At the heart of Atlus' action spin-off is Persona 5 Strikers' Personas, a physical manifestation of a character’s psyche. Symbolising inner strength in the face of adversity, Personas are central to our fight against Shadows. The thing is, as a spin-off sequel, Strikers has a few key differences in how they work.
If you’re a frequent Velvet Room visitor wanting to know what’s changed, or you’ve never played a Persona game before—if the latter's the case, my Persona 5 Strikers guide primer will be useful—with the following breakdown I'll be covering everything you need to know about how to get all Personas in Persona 5 Strikers, and how they work.
How to fuse and strengthen Personas in Strikers
The Velvet Room is a key location in each Persona game, located between consciousness and unconsciousness, and its primary function is to cultivate Personas. Run by Igor in previous games, every Persona protagonist has at one point been his 'guest'. It takes different forms depending on the protagonist’s psyche, and for Joker, it appears as a prison cell. Sometimes, Joker is called there automatically when the story advances, but each city contains a blue door that leads to it. You can also enter it from your hideout.
As Igor doesn't appear in Strikers, his assistant Lavenza guides us. In the Velvet Room you can fuse two existing Personas irreversibly to create stronger ones, transferring skills between them. A fee is occasionally required, and in Strikers, some Personas can only be acquired through fusion. Joker can fuse larger Persona groups later for better results, recall previous ones from a registry and strengthen them too.
Strikers offers two ways to improve your Personas, outside of EXP grinding. In the Velvet Room, you can improve Persona stats like strength and defence individually, using Persona Points earned from fusions and the collection of new masks. Skill cards are back from Persona 5, too, letting you assign skills Personas wouldn’t naturally learn. Considering each shadow has resistances/weaknesses like before, they're a great way of varying abilities.
Players can also improve every Persona through the BOND system. There are four BOND skills:
- Martial Arts: Increases damage for physical skills.
- Spiritual Arts: Increases damage from magical skills.
- Supportive Arts: Increases duration for buffs and debuffs from skills.
- Tactical Arts: Increases chance for skills to inflict status ailments.
There are also Strikers-specific Personas. Treasure Demons are uncatchable, but offer high rewards for defeating them within a given time limit. You can increase their appearance rate by ranking up the 'Treasure Hunter' BOND skill. Dire Shadows are very high level, distinguishable by the electric sparks around them. You need to come back later if you wish to challenge them, but know they aren’t to be taken lightly.
Powerful Enemies will also appear from August 24. Most Jails have one each and defeating them unlocks them as a Persona fusion in the Velvet Room. It’s optional, but should you be interested, Lavenza will ask you to destroy them.
All Persona 5 Strikers Personas list: Where to get each personality
So, how do you get Personas? Strikers doesn’t include Persona 5’s negotiation tactic, so some Personas drop masks once defeated. You can’t guarantee a mask will appear, though you can increase your chances with the 'Joker’s Wild' BOND skill. If Joker is at maximum Persona capacity, they get sent straight to the registry. Every Jail holds different Personas, and, unlike Persona 5, Jails don’t disappear upon completion—so you can revisit them if you miss one.
Excluding each Phantom Thief’s own Persona, this comprehensive list details which Personas Joker can get, what Jail they're in and their base levels when first captured. As Treasure Demons cannot be captured, they're not included here. So here's how to get them all, just be wary of minor spoilers:
Shibuya Jail
- Andras: Level 10
- Archangel: Level 19
- Jack-o’-Lantern: Level 2
- Mokoi: Level 8
- Pixie: Level 2
- Silky: Level 6
- Succubus: Level 11
Sendai Jail
- Berith: Level 15
- Bicorn: Level 4
- High Pixie: Level 16
- Lamia: Level 18
- Orthrus: Level 21
- Pisaca: Level 22
- Slime: Level 12
- Unicorn: Level 38
Sapporo Jail
- Eligor: Level 31
- Jack Frost: Level 24
- Kaiwan: Level 30
- Lilim: Level 25
- Mothman: Level 28
- Mithra: Level 33
- Mithras: Level 41
- Principality: Level 27
- Setanta: Level 26
Okinawa Jail
- Arahabaki: Level 36
- Black Ooze: Level 33
- Legion: Level 34
- Shiisa: Level 35
Kyoto Jail
- Kikuri-Hime: Level 40
- Koppa Tengu: Level 39
- Kurama Tengu: Level 52
- Neko Shotgun: Level 37
- Okuninushi: Level 42
Osaka Jail
- Fortuna: Level 49
- Ganesha: Level 47
- Naga: Level 44
- Norn: Level 53
- Raja Naga: Level 50
- Sarasvati: Level 48
- Valkyrie: Level 45
Abyss Jail
- Abaddon: Level 66
- Bugbear: Level 53
- Hecatoncheires: Level 46
- Lillith: Level 54
- Mot: Level 57
Tree Of Life And Wisdom
- Dominion: Level 62
- Forneus: Level 60
- Kali: Level 64
- Yatagarasu: Level 58
Velvet Room-Only Fusions
- Alice: Level 75
- Ame-no-Uzume: Level 23
- Black Frost: Level 67 (Unlocked in Shibuya Jail, Powerful Enemy)
- Cerberus: Level 57 (Unlocked in Osaka Jail, Powerful Enemy)
- Cu Chulainn: Level 59
- Hua Po: Level 13
- King Frost: Level 63 (Unlocked in Sapporo Jail, Powerful Enemy)
- Lucifer: Level 90 (New Game Plus only)
- Mara: Level 72 (Unlocked in Okinawa Jail, Powerful Enemy)
- Metatron: Level 80 (Unlocked from Tree Of Life And Wisdom, Powerful Enemy)
- Nebiros: Level 55
- Queen Mab: Level 43
- Seth: Level 51 (Unlocked in Sendai Jail, Powerful Enemy)
- Siegfried: Level 69 (Unlocked in Kyoto Jail, Powerful Enemy)
- Thor: Level 61
- Trumpeter: Level 56
- Yoshitsune: Level 78
- The Reaper
Persona 5 players will likely remember The Reaper. If you lingered on one floor in Mementos for more than two minutes, they’d suddenly appear, accompanied by the sound of jingling chains. Taking on the Reaper requires you to complete Strikers first. Once you've loaded up a cleared save, Lavenza advises you to take down the Powerful Enemies.
Once these requests are completed and you’ve successfully defeated each boss again, The Reaper appears in Okinawa’s Jail as the ultimate boss. Defeating them doesn’t unlock this powerful foe as a Persona, but it opens up New Game Plus, where you can fuse Lucifer.
How are Personas different in Strikers?
There’s one key difference. Each Persona represents an Arcana, which are (mostly) based off Tarot cards. These also correlate to in-game Confidants. For example, Ryuji has The Chariot, but Makoto has The Priestess. By building relationships with these characters, Persona 5 offers an EXP boost when creating a new Persona from a matching Arcana. As Strikers scraps the Confidant system, this boost no longer applies.
