weekends. Rain still stops her.

Kanji Tatsumi is the first one that does not start itself. After 9 June, go to the second floor of the Learning Building and find the female student near the middle staircase, ask her about Kanji threatening people, then find Kanji himself downstairs in the Practice Building and pick the first option, "Yes I do". If you have not done that, his link does not exist no matter how far into the story you are.

Teddie opens on 24 June and is the exception to this entire page. His link ranks up automatically as the story progresses, so he never competes with anyone else for an afternoon. If you are budgeting time, budget nothing for him.

July and October: the tight windows

Rise Kujikawa opens automatically on 26 July, and she is where availability starts to hurt. Friday in classroom 1F, weekends in the south shopping district, and nothing at all in the rain. That is effectively three slots a week, in a stretch of the calendar where several other bonds are also live.

Naoto Shirogane is the squeeze, and the arithmetic is the point. Her link cannot begin before 21 October, and every Investigation Team link closes on 27 November. That is roughly five weeks. Worse, she is gated twice: you need maxed Knowledge to pick the first option with the man in black near Aiya, and then maxed Courage to actually start the link when you talk to her back at school.

So the practical consequence is that Naoto is decided in the summer, not in October. If you have not been banking Knowledge and Courage all year, she is unreachable by the time she becomes available, and no amount of free afternoons in November will fix it.

The stat gates that stall a bond

This is the failure people do not see coming: you turn up on the right day, in the right place, and the bond will not advance because a number in a menu is too low.

Those are the gates our pages actually state. We are not going to invent thresholds for Yukiko, Kanji or Rise, so treat their absence as unrecorded rather than as confirmation that they are ungated. Our social stats guide covers how to raise each one, and the Understanding, Expression and Diligence pages go deeper on the individual stats.

What each rank actually buys you in a fight

Investigation Team bonds pay out in combat abilities on a ladder, and Yosuke's is the one we have documented rank by rank. The pattern is what matters, because it tells you when a bond stops being a story and starts changing how you fight.

Rank 5 is the one to aim for if you are triaging. Ailment removal without spending a turn is worth more in a long dungeon run than either of the two damage perks around it, and it arrives at the halfway point rather than at the end.

What maxing a bond pays

The Fool row is worth noticing: it is the Investigation Team as a group, it activates before Yukiko's Castle, and it cannot be missed. Our fusion guide covers what to do with these unlocks, and Rise's payoff is also felt in the dungeons themselves through her Weakness Scan.

The bonds that are not party members

Two Social Links get filed with the team by mistake because they matter as much and behave differently. Margaret takes the Empress arcana, is a Velvet Room bond available from 19 May, needs Knowledge Level 3 first, and ranks up by completing her fusion requests rather than by spending afternoons with her. Marie holds the Aeon arcana from 18 April, is also a Velvet Room link, and is known to occasionally not trigger, in which case leaving and re-entering the room usually fixes it.

Neither is a party member, but Marie in particular is not optional if you care about the ending, which our story guide explains. The Fool and Judgement links also progress on story alone. Everything else, including the town's non-combat links, is covered in our social links overview and in detail on the social links guide.

How to spend a single playthrough

Bank Courage and Knowledge from April. That single habit decides whether Chie stalls in May and whether Naoto is even possible in October, and both of those are irreversible by the time you notice.

Spend April and May on Yosuke and Chie, since they are the only two live bonds and both are blocked by rain, so an unusable day costs you nothing. Ignore Teddie completely, because the story ranks him for you. Treat Kanji as a task rather than a bond: go and trigger him after 9 June or he will never appear.

From late July, when Rise joins a crowded calendar, start protecting your non-rainy Fridays and weekends. And from 21 October, treat Naoto as the priority over everyone else, because every other Investigation Team link has had months of runway and she has five weeks.