Reaper Persona Guide (Experience Farming)
Super Strong Enemy Shadow
In Mementos, a strong enemy shadow known as the Reaper occasionally appears. The reaper resembles a phantom wearing a tattered cloak and wields a pair of guns. It is a strong shadow that cannot be beaten unless you are at a fairly high level. It is advised to avoid the Reaper when it appears as it is very strong. However, if you can knock it out, you can obtain, not only a huge amount of experience but also unlock a trophy, and a chance to receive the Divine Pillar, an accessory which halves, damage at the cost of losing evade.
Stats
| Inherit | Reflects | Absorbs | Block | Resists | Weak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| – | – | – | – | – | – |
The Reaper does not have any weaknesses, resists, or any other interactions with attributes.
Attacks
Reaper can afford to use either normal attacks or magic spells. Its normal attacks can’t be disabled, reflected, or absorbed. Meanwhile, its magic skills range from single target to multi-hitting. Reapers can also use other skills such as those with the Gun attribute or buffs like Concentrate.
How, Easily Defeat the Reaper
It is highly recommended to fight the Reaper during Flu Season. When encountering shadows during this condition, including the Reaper, they have a chance of entering the battle under the effects of Despair. This will cause the shadow to succumb to despair and die after three turns.
How to Grind for Experience
- Go to Mementos during “Flu Season”.
- Head to the waiting room and save your progress.
- After saving, move to an area and stand still until the Reaper appears.
- Battle starts when the reaper emerges.
- Continue to fight if the reaper is affected by Despair. If it does not have despair, flee from battle and challenge it again.
- Under despair, stall it by using “Guard.”
- If the enemy gets knocked out from despair, head to the waiting room and save.
- After saving, return to the area and wait until the Reaper appears again.
- Repeat the above procedure.
When under the effects of despair, the Reaper will perish after a few turns. Because you can get a large amount of experience when winning, this can be a valuable method when grinding levels.
Notes on this method
- You don’t need special skills to earn experience.
- Take note of flu season warnings, as they only occur at certain periods of time.
- Flu season warnings occur only during the following periods.
- In P5R, the Reaper is immune to Despair.
- In P5R, after defeating the Reaper in that area, you need to move to the next area to encounter another.
Flu Season Advisory Periods
- Month: 11, days: 13-11 / 15
- Month: 12, days: 8-12 / 9
These times are the only periods of time when flu season warnings occur. Since they last for a short period of time, those wanting to try this method of fighting the Reaper need to pay careful attention to the time. Even during the flu season period, the Reaper’s Despair is random. The method may have to be repeated if the Reaper appears without Despair.
Reward
After defeating a Reaper you’ll gain massive experience points. Apart from that, you’ll also unlock the trophy “A Unique Rebel.” There’s also a chance that the defeated Reaper drops a rare accessory, the Divine Pillar. When equipped, Perfect Pillar halves the damage of an incoming attack. There’s a catch though, if you wear this accessory, your character won’t be able to dodge the attack, which means you’ll be forced to take the halved damage.
Other Persona Compendium Guides
| Persona Overview | Acquiring Personas | Treasure Personas |
| Reaper Persona | Awakened Personas | Ultimate Personas |
Persona 5 Royal Recommended Article List
| Persona 5 / Persona 5 Royal Recommended Articles | ||
|---|---|---|
| News and Features | Story Walkthroughs | Palace Guides |
| Boss Guides | Characters | Confidants |
| Persona Compendium | Electric Chair and Skill Cards | Confidant Gift Guide |
Please put more work in it. The information is only true for vanilla Persona 5 and not for Persona 5 Royal.
this guide is irrelevant now that the reaper is immune to despair
In Persona 5 Royal, casting Makarakarn onto Joker restricts Reaper to using Concentrate + Megidolaon. I had Ryuji/Yusuke with Charge using God Hand + Brave Blade. Makoto kept us healed. Joker swapping with debuffing Reaper and dealing damage.
Tetraja appears to have the same effect. My first win was very easy with Maria equipped by Joker casting Tetraja first off and then Heat Riser and healing as needed (and any other buffs/rebuffs you may put on her, but I would keep her unique passive HP/SP regain skills and get Spell Master on her if possible), and my party dealing damage.
In Persona 5 Royal, the Reaper is immune to the Despair status, and the flu season trick no longer works.
It’s much easier to let Joker solo the reaper than depend on his teammates who are a liability when the reaper hits their weaknesses and gets an extra turn. You need a damage dealer (Yoshitsune – hassou tobi, sharp student, arms master, drain ice, drain wind, drain psy, drain nuke, repel curse / Kaguya – shining arrows, repel phys, bless amp, bless boost, magic ability, ali dance, angelic grace, drain fire) and a persona with repel/drain/resistance to everything except almighty (Rangda, Shiva, Alilat, Fafnir, Lucifer, Messiah) and Concentrate/Charge with support skills (thermopylae/heat up/debilitate). Healing items might be required.
And then I soloed the reaper on merciless 😀
I was level 40 and killed him using a very obvious method.
–If you have DLC–
Use debilitate, Concentrate, Heavy almighty damage. Rinse and repeat. Keep up accuracy and evasion and just have SP healing items just in case. After you get uo to level 60 he’s easy.
–Without DLC persona–
Get the items that use debiliate effect such as the items from the clothing store, or those Ofuba you find in chests. With at least 4 you can use the same method. Just stay strong and check it out. It’ll work eventually.
He doesn’t get affected by flu in p5r, however having snuff souls and soul foods while using izanagi-no-okami is effective since each shadow has to take the brunt force of the almighty attacks.
This was patched out in P5R. The flu season is no longer a viable option for easy grinding.
I didn’t know this TBH. I encountered the reaper around July whilst still lvl 25, and I run like my life really depended on it lolol.
I did fought him on my first play through though, lvl 65, Dec 9th.
On the first two tries it was effective, and on second try he coughed up the divine pillar. On the third try I wasn’t lucky since my eyes got too strained from all the darkness on the Adyeshach path lol. How much EXP he gave, I really didn’t remember. XD
on easy difficulty he gives 75kexp and on merciless he gives 28kexp
Really?! Wow, that is cool!
so that’s the reason why the average level for players during that period are way higher than mine…
but I managed to defeat the last dungeon/last boss easily without defeating this optional boss. I guess I will try to defeat him on NG+
Game breaker, if you take narcissus with ambient aid for greatly increases success rate of ailments during rain, pollen, or flu (very easy despair)
Game breaker, I would only suggest doing it on your New Game+ playthrough because the rest of the game is hilariously easy after you do it even once
But still, an awesome trick, now if only farming gold were so easy, the Memento boss trick is so annoying and random STOP THROWING ME MUSCLE DRINKS lolol
*same commenter as comment listed at 9:15*
A thought occurred to me, but a step you might want to include for ease of use in this strategy is perhaps have escape items (cannot remember the name of P5’s escape item at this time, as I am currently still trying to use this method to farm up XD But its a thought worth noting even without the name of the item)
Tried this for the first time just now. First time I found him, almost got wiped out. Second time… SCORE! XD I am not ready to face him normally by any means, but doing this was no big deal at all. Just save in the waitroom and keep trying if you fail to survive an encounter without.
I use it cos I’m on ng+, for first playthrough it isn’t advisable
I tried this method on influenza day but the odds of a reaper with despair status is very low. I enagged and escaped more then 15 times without it happening. It’s possible they patched the US version.
I just did it and it worked for me
@Kuro Glad it helped you 🙂 do enjoy playing Persona 5 and please do check out our website for any games that you may need guides, tips or walkthroughs on 🙂
@Anon that may be possible, i do hope the guide helps you for gaining experience. please do try it out