quote gobi1972

I'm taking time between the girl in the shrine, the old couple and Kenji. All three have passed level 6 now, and I'm waiting for the third full moon while leveling up my men.

The girl at the shrine and the old couple are best only done when exam time is coming up since your school S-Links are unavailable at that time. Last game I ended up with some weeks where I couldn't do any S-Links because of school holidays.

Maxed out on Kenji already - level 9.

Does the level goes down later if ya ignore him?

From what I understand, S-Link levels never go down. They can be reversed though. This happens if you say or do something very wrong during a meeting, don't see them in a long time and can happen if you break off a Sunday meeting with them.

Level 10 is always the maximum, but sometimes you need to wait for it to happen.

quote Holywhippet

A good trick to levelling up your personal stats is to hit the mall every night. If the trivia game is available, play it. Otherwise use the karaoke bar for courage or the cafe for charm. When you return to the dorm, study if you are healthy or rest if you are sick.

The arcade (where the trivia game is at) is actually far more productive (+4 stat points) than the karaoke bar or cafe (+2 stat points). Honestly, you should just take whatever is available at the arcade and forget about the cafe or the karaoke bar altogether, unless you really need a stat that's not available that night upped really, really soon.

quote gobi1972

Just started playing this game about a week ago. Just finished the First Full Moon phase (the Sorceress boss).

I'm trying to get my status to be as best as possible. So far, I managed to get my Academic and my Charm up to the 2nd notch, but my Courage needs to work. Between singing the crap out at the karaoke and eating at the Burger place, I prefer the burger place (less expensive) to boost my Courage.

A friend of mine stated that if ya do stuff when the character is in Great status, it will be double the points we get. Didn't know if this is true or not. So far, only way I could get Great is by going to the toilet (in Good status). Sometimes, it won't work.

Why don't you use the guides at GameFAQs? They're really great in offering advice on which activities or conditions give you more points and a whole lot of other stuff.

The Great status only helps you in battles, by making you critically hit and evade your enemies more often. It also gives you a greater increase in academics when you place money in the offertory box at Naganaki Shrine, but only in P3 FES, and you will end up losing the afternoon there. Another similar increase is when you study in your dorm on Sunday, but you'll also lose the whole day (again, useless since you can do 2x(+2) in the afternoon and late at night, and still have the evening free for what you want to do).
And the more expensive places increase your stats more (up to 4 points) than the less expensive ones (2 points).

Also, the movies are great places to increase your stats (+4 every use, only takes afternoons, are open every day, the only downside being that the movie type changes only from month to month, so if you want to up change the other stat [courage or charm], you'll have to wait till the whole month passes).

The film fests in particular are the greatest boost in the game, as they'll not only offer a +4 boost to a specific stat each day (including academics, which you can't do at the movies normally, and is the hardest to raise), but also up your social link points toward the person you go with (as in, if you had to go out with him one more time to make the points necessary for a level-up, this one will do just that).

Another awesome boon, though only in FES, is the arcade. It will always give you a +4 increase in a specific stat, depending on what day it is. Sunday is the only day with no stat increases there, but you get to choose from all the other stuff (Persona stat increases).

PS: I don't mean to advertise or anything (even though I'm not getting anything in return), but if you started playing for the first time, I would recommend you take a look at my program, which is meant to help people greatly in making fusion decisions. The link is in my sig if you want.

It's still a work-in-progress, but it can already calculate normal spread fusion results. That, at least, should be a bit of help, even though you can basically find the same combinations displayed on GameFAQs (triangle spread, on the other hand, is actually impractical to try and display all combinations because it takes into account the ACTUAL level of the Personas you're fusing, not the base one; the app I'm making, however, will be able to do that since it'll store the Personas you have in your Compendium in a database, so it'll calculate the fusion results on the spot).

This message was edited by Cloud737 on Nov 06 2009.

quote Matt Addison

A question from me: How much emphasis should you place on presents? Do they boost the point count by much?[/size][/color]

Yes, they do boost the point count very, very much (granted you selected the right present that girl likes, otherwise you can get a moderate or not boost at all), but are only useful on few occasions, granted you selected the right (best) answers in your previous Social Link with that girl.
You can only give presents during Sundays, when there is only a dating social link going on, which has the restriction of not allowing you to level up the Social Link that day, even if you have the required points to do so (note: points for the level up are gained BEFORE that Social Link where the level up occurs, i.e.: in the previous Social Link).

Most girls, at least in the first stages, have a low level-up points requirement, and in the later stages you'll find that presents are unnecessary since the date itself (or the normal "spending time" Social Links), granted you gave the right answers. There are exceptions, but you can circumvent those with the help of the Summer Film Festival (where you also gain a boost to your stats), however I find it troublesome to try and avoid them just for the sake of not paying.

More detailed info can be found on GameFAQs, if you'd like.