Mechanics

Persona 5 Strikers fights in real time, and the resource our pages keep counting is SP. Four of our five boss pages end their preparation list the same way, with a stock of both HP and SP recovery items, and our beginner's guide warns that the AI will not manage healing for you. So the four systems we cover here are easiest to read as a single ledger. Magic skills are the debit column, priced from 6 to 38 SP a cast. Persona fusions are where you buy a better rate, whether by paying in HP instead, halving the cost, or earning SP back while getting hit. Cooking is the credit column, and the Lock Keepers are the fight the whole balance is being saved for, because one stands between you and every Monarch.

The debit column: what a spell costs

Our magic skills page lists 64 spells with an effect, an SP price and, for 23 of them, a location, which for 17 is a Strong Shadow in a named Jail and for the other six is just the Jail. The prices sort into four bands with almost no overlap. Single-target and small-radius starters such as Agi, Bufu, Zio and Psi sit at 8 SP, with Garu the cheapest thing in the game at 6; the medium tier of Agilao, Bufula and their wide-area versions runs 14 to 16; the heavy tier of Agidyne, Bufudyne and Maragidyne runs 24 to 26, with Atomic Flare the lone heavy spell priced at 36; and the six top-tier spells, Inferno, Thunder Reign, Panta Rhei, Vacuum Wave, Cosmic Flare and Megidolaon, cost 34 to 38. Almighty is the exception to the cheap-start rule: apart from Life Drain, which siphons HP for 10 SP, its damage spells open with Megido at 14 and close with Megidolaon at 36. The location column is itself a rough ladder: Shibuya's Strong Shadows hand out the 6 to 8 SP starters, Sendai mostly the medium tier with the light Makouha thrown in, Okinawa the wide medium spells, Osaka the first heavy ones alongside the instant-kill Mamudoon, the Abyss the wide heavy ones plus Kougaon, and the Tree of Life and Wisdom the wide heavy Bless and Curse spells, Makougaon and Maeigaon, plus Megidola.

Two effects on that page matter more than their damage numbers. Every Psy spell scales with the number of mental ailments already on the target, and every Nuclear spell hits harder if the target is Burned, Shocked or Frozen. That is the mechanical reason our boss pages keep pairing an ailment with a follow-up, and it is why Queen's Johanna and Noir's Milady show up in so many recommended parties.

Buying a better rate: fusions

The fusion page covers eleven Personas, one per damage type from Yoshitsune for physical through Kali for Psy, and read as a ledger they split into three kinds of saving. The first is paying in health instead: Yoshitsune's Myriad Slashes, Brave Blade and Hassou Tobi cost 24, 20 and 30 percent HP, Seth's One-shot Kill and Riot Gun cost 30 and 40 percent, and Kali's Vorpal Blade costs 18 percent, all of which leave your SP untouched for the next heavy spell. The second is cutting the price: Alice learns Spell Master at level 90, which halves the SP of every magic skill, and much of her kit is instant kills at 14 to 20 SP, a fraction of the 36 SP her own Megidolaon costs. The third is earning it back. Black Frost's Soul Stealer siphons SP from enemies suffering an ailment, and Lucifer's Lamentation, learned at level 99, restores SP while he is taking damage.

Lucifer is also the page's most expensive line in both directions: Blazing Hell at 54 SP and Morning Star at 52 are the two priciest attacks on any of our pages, with only Metatron's Salvation, an 84 SP recovery skill, costing more, and fusing him consumes Black Frost, Mara, Metatron, Alice and Yoshitsune, meaning five of the other ten recommended fusions are ingredients for the eleventh. Several of the materials arrive through requests. Strong Shadow hunts for Seth, Cerberus, King Frost, Black Frost, Siegfried, Mara and Metatron each pay a fusion item on the first clear, and those hunts are listed with their repeat payouts on our requests and Jails guide. Multipliers are consistent across the page: Charge is always 1.5x on the next physical attack and Concentrate is 2.5x on the next magic attack, though Lucifer's copy of Concentrate is listed at 15 SP where every other copy costs 26.

The credit column: cooking

Joker starts the game knowing two recipes, and they set the exchange rate for everything else. Leblanc Coffee needs only coffee beans and restores 20 SP to one ally; Leblanc Curry needs pork, onion and rice and restores 20 SP to everyone. Against the price list above, one Curry funds a medium spell for each party member, or two light ones, which is why our boss pages treat a cooked stock as part of the fight rather than a luxury. The recipes page then lists seventeen more, gathered four ways: friends hand some over on a set day in a set place, story progress unlocks Kyoto Curry by August 14, requests pay out Obanzai, Churrasco, Master Curry and Master Coffee, and city shops sell the rest, with Sapporo's Miso Ramen at 850 yen, its Seafood Bowl at 1,000 and Sendai's Salmon Bowl at 900 as the priced examples. Only six recipes on the page carry an effect line. Jingisukan heals 40 HP to the party, Miso Ramen 20 HP with a critical and agility boost, Seafood Bowl 20 SP with a defence boost, and Salmon Bowl 20 HP, alongside the two Leblanc staples. The ingredients themselves come from Sophia's shop and real-world stores, and several repeatable requests pay in them, which is the cheapest way to keep the kitchen running.

What the balance is for: Lock Keepers

A Lock Keeper is the Shadow guarding the Trauma Room of a Jail, the last thing protecting a Monarch from remembering its own past, and there is one in Shibuya, Sendai, Sapporo, Okinawa and Osaka. They matter to the ledger because they are the fight immediately before the fight you were saving for, and because the lock keepers page reveals something none of the individual entries say out loud: all five are weak to both Bless and Curse. Sophia's Bless and Joker's Arsene Curse therefore work on every one of them, with the extra elements varying by keeper. The level ladder is steep, from 10 for the Axe Lock Keeper to 60 for the Bazooka Lock Keeper, and the rewards climb with it.

The tactics are shared. Teleporting sneak attacks come from the Axe and Sword keepers, the Shield keeper hides behind a wall of shields that only elemental hits strip away, and the Sword keeper can inflict Dizzy and Rage, so the page's advice to carry healing items is really advice to walk in with the credit column full. Each one also hands over a trophy on the way to its Monarch, and the fights those Monarchs turn into are sorted by their own weaknesses in our bosses guide. For where these systems sit in the game as a whole, start from our Persona 5 Strikers guide.