Part 243: Weapon Fusion Basics

Welcome to the Velvet Room: Fusin' For a Bruisin'

So I promised I'd talk more about weapon fusion. Let's do this. As I noted, step one is to pick one of your Nihil <Weapon>s. This determines the type of the weapon in 95% of cases. Every weapon type has a Nihil variety, it's just a matter of farming enough Gold Shadows to get them (you probably need a party member who can use the weapon type to see one drop, i.e. we can't see say Nihil Gun drop yet).

The next thing that matters are the stats of the Persona we're going to use, which will determine which 'type' the weapon is. If Strength or Endurance is highest, it'll be Type A which has average stats, whereas if Magic or Agility is highest it'll be Type B and have higher attack but lower accuracy (note that this inverts if we're making a Gun for some reason). In the case that Luck is highest, we get a Type C weapon that is least powerful but most accurate.

Then we need to look at the Persona's current level. There are 11 'tiers' the level can fall into with their own sets of stats for each type. The tiers are relatively large early on, tighten in the middle, and finally become very broad in the last tier (which is level 70-99). What this means is that a single level difference will either mean nothing or have a huge impact on the power of your weapon depending on whether it takes you up a tier or not.

Now's where things get interesting, because we're going to talk about the Arcana and added effects. The level and Arcana of the Persona determines what else it will do. Thanks to the immensely useful GameFAQs guide on this, I'll lay them all out.

Magician: Evade Ice in three tiers of power.
Priestess: Evade Fire in three tiers of power.
Empress: Resist Wind (not sure if it's just reduced damage or actually proper Resist, which would be really good).
Emperor: Evade Elec in three tiers of power.
Hierophant: Auto-Sukukaja.
Lovers: Resist Charm.
Chariot: Counter/Counterstrike/High Counter.
Justice: Evade Wind in three tiers of power.
Hermit: Resist Poison.
Fortune: SP+.
Strength: Auto-Tarukaja.
Hanged Man: HP+.
Death: Resist Rage.
Temperance: Auto-Rakukaja.
Devil: Resist Fear.
Tower: Resist Elec (as Empress).
Star: Resist Ice (as Empress).
Moon: Increased crit rate in three tiers.
Sun: Resist Fire (as Empress).
Judgment: Increasing chance to inflict ailments on attack.
Aeon: Increase to all stats.

Fools are of course weird and have a mixed bag of powerful effects (though their levels in practice make it hard to use some of them forever).

But what of the Special Weapon Fusions? So, there are certain Personas that will always have the same result no matter what Nihil Weapon you use. These all tend to be powerful Personas that you won't have access to until late in the game and among other interesting things they turn out the strongest weapons for any given character in the game. I've actually got a few of these lying around that I'll give people when the game makes me angry or I move to the postgame stuff. I'll go over them again when we've got everyone.

It takes a couple of days for her to actually make our new weapon, by the way, so keep that in mind.