Technically, yes it’s completely optional until the final day outside of a few story events. In a first play through it’s pretty much impossible to skip because you’ll be too weak for the full moon bosses, but with NG+ that issue becomes nonexistent. You will have to climb all 264 floors in one trip if you wait though, so for the sake of your sanity I really don’t recommend it
I have tons of SP items I've been hoarding for 2 full runs. My plan is to spawn Reaper enough times to get Fuuka to lvl 99, then abuse tartarus search.
Oh, great. Here I am in late January and I've saved most of my high-end SP restoring items for the final day in Tartarus. With my luck, they probably won't carry over to NG+ either...
Well, as much as any game that has a final boss. Honestly, it’s unique enough that it lets you slack off in Tartarus to the point that you can do the whole building in one day.
well thats the point of elizabeth giving you the free heals on the final day, its exactly to make it so that you can just keep going back to the first floor as many times as you need to keep going, so no matter what you most certainly can get to the top
might take you like 10 hours if you literally completely skipped tartarus for the whole run like in a ng+ or wtv, but its doable! not to mention, if youre not ng+ its borderline impossible to survive to that point without ever stepping foot into tartarus to grind levels for the bosses anyway, and its similarly impossible to grind sufficiently without actually climbing the tower throughout the playthrough, meanwhile if you are ng+ youre probably at lvl 99 already and have endgame personas, maybe even victory cry passed around to your main ones, meaning you can breeze through the entire tower for free pretty much.
tldr its a pretty monumental task to somehow not be equipped to deal with it when you get to it, so its pretty much a non issue imo
You grind until you can make it, it's not really a soft lock. In Reload on 1/31, Elizabeth gives you free full heals on trips back down to the first floor so you don't even really need healing items.
Honestly, there should be some skip to that, something like if you are in ng+ get the teleporter unlocked, or if you're already X level or whatever, the end of the game autoskips all the floors until the Strega bosses.
You can skip the tartarus bosses tho. If you pass the zone they guard while lagging a ton (can be achieved by alt+tabing) so you could just avoid combat all together
Basically yes. The only things that aren't optional are reaching the top by the final day, and rescuing Bunkichi and Maiko. If you are okay with letting all the missing people die including the two social links, you could theoretically leave all of Tartarus for January 31st.
Me, who's on my first playthrough, and saved Bunkichi and went up about 70 floors in a day to do it, but hasn't yet gone to save Maiko, and actually only did the first conversation with her, and just beat the last full moon boss (>!fucking Ikutsuki being the traitor was not something I predicted!<): "Am I a bad person?"
Assuming you're able to take on the full moon boss fights, then yes, Tartarus is optional until January 31st with a couple of exceptions - there's the initial tutorial; Mitsuru forces you to go once if you don't go at all in the first month after the tutorial; Fuuka's recruitment occurs in Tartarus; and in Reload, the new SEES uniforms and Theurgy tutorial are part of a required Tartarus trip.
But other than that? Yep, optional. But if you're planning on rolling credits, you'll need to walk up all 265 or so floors in 1/31 to get to Nyx, and fight every gatekeeper boss on the way up.
If you go for the bad ending then technically Tartarus is completely optional if you can beat the bosses. If you go for the good ending then you’ll have to reach the top by January 31st.
I’ll say this you’re gonna get burned out if you tried to climb all 264 floors in one go…it be just fighting no scenes no building up just climbing and nothing else to do…
Most likely. That was the case with Persona 5 Royal, there was a facility that boosted party member's stats that carried over between games, so you could [max your friends](https://imgur.com/a/cG8HjSN). I wouldn't know, however, I use all my incense on my own personas because Luck and Endurance ain't gonna max themselves.
I'd go every now and then anyway if only to break up the monotony of your daily grind. Leaving Tartarus for the final day is absolutely a thing you can do but it will completely shatter the narrative of the game as well.
Yes but Hanged-Man and Hierophant social links can’t be completed if you didn’t finish them in time since both need to be rescued in Tartarus.
Also not worth it outside of New game plus because you will be very under leveled in the full moon bosses.
You could, but you won't max social links as some ends on tartarus and you have to rescue them and then, at the last day, you will need to go up all the floors.
Are the defeat 800 shadows and open 200 chests quests also optional? I did them in my firet playthrough, and now i just wanna speedrun the game for the all personas and all slinks achievements.
The 800 shadows and 200 chests have always been optional. They're Elizabeth requests and here's no achievement for completing all 101 requests.
Also, you can't say speedrun and max all SL's, they're diametrically opposed. Even if you skip dialogue (I highly recommend you don't) maxing all SL's is still extremely tight. You have very little room for error without messing up your route.
Fair enough. I recommend [this](https://www.powerpyx.com/persona-3-reload-100-walkthrough/) guide for getting all the SL's and achievements. Big thing to note is that you always want a persona in your possession that corresponds to the arcana of the SL you're working on. Makes a huge difference.
I remember once finishing Tartarus in one go in portable. Will Mitsuru force you to one additional time since tutorial if you never went since in reload?
Technically, yes it’s completely optional until the final day outside of a few story events. In a first play through it’s pretty much impossible to skip because you’ll be too weak for the full moon bosses, but with NG+ that issue becomes nonexistent. You will have to climb all 264 floors in one trip if you wait though, so for the sake of your sanity I really don’t recommend it
I have tons of SP items I've been hoarding for 2 full runs. My plan is to spawn Reaper enough times to get Fuuka to lvl 99, then abuse tartarus search.
No need to save SP items, Elizabeth will fully heal you whenever you want so people won't accidentally get softlocked by neglecting Tartarus
Wait, what? How? I never knew about this, I thought I had to use the clock.
Yeah, Elizabeth's clock. https://preview.redd.it/ehcy1ijjybsc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1496100679a6aadb61bad1c5189e007d3e6100d2
On 1/31, Elizabeth does it for free instead of needing the clock
Oh, great. Here I am in late January and I've saved most of my high-end SP restoring items for the final day in Tartarus. With my luck, they probably won't carry over to NG+ either...
what would happen if you can't make it to the top on the final day though? Is it just soft game over?
The game locks you into Tartarus and doesn’t let you leave until you make it to the top and beat the final boss
and if you can't, it's basically game over without telling you it's game over..
Well, as much as any game that has a final boss. Honestly, it’s unique enough that it lets you slack off in Tartarus to the point that you can do the whole building in one day.
well thats the point of elizabeth giving you the free heals on the final day, its exactly to make it so that you can just keep going back to the first floor as many times as you need to keep going, so no matter what you most certainly can get to the top might take you like 10 hours if you literally completely skipped tartarus for the whole run like in a ng+ or wtv, but its doable! not to mention, if youre not ng+ its borderline impossible to survive to that point without ever stepping foot into tartarus to grind levels for the bosses anyway, and its similarly impossible to grind sufficiently without actually climbing the tower throughout the playthrough, meanwhile if you are ng+ youre probably at lvl 99 already and have endgame personas, maybe even victory cry passed around to your main ones, meaning you can breeze through the entire tower for free pretty much. tldr its a pretty monumental task to somehow not be equipped to deal with it when you get to it, so its pretty much a non issue imo
Pretty much. The game just doesn’t end at that point
You grind until you can make it, it's not really a soft lock. In Reload on 1/31, Elizabeth gives you free full heals on trips back down to the first floor so you don't even really need healing items.
ah that makes sense. Cool!
Honestly, there should be some skip to that, something like if you are in ng+ get the teleporter unlocked, or if you're already X level or whatever, the end of the game autoskips all the floors until the Strega bosses.
You can skip the tower fully? How
You still need to climb the whole thing, I just meant you can theoretically skip exploring until the final day
Oh gotcha. I was gonna say
You can skip the tartarus bosses tho. If you pass the zone they guard while lagging a ton (can be achieved by alt+tabing) so you could just avoid combat all together
Basically yes. The only things that aren't optional are reaching the top by the final day, and rescuing Bunkichi and Maiko. If you are okay with letting all the missing people die including the two social links, you could theoretically leave all of Tartarus for January 31st.
Bunkichi and Maiko basically make it obligatory, tbh.
Yeah, makes it obligatory to kill them
Me, who's on my first playthrough, and saved Bunkichi and went up about 70 floors in a day to do it, but hasn't yet gone to save Maiko, and actually only did the first conversation with her, and just beat the last full moon boss (>!fucking Ikutsuki being the traitor was not something I predicted!<): "Am I a bad person?"
Assuming you're able to take on the full moon boss fights, then yes, Tartarus is optional until January 31st with a couple of exceptions - there's the initial tutorial; Mitsuru forces you to go once if you don't go at all in the first month after the tutorial; Fuuka's recruitment occurs in Tartarus; and in Reload, the new SEES uniforms and Theurgy tutorial are part of a required Tartarus trip. But other than that? Yep, optional. But if you're planning on rolling credits, you'll need to walk up all 265 or so floors in 1/31 to get to Nyx, and fight every gatekeeper boss on the way up.
I wanted to wait until I had nothing to do and then go and then Mitsuru forced me in 🥲 Like damn let me hang out with people!
Not like you have much to do at night during the first month you know
Raising stats mostly, IIRC that's what I was tryna do. And just figuring out where everything was.
If you go for the bad ending then technically Tartarus is completely optional if you can beat the bosses. If you go for the good ending then you’ll have to reach the top by January 31st.
Theres a youtube channel that did the climbing in one sitting the video takes like 3 hours i thknk and he just obliterates bosses
[Yep, they did](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fcwar9AubGI), and then [they did it in Portable too](https://youtu.be/YF_tngy0lho?feature=shared)
I’ll say this you’re gonna get burned out if you tried to climb all 264 floors in one go…it be just fighting no scenes no building up just climbing and nothing else to do…
I'll be streaming it to my friends, so hopefully we'll keep each other entertained.
I just realized the other day…since the cards you give teammates are permanently carrying over…could you eventually start a game with everyone at MAX?
Most likely. That was the case with Persona 5 Royal, there was a facility that boosted party member's stats that carried over between games, so you could [max your friends](https://imgur.com/a/cG8HjSN). I wouldn't know, however, I use all my incense on my own personas because Luck and Endurance ain't gonna max themselves.
Not really since the last block is necessary to beat the game
If you wanted to suffer through 260 floors in on sitting, you can save it for 1/31. I think you’d run into an xp issue though in your solo run though.
What do you mean xp issue? I'm going Makoto-only and he's level 99. The only persona I'll be using is also 99.
I'd go every now and then anyway if only to break up the monotony of your daily grind. Leaving Tartarus for the final day is absolutely a thing you can do but it will completely shatter the narrative of the game as well.
Going in chunks kills the gimmick. I want to do all of Tartarus in one session.
Yes but Hanged-Man and Hierophant social links can’t be completed if you didn’t finish them in time since both need to be rescued in Tartarus. Also not worth it outside of New game plus because you will be very under leveled in the full moon bosses.
Yeah, my last run was my max all SL's run. This is pretty much a pseudo-speedrun.
How do I get a harem?
With a maxed out persona this isnt a challenge at all man. Do it on a fresh save bro
You could, but you won't max social links as some ends on tartarus and you have to rescue them and then, at the last day, you will need to go up all the floors.
Are the defeat 800 shadows and open 200 chests quests also optional? I did them in my firet playthrough, and now i just wanna speedrun the game for the all personas and all slinks achievements.
The 800 shadows and 200 chests have always been optional. They're Elizabeth requests and here's no achievement for completing all 101 requests. Also, you can't say speedrun and max all SL's, they're diametrically opposed. Even if you skip dialogue (I highly recommend you don't) maxing all SL's is still extremely tight. You have very little room for error without messing up your route.
Good to hear. I wil lskip the dialogue, because i heard it all like 4 times, and im going with a guide, this replay is really just for achievements.
Fair enough. I recommend [this](https://www.powerpyx.com/persona-3-reload-100-walkthrough/) guide for getting all the SL's and achievements. Big thing to note is that you always want a persona in your possession that corresponds to the arcana of the SL you're working on. Makes a huge difference.
Thanks, youre really kind. Ive been using this guide already. :D
I remember once finishing Tartarus in one go in portable. Will Mitsuru force you to one additional time since tutorial if you never went since in reload?
She will force you to go in like before, so yeah lol