Update 35
: This entire recording session was fucking cursed. First, the site ate my last update like five times. Then I got halfway through the dungeon and realized I permafucked. Now, I realized that on my re-recording run I forgot to open my screenshot tool.
: It’s Sunday, so the first thing we want to do, as usual, is grip and sip. What happened was that on my first recording run, I went to the dungeon and forgot to buy new equipment… and on the second run, I forgot to grip and sip.
: “You were all using code names, weren’t you?”
: “You’re quite perceptive.”
: “This time’s a hard one… maybe somethin’ like ‘Shoulder Pads’ ?”
: “Why in the world did you focus on that?”
: “I refuse to be called that.”
: “What about ‘Rider’?”
: “Sounds too much like a smuggler. Next.”
: “Fixer?”
: “I’m not a mastermind though. Next. Won’t you give me something better to work with?”
: Funny he says that, because we do get an Empress-arcana as a party member.
: “You got anything, Joker?”
: Unfortunately, I picked “Witch” on the recording where I forgot my screenshot tool. If you do, Yusuke agrees with you.
: “Do you want to be smacked?”
: “Guys, she’s clearly a ‘Queen’.”
: “That’s it!”
: “Queen… it has a nice ring to it. I like it. Let’s go with that. Now then, could you explain to me the strategy for this mission?”
: God dammit now she’s trying to be Donte from the shitty Ninja Theory “Devil May Cry” game.
: “…Strategy?”
: Makoto reminds me of this one lady at work who spearheaded a weekly “training program”. She sends out an email every Monday, including holidays, with a link to an online training course.
: Every week, without fail, the training course consists of a button that reads “PRESS THIS BUTTON FOR COURSE CREDIT” and nothing else.
: “Uhh… we pretty much look around the area, I provide navigation when needed, and then…”
: “If we run into Shadows, we beat the shit outta 'em!”
: “Very well then. I feel like I’ll be useful for sure. It seems my role is to be the brain of this team. I’ll analyze Mona’s information and give out orders. Any objections?”
: Joker gives Makoto a thumbs-down because of his highly complex relationship with Makoto’s brilliant military mind. Later, he has a breakdown because Makoto won’t authorize use of the Varia Suit to get through a lava pit.
: “N-None, Queen!”
: “I bet Skull’s definitely the type that’ll be under a girl’s thumb.”
: “Mona, will you begin navigating us?”
: “Y-Yes, Queen!”
: “Him too, it seems.”
: “Apparently we are acknowledged as customers who can be extorted.”
: “…That’s fine. We can take advantage of his negligence.”
: “Though I will say, it’s a little scary every time.”
: We actually have to examine the front door to proceed, even though we can clearly see it in the last shot.
: “It seems as though they didn’t want to leave that gaping hole…”
: “But… we can’t get in now…”
: “Sorry… I… think I might have taken it a little too far…”
: “C’mon, it’s not a big deal. Plus it was super cool, Queen!”
: “Th-thanks…”
: “The details are no longer important. Let us search for a new infiltration point, Joker.”
: “Wait. I can feel a draft coming from underneath the statue… doesn’t this seem strange to you, Joker?”
: “Why don’t we check it out?”
: “Let’s head inside… after we’re adequately prepared, of course.”
: The new entrance drops us off just to the right of the reception area, where we were last time.
: There’s a tutorial here for Showtime Attacks, which I already covered in the last update. Let’s just move on.
: The first area is now full of enemies, and they’re kind of annoying to sneak up on due to the long corridors of benches.
: In the original recording run, where I permafucked, we got a fight with the new Treasure Demon as our first encounter.
: The new Treasure Demon is weak to Psychic damage, so I just take advantage of that.
: The Queen’s Necklace was an actual piece of jewelry that was commissioned by Louis XV of France for a lover, but wasn’t finished before he died of smallpox.
: Ultimately, it got used by a con woman who convinced a high-ranking cardinal to buy it in the name of Marie Antoinette, and was one of the contributing factors to Marie Antoinette’s execution even though she never had anything to do with it.
: I say it was an actual piece of jewelry because what happened is that the con woman hired a lookalike to pretend to be Marie Antoinette in order to get the necklace from the cardinal, and then took it apart and sold the diamonds it was made of on the black market, so the necklace no longer exists.
: It was also the subject of an Arsene Lupin story.
: In the second fight, we run into a Nekomata and have Akechi’s ability proc. Thankfully, we have Ame no Uzume with Mazio and a passive that cuts the cost of Mazio from ten SP to five.
Returning Persona: Nekomata
Origin: Japan
First Appearance: Megami Tensei I (NES)
Yokai born from extraordinarily long-lived cats with various supernatural abilities. Sometimes portrayed with a split tail.
: Nekomata is basically just here to be fusion fuel, and not even particularly good fusion fuel at that. The one thing I find really amusing is that one of the criteria in mythology for a cat becoming a nekomata is “reaching a certain size” in which case I absolutely want to see a Garfield nekomata.
: We also get a Thieves Den thing for negotiations.
: With that room cleared, we can go down the hallway to unexplored territory. Just in case you’re wondering, you can’t go back into the room behind the counter - it’s blocked off.
: “Hm, but that elevator is lacking a control panel.”
: “They probably control it from a security room. It’s a simple, but effective measure of screening.”
: “That must mean they really don’t want anyone going down there…”
: High Pixie here is weak to both Nuclear and Gun. In the base game, there was a good reason to use Makoto here due to the whole “guns have limited ammo” bit. Here though? Not so much.
: I do grab one, but only out of habit. They’re Fool arcana and don’t really have any great skills… nor are they really a mythological figure so much as they were a palette-swap in the older games that just kind of persisted.
: I swear there’s like a million random encounters in this area. Anyway, we have an Orobas surrender to us.
New Persona: Orobas
Origin: Ars Goetia
First Appearance: Megami Tensei II (Kyuuyaku ver. only)
Prince of Hell who gives conjurers perfect information about past, present, or future. Apparently incapable of lying. Can also bestow honors and protect from temptation by demons.
: Orobas is another kind of useless fusion fuel Persona. I suppose if you fused him and got Marakunda that might be worth it, but I’d rather have the single-target version, given that 24 SP is a very steep cost.
: Before we move on, there’s actually a treasure chest by the reception area with a Portable Battery in it, which gives you a higher chance of inflicting Shock. It’s garbage.
: The elevator is on our right, and as you can see on the map there’s a bunch of stuff on the left we haven’t explored.
: The left side just has a small office area with a couple treasure items, and this door, which leads to a chest.
: We need to go up those stairs.
: There’s a dog shadow here that is going to allow me to show off the greatest weapon in the John Persona arsenal.
: See how the text there is red? That’s Yoshida’s ability, which gets you a significantly larger amount of money when it activates.
: By the way, dog shadows will always be an Orthrus, which are a pain in the ass to negotiate with.
: We may have already gotten a full Shiki-Ouji’s worth of money from a random encounter… but that’s not enough. To take things over the top, we will need to employ the greatest weapon in the John Persona arsenal.
: Yoshida gives you a second ability that allows you to ask for money a second time… or actually, as many times as you want. What happens is that the demon either gives you more money (which will always be identical to the first amount they gave you) or they get pissed off and start fighting again, summoning more demons if they can.
: That’s three times.
: On the fourth, he gets angry… only Ann uses her ability to simply cancel his attack.
: He then summons a second High Pixie, which I kill before holding him up again. I initially thought that you got more money depending on how many enemies were on the field, but that’s not the case: I’ve gotten drops of 7,000 yen from a single enemy and half that from a big group.
: You’re starting to get the idea. Now, you might ask “If the demon summons other demons when you fail to get more money, can you do this in an endless loop since you now have regenerating SP?” and the answer is yes, yes you can.
: Unfortunately, this isn’t the best fight to do this in because of how weak the High Pixies are. If you leave them alive for a bit they’ll eventually heal the Orthrus, but the Orthrus has a couple of very high-damage attacks (including one that can potentially instakill) and I didn’t want to game over.
: Yes. Money will never be a problem again… at least, not until we finish Caroline and Justine’s confidant. Then it will be a problem.
: There’s a room off to the side here, but it’s locked. Instead…
: We want to climb up here.
: We get a mini-boss fight against four Orobas. The reason they’re not named is because this footage is from my third recording where I didn’t get any Personas and just ran through.
: Unfortunately, Yusuke only hits three of them, so Joker has to follow up with a regular Bufu.
: “This appears to be some kind of monitoring room. I hope we can find clues in here…”
: “I’d bet that’s where the Treasure is…”
: “Unless we can obtain another map, we won’t know for certain…”
: “It would probably make sense to head there first…”
: “Shall we go on that elevator we found earlier then?”
: “That should be our last resort. First, let’s see if there is anywhere to use this keycard.”
: Personally, I preferred Melty Donut Dough Again Frosting Code, the updated 2010 re-release.
: Naturally, we need the keycard to leave the room.
: To the left is a giant metal gate we can open from this side.
: It leads back to the start of the palace. The reason there’s so many shortcuts is because Kaneshiro’s palace only has something like four save rooms.
: Instead, let’s go back to that locked door we passed by.
: “Yeah, it has to be the one they’re controlling externally. So this is right above it…”
: “So what, this is the control room or something? What’s the point of comin’ here?”
: “Perceptive as usual, Joker. We should be able to ride on top of the elevator.”
: “I see. We sneak atop it, then wait for it to move on its own.”
: “It does sound like that plan will take us further down.”
: The way they set this up is kinda dumb, because instead of going with the “service hatch on top of the elevator” they go with, uh…
: A magic vent in the side of the wall that has no reason to be there and lines up perfectly with the top of the elevator. Makes sense.
: Instead, we come out atop a replica of the cathedral rafters from Dark Souls 1. There’s nothing special to them - you just jump down to the floor below.
: “Is that Kaneshiro…!?”
: “It looks like some rats have infested this place! Under no circumstances let them further down! Strengthen security as much as you can! Understood?”
: “It seems painfully obvious where the Treasure is now…”
: “But the map from earlier doesn’t show that much… I wonder if there’s another one somewhere.”
: “In any case, heading down should be the best move. Let’s keep our eyes out for a map while we explore!”
: There’s a save room here, which makes sense from a gameplay perspective but not really from a plot one. Unlike the other palaces we’ve been to, where they used the excuse of “it’s places where the palace owner doesn’t have total control”, Kaneshiro’s palace isn’t based on a real building the way Kaneshiro’s and Madarame’s were.
: Let’s just go down the other hallway.
: Cameras add 10% to the security level if they spot you. I believe they’ll also alert any shadows who are close enough.
: “Joker, can’t you use your observation skills to see the camera’s range? Make sure it doesn’t catch sight of us!”
: Wait, what’s that blue glowing thing?
: “The word ‘camera’ is written on it.”
: “Oh, this must be for the surveillance cameras! Let’s destroy it, Joker!”
: Most of the cameras in the palace can be turned off, and it’s usually mandatory to do so. I think you can skip one of the power boxes if you really want to, but it’s on the way to an objective anyway.
: At the end of the camera hallway, there’s a door. Let’s just open it.
: This is a new thing for Royal, where they outright tell you that Oni has no weaknesses and must be hit with a Technical to be knocked down.
: This is a nice addition actually, given that I got through the entire base game without even knowing technicals existed - I assumed that Oni was like the demons in the mainline SMT games who are from demon families that cannot be negotiated with and must be fused to use.
: So anyway, I went to the other LP to check if this was in the base game and I just somehow forgot about it, but it’s not. What I found is that the guy who did the LP of the base game was… not very good at it and I think that’s part of the reason he hates this game so much.
: Seriously, he grinded to level 26 (we’re at like, 23-24 at this point) before even going through the first room. Now, I will admit that the base game was slightly harder than Royal is… but the thing is, the demons in Kaneshiro’s Palace were barely touched. The only difference is that they added a single new demon (replacing a level 12 Angel) and changed Orobas’s weakness from Bless to Ice so that Yusuke wasn’t a liability here.
: Kaneshiro’s Palace is a step up difficulty-wise. The enemies hit hard and some of them can oneshot Joker or use extra press turns from hitting the party members to kill him before he can move. In fact, I game overed at two different points in this palace, but one of them was absolutely my fault.
: Oni has a skill called Rampage that does multiple physical hits at random, and can do a lot of damage to one person if you get bad RNG.
: There’s a staircase here, but it’s blocked off by a pair of security cameras that will trigger a barrier behind them if they’re set off. You can see the barrier in the background - it looks just like the one in Madarame’s palace.
: There’s another way we can go, and on that route we meet Black Ooze, another kind of generic demon that doesn’t really have a mythological background. Black Ooze was added to this dungeon’s enemy list in Royal.
: We also have Akechi’s ability kick in to let us know it’s weak to Electricity. Let me just post their stat thing, since I grabbed one as a Persona and promptly tossed it for something better.
: Black Ooze is here solely as a means to counter Oni, if for some reason you don’t have a Persona capable of using status effects and decided to remove all the status skills on your party members.
: If we go out the other exit from the room with the stairs, there’s a hallway with more security cameras in it. This one you can honestly bypass fairly easily - there’s a room off to the left of where I am here that shuts them off.
: The guard you could see in the last screenshot gives us our first Disaster Shadow in the form of Nekomata. High Pixie can also be a Disaster Shadow.
: It was here (on my first run) that I discovered how Disaster Shadows are actually meant to work. What happens is that they still drop an item even if you kill them in a way that does not give them a chance to explode - such as an All-Out that ends the fight.
: The idea is that if you knock all the enemies down and get an All-Out, the Disaster Shadow will explode on any enemies remaining for damage roughly equivalent to what the All-Out did to it, which is usually going to be a guaranteed kill.
: The Disaster Shadows here mostly drop Black items.
: The room at the end of the hall here has a power box that shuts off the staircase cameras, allowing us to proceed.
: There’s also a small side room near the switch that has a Black Rock in it. I remember having way more of these by the end of my base game run than I could ever possibly use.
: I also stop by the other camera switch on the way back. Not really much of a reason to at this point, but I figured I’d show it just in case.
: Here’s the top of the stairs from earlier.
: “According to the map, we should be able to head down from here…”
: “Hm? Everyone, quiet down! I hear someone talking!”
: “Hmm? Keys? What’re those Shadows talkin’ about?”
: “I wasn’t able to pick up everything they said. If only we could get closer…”
: “There are Shadows in there. It’s probably too dangerous to get any closer right now…”
: “I’m curious about the conversation they were having, but there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. For now, let’s just focus on finding a way down.”
: There’s also a locked chest near the switch we just broke.
: It’s got a good mace for Ryuji, but we’re not using him.
: This is down below where the cameras are.
: “According to the map, there’s a great deal more beyond here…”
: “Then this is not a vault, but a partition of sorts. The terminals there must be how you open it.”
: “B-But both of them have keyholes.”
: “Meaning we’ll need two keys to get beyond this area…”
: “For real? Ugh… it’s such a pain in the ass how secure this place is.”
: “It would seem that’s correct. This may lead further down, just as Kaneshiro had mentioned.”
: “Hey, perhaps the key that those Shadows were talking about goes here.”
: “Hmm, that sounds likely to me… all right! Let’s go back to that room!”
: “Hold up - don’t forget about them security cameras.”
: “Good point. They’re a pain, but we should deactivate the security cameras first.”
: We’re going to head right first, because…
: There’s a red shadow up here, so let’s take care of that first. From what I’ve noticed, red shadows are a lot less common than they were in Kamoshida or Madarame’s palaces.
: The red shadows are Take-Minakata, who is far less useful than Shiki-Ouji. He is the only enemy in this dungeon who truly got nerfed in Royal: in the base game, he was level 29 and had higher stats.
: I’m not entirely sure why they nerfed him - from what I remember, there weren’t all that many of him even in the base game’s version of Kaneshiro’s Palace.
: What’s also weird is that at level 29, Take-Minakata was five levels higher than the second-highest level enemy in the dungeon. Shiki-Ouji is six levels higher than the second-highest enemy in Madarame’s palace.
: Normally, he’s weak only to Psychic, but Ann managed to burn him. This is probably why you want Makoto if you have Ann, because burn opens the enemy up to both Nuclear and Wind.
: The reason I’m not doing as much damage is because this was my third recording and I didn’t bother to stop for new Personas. We’ll switch back to the save I used for my second (lost) recording soon.
: Just like Shiki-Ouji, Take-Minakata is a “tough guy” who won’t negotiate unless he is critically low on HP… not that there’s much of a point to doing that. Doing the Greatest Weapon in the John Persona Arsenal technique on groups of regular enemies is a much more efficient way to farm money.
: Take-Minakata does not fuck around. If he gets a lucky shock off, he can and will follow up with a technical on his next turn. This didn’t happen on my canon recording and I’ll explain why once we pass the vault door.
: Okay so, uh… does that mean the armor is sooty, or does it mean that only sooty men can wear it? Or was it made by sooty men and that’s why it’s called that? I have questions.
: There’s a locked door here you can open to make a shortcut back to the main room, useful in case you want to come back and pick up a Take-Minakata later. We probably will at some point - I’m doing that thing where I record like 3/4 of the dungeon and do the writing and then go back and finish it again.
: Oh, right. Kaneshiro doesn’t have an unused Will Seed cutscene the way Kamoshida and Madarame did. As far as I know, Atlus cut the idea after recording those two.
: I also didn’t know this, but Kaneshiro’s original Japanese voiceactor died right after the base game released. His name was Kazunari Tanaka and he died of an unspecified illness in October 2016. Atlus completely replaced all of his voice lines in Royal.
: This was one of two voiceactor deaths related to this game. Miyu Matsuki, who voices the fortune teller we met in Shinjuku, died in October 2015 of lymphoma. Her voicelines were also replaced in Royal.
: Honestly, I think Persona as a franchise has some horrible death curse associated with it.
: Before we leave, there’s a very sneaky chest up on a… I’m not even sure what you’d call it, it’s just kind of this platform that exists for no apparent reason.
: You can get to it by jumping up here and then jumping across and going through the tiny vent that also seems to serve no identifiable purpose.
: Having a source of psychic damage for knockdowns is nice, even if we only have three of them. They’re a good backup in case Joker gets stunned or silenced.
: The other side leads up some stairs to a hallway with a dog and some cameras.
: There’s another optional power room at the end.
: In addition to turning off the cameras in the hall we just ran through, it also turns off the cameras on the other side of the wall.
: There’s a card reader we can use to open a shortcut back to where the save room is. This is helpful for farming once you’ve cleared the dungeon out.
: The next three rooms are just kind of there to be there. You go into the first one, jump through a vent in the wall to the next one, and go down to the bottom.
: Like the other side, there’s a shortcut back to the main room.
: During the fight with the shadow in here, I got Maruki’s “Flow” ability to activate. This raises Joker’s attack by an insane amount - I was doing 300+ damage with single spells.
: We can open this door to go back to the main area.
: “Wait… you think they’re talkin’ about those two keys!?”
: “Hm, just as expected… those are highly likely to be what opens the partition.”
: “What’re we gonna do then? Beat 'em up and take the keys?”
: “Really, Skull? Just look at 'em. They’re not your average Shadows. Anyone in charge of such important keys must be extremely strong.”
: This is where the rumor thing from P2 should have made a comeback, and you could argue that they’re “really strong” or “probably not that strong” and the fight would change based on your choice.
: “And there’s two of them; dealing with both of them would be tough. Plus, they could go and sound the alarm…”
: Funny she says that, because we’ll actually wind up fighting both of those shadows (plus a third one) at the same time as a miniboss in the next area.
: “They don’t really look like they’re goin’ anywhere, though…”
: “…Then why don’t we split them up and beat them individually?”
: “And how will we do that?”
: By using the dumbest fucking idea that shouldn’t work.
: “Remember that monitoring room upstairs - the room we got the map in? There was some communication equipment there as well. We can use that to lure one away.”
: I didn’t want to pick the second one because on the canon run, I had two Personas that absolutely fucking devastated them.
: “I agree. It sounds a lot safer than fighting them both at the same time!”
: “Okay, let’s leave this part to our resident intellectual!”
: I don’t know why no one has suggested just, I dunno, shooting them through the door. Especially given that the door has holes big enough to fit a gun through.
: “Thanks! So, first we need to head to the monitoring room!”
: The game then offers to simply warp us right to the communications room. We’ve already picked up everything, so there’s no reason not to do it (especially given that it’ll warp us back here afterward).
: After playing SMT 1 I’m surprised they didn’t make you walk back to the communications room only every other floor tile is now a damage floor.
: Why the hell would this work? Why would they not just send both guys just to be sure?
: Wait a second… is this Loss?
: Meet Fuu-Ki. He’ll show up as a normal enemy later in the dungeon. We will definitely want him because he’s a Star arcana Persona, but also because his moveset is… surprisingly good.
: He hits pretty hard, but that’s only because I was too lazy to look up the weakness chart. He’s very weak to lightning.
: “Oooh, he had a key!”
: “Guess that went pretty well, huh?”
: “That means there should only be one Shadow in the security room! Let’s snatch the other key from it while we can!”
: The game offers to warp us right back there.
: Sui-Ki promptly gets his ass handed to him, even on this run.
: “Perfect, we’ve now obtained both keys!”
: “Oh, just one moment! Doesn’t this map have a little more information than our own?”
: “Maybe it can tell us what the bank is like further down.”
: “This map seems to indicate that the area beyond the partition is rather large as well…”
: We’re about halfway through the dungeon right now. The vault door is kind of a natural stopping point if you’re not going for 100%… but we are.
: “I’m sure security will keep getting more intense from here onward too. We need to be careful.”
: “On three! One, two…!”
: Something tells me that had Final Fantasy 7 Remake come out before this game, this would be a minigame.
: “This took some time, but we managed to force it open.”
: You would think this would be a confidant point thing, but it’s not.
: “Yes, I agree. The cooperation of our whole team is what helped us through this particular ordeal.”
: “So he took all of this from the weak…”
: “…He’s going to pay for this.”
: We’re in another two-staircase situation, but the one on the right is totally pointless, as indicated by the door being white instead of yellow. You can’t even unlock it - on my lost recording, I got on the other side.
: “Hm!? Wait, Joker! Hide!”
: Basically, you can just run right through these cameras without giving a single fuck provided that your security level is low enough since there’s no way to turn them off.
: “It might be a surveillance system that switches between multiple cameras for efficient coverage…”
: “That just means we gotta pass by when it’s not recordin’, yeah?”
: “That should work… but there are guards to watch out for too. We should proceed with caution!”
: For the most part, you can just jump between cover to avoid the cameras.
: The second half of the dungeon has new enemies, and one of those is Leanan Sidhe here. On my second run (which we’ll be catching up to in a bit) I fused one of these as soon as I got a Queen’s Necklace. Since we’re here, let’s talk a little about the Personas I fused on the canon run.
New Persona: Leanan Sidhe
Origin: Ireland
First Appearance: Soul Hackers
Irish fairies who seek out human lovers and give them inspiration, usually resulting in madness and/or death for the artist.
: By herself, Leanan Sidhe is pretty good: she’s got Psio and Marin Karin is actually pretty okay… though as far as I know it can fuck with the Greatest Weapon in the John Persona Arsenal because brainwashed enemies don’t trigger Yoshida’s abilities.
: Man, a Persona game where Marin Karin is actually useful. Never thought I’d see the day.
: The real reason I wanted Leanan Sidhe, though, is because we can fuse her with the Kodama we’ve had sitting around in the party (which, strangely enough, none of the fusion calculators list as a valid fusion but I swear I did it) to get Feng Huang.
New Persona: Feng Huang
Origin: China
First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I
Mythological king of birds in Chinese mythology. Originally divided into a male (Feng) and female (Huang) gender, but now exists as a feminine counterpart to the Chinese dragon. Often confused with both Suzaku and the Phoenix, both of which are distinct mythological figures. Persona 4, Persona 5 and Royal incorrectly translate this Persona’s name as “Phoenix”.
: The reason that people can tell the translation is off, by the way, is that Joker will shout “Ho-oh!” when he summons it if you’re using the Japanese voices. “Ho-oh” is the Japanese name for Feng Huang… though you’ve probably heard that name if you’ve ever played Pokemon Gold or Silver. The encyclopedia entry for it in P5 and Royal is also a dead giveaway.
: To the best of my knowledge, Feng Huang is the only mythological figure to be both a Persona and a Pokemon under the same name.
: Anyway, Feng Huang fucking RULES. It starts with Atomic Bloodline, reducing the cost of Freila to 4 SP… in addition to learning Nuke Boost for even more Nuclear damage. In the base game, you could trade him in for a Nuke Boost card, but unfortunately that was removed in Royal.
: Oh, and of course we also need it because it’s the first available Faith Persona and we don’t want to permafuck.
: There’s a door we could go through, but also a vent.
: To get the Will Seed, we want to face away from where the Will Seed room is.
: This would’ve been way cooler if they had Joker just kick his way through the doors from the grappling hook.
: There’s another route you can use to find a second grapple point.
: Just like the other “Black” items, the Black Kogatana isn’t a weapon by itself, but a trade-in item for returning Personas.
: Oni are now a regular enemy, and here’s where I want to show why All-Outing a Disaster Shadow is the best way to deal with them.
: We get an All-Out, which kills both High Pixies easily but doesn’t kill the Oni.
: That does though.
: You might notice that there’s red areas behind us on the map. This is because going through the vents effectively bypasses a couple of hallways. There’s nothing really in those, so they’re safe to skip.
: There’s another lock at the top.
: Right after this hallway, we’ll be going back to the canon save file.
: Here we have Yaksini, who I didn’t grab even on the canon file because they’re kind of a pain to negotiate with.
: Yaksini is kind of useless anyway. They have one useful skill - “Attack Master” (formerly Auto-Tarukaja) which gives you an attack buff at the start of every battle. Unfortunately, they don’t learn that until level 23 - meaning you’re either grinding with a Persona that only knows physical skills or waiting until October to be able to level one up automatically from fusion… at which point there are other options.
: Yaksini is also very weak to nuclear.
: And now we get Makoto’s finisher screen.
: The elevator leads into this long hallway with nothing interesting in it.
: And now it’s time for us to rejoin the canon file.
New Persona: Nigi Mitama
Origin: Japan
First Appearance: Devil Summoner
Aspect of the human soul that represents calmness and functionality. Opposite of Ara Mitama.
: Nigi Mitama is garbage for a reason I only discovered after I fused it. First, Relief Bloodline only works in combat. If you heal out of combat, you pay the full SP cost.
: I’m also pretty sure that Divine Grace only works in combat. The only reason I fused it is because I had a Queen’s Necklace to get rid of and my Persona roster was full… and because we still need a Councillor Persona for Maruki.
Returning Persona: Orthrus
Origin: Greece
First Appearance: Megami Tensei I
Two-headed dog born from the titans Typhon and Echidna. Brother to Cerberus (but not Pascal the Dog), the Sphinx, and the Chimera. Belonged to the titan Geryon, and was slain by Heracles during his labors.
: Orthrus is basically set up to be an enemy, and his skill set as a Persona is kind of questionable.
: “Y-You bastards… how did you get this far!? What about my security!?”
: “Sorry, that shit was a piece of cake for us!”
: “…Well, I wouldn’t say it was that simple…”
: And now, not even ten minutes after fighting Sui-Ki and Fuu-Ki separately, we fight them plus a Kin-Ki in the same battle.
: Joker knocks down the Fuu-Ki and Baton Passes to Makoto, who wipes out nearly half of Sui-Ki’s HP in one go. Kin-Ki is also very weak to Psychic but I couldn’t change Personas due to the “one change per turn” rule.
: Instead, I have Ann light the Kin-Ki on fire.
: Then Makoto gets bullshitted to death. This is not the first time this happens in this dungeon, nor will it be the last. Giving enemies the ability to technical was kind of a mistake because it potentially allows any enemy to pull a Mot and bullshit their way into six or seven press turns at a time if they get lucky.
: Sui-Ki down, and Kin-Ki at low HP.
: Fuu-Ki gets a faceful of lead, and dies from the Showtime.
: And then Yusuke finishes off the Kin-Ki with a physical attack.
: “Grrr, he took off while we were busy fightin’…”
: This is what the rest of this dungeon is going to be - finding bits of this substitution cypher and using it to open doors.
: “The pages afterward have been torn out as well. Could it be a code of some sort?”
: I should mention that Kaneshiro’s Palace is one of two dungeons that were the source of a lot of complaints about the base game. There were some changes made, which you’ll see coming up.
: “If we’re not gonna figure this shit out now, we should just keep goin’ forward, yeah?”
: “Considering Kaneshiro’s reaction, this elevator should lead us to the innermost part of the bank. If so, it’ll be the most secure area as well. Let’s make sure we’re ready for whatever awaits!”
: I did a little bit of grinding here because Joker was very close to level 26, and I wanted to hit that in order to get a Take-Minakata.
: This is what Harisen Recovery looks like - Ann pulls out a giant paper fan and hits Joker with it.
: I’ll log Oni (and Yaksini) at the end of the update, since they were only in the party long enough for me to add them to the compendium. That’s one thing I re-learned in this dungeon: if you negotiate with a demon but don’t actually add them to your party (ie; because your party was full and you chose to not take them) you don’t get them in the compendium.
: This is what happens if you try and negotiate with a brainwashed enemy. I can only assume Oni is a cultured Elly and/or Yukiko fan.
: The options even change, which is kind of amusing. The only downside is that you can’t ask for more money, and this also won’t work on enemies that are weak to Psychic because being hit by a weakness clears Brainwashed.
: With that, I immediately went back out to the Velvet Room, because there were even more Personas I wanted to fuse. This is a mistake because of something we unlock after we’re done here.
New Persona: Take-Minakata
Origin: Japan
First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I
Son of Okuninushi who lost his arms in a sumo battle with Take-Mikazuchi. Fled to Suwa, where he became the guardian god of Lake Suwa.
: Take-Minakata is pretty good. He covers the total lack of lightning damage I had, plus he eventually learns Elec Boost. The only downside is that he’s Hanged, and we don’t need that until after the next dungeon when we can get better options.
New Persona: Isis
Origin: Egypt
First Appearance: Majin Tensei I (SNES)
Egyptian mother goddess. Sister of (and also wife to) Osiris, mother of Horus. Associated with nature and magic.
: We need Isis for one reason and one reason alone: the fact that she’s a Priestess persona.
: I could’ve just summoned Apsaras, but there wasn’t much of a point when I could have a half-decent Bless-element Persona.
: Just to get it out of the way, there’s one other Persona I fused while still in the dungeon.
New Persona: Clotho
Origin: Greece
First Appearance: Nocturne
One of the three Fates, daughter of Nyx and Erebus. Spins the thread of life and is responsible for determining when things are born.
: Clotho is another Persona I fused for one reason: we need a Fortune Persona to not permafuck and there are no better options. If you’re playing online and have the DLC, you can fuse Ariadne at 30, but she’s only marginally better.
: “Wh-what the hell!? Are these all vaults!? How messed up is this guy!?”
: “We’re supposed to check all of these for the Treasure!?”
: And then Persona 5 was Payday 2.
: “Hold on, this distinct shape… could it be…”
: “What’s the matter?”
: “If my prediction is correct, we won’t need to check every single one of these small vaults.”
: “For real!?”
: “That is, I hope. I’ll explain why once I’ve confirmed my theory.”
: “I seriously hope so too…”
: “PIN…? So is this gonna open one of the vaults?”
: “Hm, there’s something written above the number pad on here. ‘RICH’… this is disgusting. How obsessed can one man be with money?”
: “Wait, there might be something more than that! Do you think this is connected to that journal…?”
: I am getting serious Bioshock Infinite “Wait a minute, that card!” vibes here.
: “See? It has all of the letters in the word ‘RICH’!”
: The strange thing is that they have Yusuke repeat the whole cypher before you get a chance to do it, but they don’t just… show it on the screen while you’re entering it.
: “What the!? The whole vault moved!?”
: “So my deduction may be correct…”
: I wish actual ATMs had the ability to play custom voice clips when you enter your PIN, because I’d set mine to four minutes of silence followed by a voice going “Hey! I’m a magic ATM! Gimme some coffee and I’ll give you money! Just pour it right on me, it’ll work!”
: “That voice… it’s Kaneshiro! Is he watching us!?”
: “That doesn’t seem to be the case. It sounds more like the voice of his heart… I guess all he really thinks about is money, after all.”
: “So he blackmails people outta their savings and that’s still not enough? What a douche…”
: “More importantly, the message in the journal was the PIN code!”
: “Yes, it seems so… but I doubt it will be that easy from this point forward. The rest of the pages were torn out of the journal. Who knows what clues they may hold…”
: “Well, let’s not get pessimistic. We should look around and try to find some other clues. Time to head further in and find those PINs!”
: I love how they only put in one save room for the entire first half of this dungeon, and then there’s two right next to each other.
: For reference, there are zero enemies between the last save room and this one - in fact, I don’t think it’s even possible for the enemies on the stairs to see you so long as you stay on the lowest level.
: One thing I wanted to point out is that unlike the save rooms in the other palaces, the ones in Kaneshiro’s don’t have that effect where they fade into what the room actually looks like, because this building doesn’t actually exist.
: The first part of this area is a loop with a bunch of cameras in it.
: Fortunately, the switch for them is right across from the place we need to go.
: Here, we meet the final new enemy of this dungeon: Rakshasha.
: Fortunately, I gave Isis a regular Kouha (tier 1 bless, single-target) and use that to exploit Rakshasha’s weakness to Bless. They’re also weak to Wind, so if you fuse Fuu-Ki you can use him to wipe these out.
Returning Persona: Rakshasha
Origin: India
First Appearance: Megami Tensei II
Wicked spirits in Hindu and Buddhist mythology that feed on human flesh. Known for possessing humans. Capable of shapeshifting and magic.
: Rakshasha is another trash-sona I promptly returned to get a Regenerate 1 card.
: “We may have found the controls we’ve been looking for. Anything we can do here?”
: “Oh, look! The shutter’s gone! We can keep going now!”
: “Man, he seems really worked up…”
: “He must truly not want us gaining access to this ‘Golden Pig’.”
: “Well, pretty sure that one there’s the one he mentioned. Pretty suspicious, if you ask me.”
: “Hm? There’s a note here… it says ‘P=I’.”
: “…The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
: “Wait, the edge of it is torn. Maybe it came from Kaneshiro’s journal?”
: “Oh, so it’s the continuation of the code we found in there! This should be useful!”
: There’s a second code lock down the hall, but we can’t open it yet. The combination is the same every time, and I already over-wrote my save file so I don’t know if you can just open them if you know the combination.
: There’s a chest in an alcove down the stairs from the code lock (marked by the ! on the minimap) with a Model Gun in it.
: The Model Gun is an item that allows you to return certain Personas for guns, but most of the ones that can do that are at or near the end game.
: There’s a little staircase loop that has the second pig we need in it.
: There’s a lot of samey “This must be a clue!” dialog so I’m just gonna cut it.
: I feel like Atlus missed the opportunity to have a dumb Squaresoft thing where you could enter 1930 for “PEAR”, which would give you an unripened pear you could then bring to a different machine and enter “0119” for RIPE to ripen the pear, and then you have to feed the pear to something at the end of the game for Makoto’s ultimate weapon.
: “All right, it worked!”
: “Tch… this isn’t anywhere near your quota for this month. Don’t gimme your excuses. Just go reap every last penny!”
: “This voice again…”
: “I’ll make you understand if you don’t get it… people who can’t earn money are worthless to me!”
: “He’s completely distorted…”
: “It looks like he really believes money is more important than human life… what a pitiful man.”
: “Yeah… let’s finish this qucik. The door’s prolly opened up, so we should head back and check it out.”
: The game asks us if we want to warp back to the start of the vault area, but I didn’t because there was one door I wanted to check.
: All this door does is act as a shortcut between the first room and where the last pig is. It’s meant to be a way to get back to the code input thing from the pig, but because I had already cleared this area out I just walked back the long way.
: “Oooh, it’s open!”
: “This is the second one… I wonder how many more there are…”
: Just like before, we have another sub-area to go through in order to progress.
: This room has barriers all over it. One side is completely impassable.
: The other has a dog.
: Anyway, the solution to this room is to jump up on these shelves full of money.
: At the top is a switch.
: This area introduces a new stealable in the form of these suitcases. It’s a nice touch.
: There’s a locked chest up here we can get with a Golden Vest in it. It’s a slight upgrade for Makoto.
: You can kind of see the path we have to take on the minimap, but notice that golden door up there.
: “Hmm… and there’s also this weird pig. Maybe we should do some recoinassance first.”
: I don’t remember these being in the base game, but they let you skip parts of the vault area by paying.
: “I get that employees would have to show their keycards, but…”
: “They gotta pay too!? And that definitely ain’t cheap!”
: “So, Kaneshiro even views his own employees as exploitable resources.”
: “…I’m sure it’ll make him a little money, but I doubt it’ll amount to anything substantial.”
: “What should we do? I don’t think we should have to pay Kaneshiro…”
: This door can actually be opened from the other side. There’s another one in the next area that can’t be, at least as far as I know.
: We’ve seen this before - another hallway full of cameras.
: I feel like they could’ve cut a lot from this dungeon without really making it any less difficult.
: After a quick stop to grind money, I keep going.
: There’s a pig surrounded by cameras. Notice, however, that there’s nothing for a barrier to come out of. So what do we do?
: Simple, we just walk right through and take it. It’s like, a 20% penalty to security level that we’re going to erase the next time we get into a fight.
: Eventually, we come to the other side of the golden door. This place is pretty much a straight hallway.
: Joker’s just like “Hugs? I can do that.” and then proceeds to embrace Yusuke.
: I would post the “You don’t even know English” thing but technically they’re all speaking Japanese.
: “So we’ll need to transpose this one into numbers too. I hope we can do it with the hints we have…”
: Before you can even attempt it, the game repeats basically the same dialog again… even if you already have all the information you need to solve it.
: I should mention that I’m skipping the unlocking animation, but it plays in full every time you solve one of these.
: “Great, it looks like the vault opened up even more now.”
: “Well then, we should keep-”
: “This isn’t enough… I need to have a huge presence!”
: “What now?”
: “I’m done having other people walk all over me… it’s my turn now…”
: “He is beyond redemption… it seems he cares not for those he tramples upon himself.”
: “Every step we take is strengthening my resolve. Let’s push onward.”
: Instead of taking the warp out, I decided to bust down the gold door, just to see what would happen.
: There’s really no point to doing this.
: “Check it out! This one’s open for us now too!”
: “This movement… there can be no doubt.”
: “Hm? Did you notice something?”
: “Wh-what do you mean…? Can you explain that a little more?”
: Specifically, it’s a giant disc-detainer lock with six discs, but the last two are false discs that don’t actually work.
: “The cylinder is the mechanism that judges if a key is the proper shape. If you use the correct key and all the discs align, the lock opens.”
: “Now that you mention it, while the walls rotate, the path forward has remained facing the same way…”
: “So you’re saying the whole floor is just one giant lock…?”
: “That’s right. All the smaller vaults in here aren’t important. There has to be an area further in, locked away by the room itself.”
: “And that’s where the Treasure’s gotta be! Sweet, let’s get goin’!”
: Of course, it’s not quite that simple.
: This is Khumbanda. Normally, he’s a mid-40s trash Persona.
: The wiki claims he’s weak to Nuke and not Bless. They’re wrong.
: This is when I went out and fused Clotho, and also did some minor Persona shuffling to get everything in order.
: “I guess that’s why the Shadow was protecting it?”
: “Hm, it doesn’t seem to require any keys, but there are buttons on the left and right of the box…”
: “There must be a reason that thing was guarding it. Let’s try and figure out why.”
: Anyway, there’s two control panels, one way goes to progress, but we’re not doing that yet.
: “There are Shadows here as well, perhaps they are protecting something.”
: “That one seems pretty tough… we’ll have to make sure we’re good and ready.”
: Oh no. That’s not…
: It is. It’s Cerberus, though I doubt this one is Pascal the Dog. He opens with Vajra Blast, which fucking HURTS.
: That’s the only attack he gets off the entire fight. Cerberus is weak to Ice, meaning we can use both Nigi Mitama and Yusuke to get two All-Outs per turn.
: On Makoto’s turn, I have her use… I forget which spell it is… to make Cerberus forgetful. Forgetful is this game’s equivalent of silence, and Cerberus will ONLY use skills to attack - meaning he’ll just waste his turn as long as it’s on him.
: The will seed is right behind him.
: The Crystal of Gluttony is useless.
: One more area of kicking power boxes and we’re done.
: “Not to worry - we just need to deal with the power to the bars like we did before.”
: “Based on how this looks, we’re going to have to find a bunch of power boxes…”
: There’s a bunch of stealables at ground level, but at this point we don’t really need to care about those. This is where I wound up getting bullshitted to death, but I didn’t capture that.
: One of the boxes we need is in the corner here.
: We can then grapple up to the top of the shelves and access the rest of the room.
: You can see both of the remaining boxes up here. This one disables the cameras.
: In the middle is this locked box, which I think in the base game had a gun for Makoto, but in Royal just has a Bead Chain.
: I knew it! Ohio was the real villain all along!
: “So we’re getting into calculations now… good grief.”
: There’s a platform we can’t reach that just has a couple of stealables on it, and the weird thing (from a design perspective) is that you’re not likely to find where that vent leads until after you have the last clue and can warp back to the main area.
: “Daaamn! This is nuts…!”
: “Safes everywhere… Kaneshiro must have gained an obscene amount of money. Though, walking around the Palace, I don’t see anything that he seems to have spent it on…”
: I feel like the game has a hard time making the distinction between the shadow and the actual character. We saw Kaneshiro give some random hostess $30,000, so chances are the real Kaneshiro is spending it.
: “Perhaps all he wants to do with it is hoard it… now’s not the time for this discussion, though. Let’s keep going.”
: “Hey, look at that!”
: “And isn’t that the power for the bars?”
: “Oh. You’re right - we can’t go this way. I guess we’ll just have to look for a different path.”
: There’s another gold door down the hall from the barrier. Unlike the other one, I don’t think you can open this one from the other side because it’s a one-way trip.
: There’s two camera boxes you can break in here, and honestly this whole dungeon has been kind of repetitive ever since they introduced that mechanic.
: At about the 3/4 mark through this hallway is a spot you can jump up to get a chest with three Luck Incense in it. Unfortunately, incense is nowhere near as good in this game as it was in Persona 1 and Innocent Sin.
: This is because your character’s stats are now derived entirely from their Persona, and since we change Personas frequently there’s no reason to use this on any of them.
: On the way down, I get ambushed by an Orthrus and two High Pixies - what I want to point out is that when Joker is in the “surrounded” formation, he can shoot enemies behind him without moving.
: And that’s level 28. Unfortunately, all of the Personas at level 28 are kinda trash. At this point, we are now in or past negotiation range for all of the enemies in the next dungeon except the red shadows.
: We probably wouldn’t have hit 28 except that because I got bullshitted to death, I had to re-do this entire area. Getting a game over keeps all of your EXP and money but resets chests and objectives.
: Another hallway full of cameras, because we haven’t had enough of that yet.
: The last code machine is down here, along with the vent that takes you to that platform in the other room we couldn’t reach.
: To get into where the pig is, there’s a room right across from the code machine with these safes that magically open when we get close.
: “Ugh, it’s like, algebra or something! I’m getting confused…”
: “Panther… this is really just simple addition…”
: Kicking the box opens up a grappling hook point on the other side from where the barrier is.
: All it does is bring you up to a chest with an SP restoring item in it.
: One round trip across the entire room later…
: Gonna cut some repeat dialogue here.
: And now we have access to where the Treasure is. Dungeon complete, apart from the fact that I still want to farm money a bit.
: “Again?”
: “This… this is the fruit of all my hard labor!”
: “He thinks robbin’ people is something to celebrate? Tha guy needs to get his brain checked…”
: Says the kid who technically robbed two people and celebrated it both times.
: “With this much, I will be invincible! Omnipotent! I’ve changed… I’m no longer the person I used to be…”
: “The person he used to be…? What could have happened to make him so distorted?”
: “I don’t know, but no matter what kind of past he had, his actions are unforgivable.”
: “That’s right. Now, if my deductions are accurate, that should’ve been the final mechanism.”
: “All right then. Let’s head back and check out the vault! We know where it is, so going back should be easy.”
: “You’re like some kinda prophet, Queen…”
: “It’s mostly thanks to that notebook. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that. More importantly, did you hear all those things Shadow Kaneshiro was saying?”
: “Oh yeah, I was wondering about that! Didn’t he seem kinda… insecure or something?”
: “Exactly. He kept bringing up how rich and powerful he wants to be.”
: “So if he’s insecure about that shit… he thinks he’s really just some poor weakling, huh?”
: “Maybe by thinking he was going to be a strong, wealthy man, he convinced himself it was true.”
: “I wonder… well, we will discover the truth for ourselves when we change his heart. Let us hurry, Joker.”
: “I don’t see anything.”
: “Once we get this far, we need this callin’ card thing.”
: “A calling card… I see… making the target believe that the Treasure is in danger will cause it to materialize. That’s quite a bold trick.”
: “Huh? She understood?”
: Ann wants to be the smart girl.
: “Joker, we’ll defer to you regarding its timing.”
: The good news is I won’t have to do a cut, because we send the card out tomorrow and then do the boss on 06/27.
: “In the end, that Kaneshiro bastard only showed his stupid face once…”
: “That doesn’t matter. As long as we steal the Treasure, we’ll change his heart.”
: I actually did grind more. I had about 400,000 yen by the end of the dungeon, but I wanted to get at least half a million to make sure we’re covered on expenses.
: While we’ve already done pretty much the single largest expense we’ll have (that being the SP adhesives) we still need to pay 100,000 yen to start the confidant with the fortune teller. We’ll also be spending somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 yen a day on confidants.
: Actually, I calculated it out. We need a BARE MINIMUM of 200,000 yen just to not permafuck. That amount would be higher if we hadn’t bought the Famicom from the recycling store already.
: One fun thing I discovered while grinding is that High Pixies basically can’t hurt you. Their AI seems to always cast Dormina to put people to sleep and then never follows up, so you can just use them to take a nap for SP.
: On the way out, the Velvet Room door starts glowing red and we get a tutorial. I’m going to do my own instead because I think my way shows it off better.
: The red lighting signifies a fusion alarm, which is a new mechanic added for Royal. Allow me to explain how it works while I fuse a disgustingly overpowered Persona with it.
: During a Fusion Alarm, several things happen. One of them is that the reward for returning a Persona is improved - skills will either get upgraded to the next tier or made into a “ma” version (as an example, Take-Minakata usually returns a Zionga card but under a Fusion Alarm returns a Mazionga card).
: I should mention that the Treasure Demons all have unique accessories which also improve under an alarm.
: We had a low-level Angel sitting around, and I had reached level 29 while grinding, which opens up the third Justice Persona. I fuse the Angel we had with a Regent and go for an Archangel.
: Fusion Alarms increase the stats of any Personas you fuse, as well as opening up more slots to inherit abilities and potentially upgrading some of your skills.
Returning Persona: Archangel
Origin: Abrahamic Mythology
First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I
Angels who serve as the ministers and messengers between the Judeo-Christian God and mankind.
: Archangel gets a pretty significant stat boost.
: Dazzler and Magaru both flash red, meaning they’ll potentially change. If the fusion isn’t an accident, you can choose whether or not to change. I said yes.
: Dazzler gets upgraded to Nocturnal Flash, which attempts to inflict Dizzy on all enemies. Magaru gets upgraded to Garula.
: You’ll notice that Archangel is now marked in yellow. This means that if we use him to fuse something else, there is a near-100% chance for a fusion accident. If an accident doesn’t occur, you instead get a stat boost.
: I’m pretty sure the alarm will cancel if you leave to save, so let’s just do it and see what happens.
: Principality is a rock fucking solid Persona. It gets half SP cost on Bless spells and learns Bless Boost, which both increases Bless damage and also the chances that the Hama spell line instakills.
: Just like in Persona 1 and 2, the “skip” prompt disappears if you get an accident.
: The guillotine blade sparks and skids to a halt.
: We get an Eligor instead, which at first I was kind of pissed off about. Just wait for it.
: During an accident, all the skills change and… oh shit. That’s Agidyne and Garudyne. We’re not supposed to be able to get those for… quite a while.
: Getting an accident will cause Caroline to kick you out. So now we’ve got two amazing skills stuck on a trash-sona. What do we do about this?
: Well… it just so happens that if you fuse Eligor and Incubus, you get Principality. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Returning Persona: Principality
Origin: Abrahamic Mythology
First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II
Angels tasked with overseeing groups of people and bestowing blessings upon them. Associated with the Sephirah Netzach.
: By itself, Principality is a solid Bless-element Persona. With these skills? This thing is going to murder the hell out of Kaneshiro.
: See that? That was a Rakshasha. We have now broken the game in two. I did get a second fusion alarm (they occur randomly after winning a battle) but it didn’t go as planned and I had to spend a bunch of money to re-summon stuff.
: You might ask if I saved that Eligor to the compendium, and the answer is yes, so I can use it to fuse some even more disgusting stuff down the line. The next time we get a fusion alarm, my goal is to get Megidolaon around level 34.
: We leave the palace with 580,000 yen. Considering we haven’t sold any of the treasure items and still have a Mementos visit before the next dungeon, we should be more than fine.
: I check the TV shopping thing and buy this. It gives you two Black Rocks (useless) and a Black Robe (yes.)
: We spend the night crafting, because we need Proficiency 4 to get the final Technical upgrade. Not that we need it.
: The game acknowledges that I have broken it by giving me the extra two points.
: Next time, we’re going to send the calling card and introduce Kaneshiro to our new angel friend.