Persona 5: The Phantom X has finally had its global release and Persona fans worldwide can finally get into it. However, this game is much different than the standard Persona games that you are used to. For example, this game features a gacha system that many fans may not even be familiar with. To help you get used the various new systems and answer any questions you might have, we’ll be providing a starter guide that touches over everything. In this way, you won’t be completely lost when you start the game. Let’s get into it!
Starter Guide
In this guide, we’ll be touching up on the various aspects of Persona 5: The Phantom X, including explaining every single system in the game. We will also go over tips where possible.
However, our main goal is to simply help you get a good grasp of where and how to begin.
Story
Persona 5: The Phantom X features Wonder as an original protagonist in an original story. He is not a character from any of the previous Persona games. However, we will see him interact with the other Persona cast in events called Cross Fate.
As the name suggests, the game is loosely tied to Persona 5 and we do meet the characters from the game from time to time. Some people have suggested that the game might tie to the actual canon of Persona 5 later on – but this has not been confirmed.
Additionally, we might even see the cast of Persona 3 visiting us too.
Currencies & Materials
Like any other gacha game, Persona 5: The Phantom X also has various currencies and materials that you’ll need to understand. Here is a breakdown of the currencies and materials in the game:
- Meta Jewels
- Normal summon currency
- Cognitive Crystals
- Paid summon currency
- Gold Tickets
- Standard Tickets
- Platinum Tickets
- Featured Banner Tickets
- Konpaku Gems
- Can be considered like gold currency in most games
- Thief Comp. Tomes
- Level up XP for characters
- Gold Parts
- Weapon XP
- Membership Card
- Monthly Pass
- Clear & Violet Cognigem
- Resources you get from summoning used for Exchange Shops
- Coffee & Coffee Aid
- Stamina packs or Stamina potions
Below is a helpful image that will help you relate these currencies and materials to other popular gacha games with the same systems! This helpful graphic was provided by ScrambledFaz on X.
Combat System Explained
Like other Persona games, Persona 5: The Phantom X is a turned based combat game. There are 5 units that you can have on your team, with one being Wonder as the protagonist.
The fifth unit on your team must always be a navigator, with you not being able to put any other unit there. You can think of the Navigator as a sort of support unit.
Besides that, you have three units where you have complete freedom to choose who you want. Generally, what we recommend is that you have the following team composition:
- x1 DPS unit
- x1 Sustain/Buffer unit
- x1 Damage Buffer/Debuffer unit
When you’re in battle, you can see various combat options in the bottom right corner. Here is a breakdown of what each option does:
- Persona
- Three persona skills depending on the personas you chose
- Sword & Gun
- Every unit in your team has this
- Support
- Can only be unlocked if you have a Navigator
- Option will be blacked out if you don’t have a navigator
- Highlight
- Ultimate move.
Additionally, speed is a big factor as it affects who goes first – since it is turn based after all. You can see the order of who goes when in top left corner of your screen.
This will help you strategize and choose your moves wisely in advance.
For a more deeper dive into how combat works, you can check out our complete combat guide!
Character Info & Stats
Each character in Persona 5: The Phantom X has different units that each have a particular affinity. Here is a breakdown of all the affinities and what they mean in the game:
- Physical
- Can knock enemies down if the attack is a critical strike – regardless of if it resists physical
- Gun
- Can knock enemies down if the attack is a critical strike – regardless of if it resists gun
- Currently, Wonder is the only gun unit
- Fire
- Has a chance to inflict burn
- Dealing max HP damage each turn
- Ice
- Has a chance to inflict freeze (which decreases the target’s attack)
- Electricity
- Has a chance to inflict shock (makes targets more susceptible to critical hits)
- Wind
- Has a chance to inflict winded (lowers the target’s defense)
- Psychokinesis
- Deals increased damage to enemies affected by mental ailments
- Ailments include Dizzy, Forget, Sleep, Rage, Despair, Fear, Confused and Brainwash
- Nuclear
- Deal increased damage to enemies affected by elemental ailments
- Ailements include winded, shock, freeze and burn
- Blessed
- Grants allies a stackable bless effect, which heals them each turn
- Curse
- Inflicts enemies with a stackable cursed effect, which deals damage each turn
- Almighty
- Ignores enemies defense
Additionally, each unit in the game is either four stars or five stars – with five star units being the best ones. While the game does released four star units regularly, there are more five star units since they sell more.
Each unit also has stats that you can check out on their stats page. Here is a breakdown of what each stat means in Persona 5: The Phantom X:
- HP
- Overall health pool
- Some units scale with this stat
- ATK
- Damage you inflict
- DEF
- Decreases the damage you take
- Some units scale with this stat
- DMG Bonus
- Increases the damage you deal
- Effect Hit Rate (not shown on stat page)
- Increases the chance of inflicting various debuffs
- Crit Rate
- Increases your chances of landing a Critical Hits
- Crit DMG
- Increases the damage through Critical Hits
- SPD
- Determines how quick you go in each round
- Some units scale with this stat
- SP Recovery
- Makes it quicker to regenerate SP
- Each skill in combat costs SP
- PEN
- Dictates the percentage of enemy defense you will ignore when dealing damage
- Curse DMG
- Damage based on type of unit
Personas & Upgrade Tree
In Persona 5: The Phantom X, you can actually upgrade Wonder’s stats via the Inspiration tree. You should try to do this as you progress through the game so you can take on bigger challenges.
Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that Wonder scales off your Account Level. So, the more you progress, the stronger he will be.
Additionally, Wonder can also wield up to three personas when heading into combat. There personas dictate the skills that he will have in combat.
You can select your personas by clicking the + icons under his showcard.
It’s important to select all three personas as they give you various different passive and active skills. You can unlock different personas by grinding and progressing through the game.
Typically, you should try to just have the most logical persona options as you’re just starting out.
Gacha System
To get into the gacha system of Persona 5: The Phantom X, you’ll need to go to the Summons menu. You can do this by clicking on the Summons icon on the top of your screen.
If you want a deeper dive into the system, you can also check out our gacha system explained guide!
The game features a gacha system with mainly four distinct banner types. You can use these to get both Characters and Weapons.
As a gacha game, you can pull characters either using in game currency that you grind for, or a premium currency that you buy. In essence, you are using these currencies to gamble and try to get the best character possible.
While each banner has different drops, you can get the following from their banner types:
- 5 Star Characters/Weapons
- 4 Star Characters/Weapons
- 3 Star Weapons
- Low Tier 2 Star Personas
With that said, let’s go over the banners we recommend you get in the beginning:
- Beginner Banner
- We recommend using Future Fates. Avoid using Meta Shards for this one
- Discounted Pulls: 8 Future Fates needed to do a 10-pull.
- After 50 pulls in this banner, you get a choice between three 5 star characters: Morgana, Ryuji Sakamoto and Ann Takamaki
- You can still obtain 5 star characters before 50 pulls
- Rate Up Character Banner
- On global launch, the unit you can get is Joker
- 0.8% base pull rate for 5 star Characters
- Every 80 Pulls, you are guaranteed a 5 star unit
- First 5 start unit has a 50% chance to be Joker, and a 50% chance to be a standard unit
- The second five star unit has a guaranteed chance to be the featured banner (which would be Akihiko)
- Every 10 pulls, you are guaranteed a 4 star unit
- Rate Up Weapon Banner
- 0.8% base pull rate for 5 star Weapons
- Every 70 pulls, you are guaranteed a 5 star weapon
- 50% chance to obtain the rate-up 5 star weapon or 50% chance to get a permanent 5 star weapon.
- The next pity will be guaranteed to give you rate up 5 star weapon
- Permanent Banner
- After a new unit’s featured banner ends, they are added to the permanent banner
- 0.8% base pull rate for 5 star units
- Every 80 pulls, you are guaranteed a 5 start unit
- After 300 cumulative Pulls, you will get a 5 star Permanent Character of your choice once
- Rerun Banner
- These banners allow you to get limited units after they are no longer available in Rate Up Banners
- You can basically do a Rate Up Banner again with these, after they have passed
- Super Rerun Banner
- Super Rerun Banners are similar to Rerun Banners but appear only during special occasions.
- These banners allow you to select up to three 5 star Characters to feature as Rate-up Characters.
- Cognition Shop
- As you summon units, you will start to get different currencies
- Cognitive Shards are earned by pulling low-tier 2 star Personas and 3 star Weapons.
- Cognitive Gemstones are earned by pulling 4 star and 5 star Characters and Weapons.
- You get extra gems for pulling duplicates
- Cognitive Afterimages are earned from pulling on a rerun banner.
- You can use these currencies to purchase different items from the shop
Progression System
In Persona 5: The Phantom X, you level up with XP that you can by spending your stamina. Every 10 levels, you get the opportunity to break through. This allows you to ascend up to level 80.
You can do this for every single unit in the game.
Additionally, there is also an Awareness level that allows you to get extra skills and passives up to Awareness Level 6. You can increase your Awareness level by getting duplicates of a particular unit.
Keep in mind that each unit already has an Awareness Level 0 skill from the start.
Similarly to your characters, your weapons also have progression tied to them. Each character’s weapons provides them with stats and a passive. You will need to level up and break through the weapons as well.
Generally, you’ll want to get your hands on five star weapons as they have the best stats and passives. Additionally, you should try to get each unit their main weapon – although not strictly necessary.
Characters in the game also have gear known as Arcana Cards. These act as Armor and Accessories that you see in most gacha games.
These cards help your character get a variety of different stat increases, such as HP, Crit Chance, etcs. They act as the main method for beefing up your characters as you progress through the game.
There are five types of Arcana Cards:
- Revelation Cards
- Sun
- Flat HP
- Moon
- Attack %, Defense %, HP %, Healing Effectiveness %, Damage Bonus %
- Star
- Attack %, Defense %, HP %, Critical Rate %, Critical Damage %, Effect Hit Rate %
- Planet
- Attack %, Defense %, HP %, Speed, SP Regen %
- Sun
- Universe Cards
- Flat Attack & Flat Defense
Typically, you will start grinding for the Revelation Cards around Level 60.
You get additional effects if you complete sets of Revelation Cards which are: two piece effects and four piece effects. This depends on how many cards you have of the same set.
Finally, you can also upgrade the skill levels – allowing you to get more benefit out of each skill. However, we recommend that you plan out when upgrading your skills.
You should look at the characters and see what skills their kit revolves around. For example, Ryuji‘s kit in the game revolves around the Ult and Skill 3. So, you could consider upgrading both of these to be efficient.b
Do not upgrade the wrong skills as later levels will be quite grindy as you progress through the game.
Game Modes
We’ll quickly go through all the game modes so you can understand all the content you can actually play in Persona 5: The Phantom X.
Starting off, we have the Palace game mode, which acts as the main story of the game. This game mode actually has a lot of exploration involved – which can give you a lot of rewards. We strongly encourage you to get these rewards.
However, you do not need to do them right away because the Palace won’t close after you complete it.
The next game mode is Weekly Stamina grinding where you can use your stamina for all sorts of materials and rewards. You can also grind for Personas, Arcana Cards and so much more.
We recommend that you do not start grinding until a minimum of Level 60, or an ideal Level 70. Doing so will give you the best chance of getting the highest rarity rewards.
After that, we have the Velvet Trials that you can think of as a tower challenge mode. There are different challenge battles of increasing level and difficulty. All of them revolve around 2 specific elements, except for 1 which can have various stage setups.
Every stage features score multipliers that are essential to increase your stage score to earn stars. These stars unlock valuable rewards such as Meta Shards, Fated Echoes, Major Inspiration Points, and more.
We recommend you start doing them early on as they give nice rewards.
If you’re interested in the characters, there are also Character’s Story quests. These allow you to get the story of any new characters that are added to the game.
You’ll also be able to try out the new character and receive rewards for doing so.
The next game mode is Heart Rails, which is a Roguelite mode. You can take your characters through different challenges, while choosing team buffs and enemy debuffs.
After you do a run, you obtain Tickets that you can use to upgrade the skill tree for Meta Progression.
The mode offers plenty of one time rewards, and contains almost everything you might want in the game, be it Revelation Card Selectors, Level and Rank-up Materials or even Meta Shards.
There are also two end game modes available in Persona 5: The Phantom X. These are:
- Sea of Soul Trials
- You can consider them like Abyss Dungeons in other gacha games
- Allows you to challenge two bosses per patch and compete globally for high tier rewards
- Door of Nightmares (Guild)
- You can participate in a guild and earn points for overall rewards
- Face 3 bosses per patch with your highest score being added to the guild total.
Of course, we recommend that you do these later on once you’ve begun to progress. Of course, there are also different events that will be featured in the game that will also serve as unique game modes, allowing you to get rewards!
That’s everything you need to know for the starter guide for Persona 5: The Phantom X. There is a lot more to explore in the game, but you’ll be able to figure that out once you progress and get acquainted with the game. Remember to stay up to date with the community so that you always know what meta items you want to aim for – especially if you’re competing for high tier rewards!
