How do you beat Margaret in Persona 3 Portable?

How do you beat Margaret in Persona 3 Portable?

Dan Webb

One of the more pleasant surprises in Persona 3 Portable over its predecessor, Persona 3 FES, is the inclusion of Persona 4 Golden’s Margaret, who is available to fight against behind the Paradigm Door in the Tartarus entrance, just next to the Velvet Room door.

Because Persona 3 Portable released after vanilla Persona 4, there are some cool Easter eggs in the game, like the appearance of Vincent (from Catherine), the cameo from a young Yukiko Amagi, as well as a brief appearance from “the women of questionable age” Miss Kashiwagi. None are as cool, or as challenging as the Margaret battle though. One of the hardest in the game (maybe the franchise), and just as challenging as the Elizabeth fight.

In this guide we’ll run you through the best strategies, what Personas you need, what weapons and armour you need, and so on. Strap in, folks, this one is gonna take a while… just like the boss fight itself!

How can you fight Margaret in Persona 3 Portable?

The Margaret boss fight can be found in Persona 3 Portable behind the Paradigm Door that will appear in the Tartarus entrance, after Elizabeth says that there is someone that wants to meet you. Inside the Paradigm door there will be two sets of doors.

The back set of doors will contain all the full moon bosses that you will have fought throughout the school year, starting with the Priestess fight and ending with the Hanged Man boss fight. These fights, of which there are 8, however, are certainly harder than the ones you fought throughout the story itself, as they’ll be a higher level, cause more damage and take less damage to boot. The rules for fighting them, however, don’t really differ from one to the next.

The front row of doors will be specific challenges, with a preset of characters and abilities and items at your disposal. They’re almost like puzzles. The Power door, for instance, will have you fighting against 3 of the beefy looking shadows, where they’ll be susceptible to only one type of physical damage at a time, and will change their resistances from one turn to the next. For that one, you have to work out what they were last susceptible to and what they could then be their weakness on the next turn. The tip for that one is to fight them one at a time, as they don’t do anything until you attack them. Complete all 5 challenge doors, along with the 8 full moon boss doors, and a new door will appear, where Margaret will be ready and waiting to test your strength.

It’s worth noting that you’ll have to opt to be a pacifist at the end of December for this door to appear, as you’ll get the phone call from Elizabeth in January, to say her sister wants to challenge you.

 

What team should I use for the Margaret boss fight?

The ideal team for fighting Margaret is using the following:

  • Main character
  • Yukari Takeba
  • Akihiko Sanada
  • Aigis

This is for very specific reasons. Firstly, Yukari will act as your healer in the fight, Akihiko will act as your debuff character, Aigis will buff your party, and you’ll be the main damage dealer.

I tried a few other combinations, but this one worked perfectly. And a last point on this one: everyone needs to be level 99, so that they have 999 health. Without that it’s going to be tough.

So, if you need to level them up, just roam around the Monad Depths until everyone is level 99. Rather than going from floor 1 to the top to escape, you can either take Traesto Gems with you (to escape dungeons) or just do one sweep of the first floor and use the teleporter to exit and then go again. If you have a multi-elemental Persona (or a few with you), you can take out most enemies on your own and finish them off with an All Out Attack.

Remember, the key is to end the battle with a Card Shuffle so you can get the XP multipliers, which you are guaranteed to get if you end the battle on either the main character’s turn, or by using an All Out Attack. This will save you the most time.

 

What equipment & items should my team have to fight Margaret?

Before we get onto which Personas you need for this fight, it’s first important to kit all your characters out with the best equipment. That means weapons, armour, shoes and accessories. Here’s what you’ll need for all the characters and where to get it.

Ultimate Weapons

For the ultimate weapons you’ll need to fuse certain Personas with Nihil items (that you get from killing Treasure Hands in Tartarus - AKA the gold shadows) at Shinshoudo Antiques. The Personas you need to fuse are:

  • Main character - Male: Fuse Lucifer and get Lucifer’s Blade. Female: Fuse Kartikaya and get Vel Vel Muruga.
  • Yukari - Fuse Chi You and get the Quintessence Bow.
  • Akihiko - Fuse Mara and get Masakado’s Katana.
  • Aigis - Fuse Metatron and get Metatronius.

As a quick note: it doesn’t matter what Nihil you have here. For instance, you can make Yukari’s ultimate bow with Nihil Gloves. Same with all the characters and their respective weapons.

All ultimate weapons have an attack of 450, but more importantly, add 10 to all stats. Which is an immense upgrade.

Body & Feet Armour

For the body armour, you’re going to want to get 3 x Armor of Light for the main character, Yukari and Akihiko. This fantastic piece of armour has a defence of 170, but more importantly has “Resist Magic (High)” as its perk. Aigis is slightly different, for her you need the Soul of Athena, which has 160 defence, but no perk.

In terms of feet armour, you’re going to want to equip the Akihiko and Yukari with the Shoes of Light, a piece of armour that has 140 evade, as well as an “Evade Physical (high)” perk too. For the main character, anything goes, except the Shoes of Light, because it’ll be rendered useless with the accessory we’re going to put on them. For the main character, just pick anything there (it’ll become apparent when we get to the accessories why we’ve said this). For Aigis, you’re going to want to equip the Swan Legs, which have 100 evade.

All of these bits of armour come from exactly the same place: from the heart item gift that Messiah rewards the player with when he gets to level 98.

The key to getting this item easily is to fuse Messiah by fusing Orpheus and Thanatos together, but only once you’ve reached level 10 in the Judgment Social Link rank (by reaching the top of Tartarus after December 31st).

The EXP boost from the 10 Social Link will take Messiah most of the way to level 98. Then, you’ll want to go into Monad Depths and grind the character up to level 97, and get as close to level 98 as you can. Then, when Messiah is only a 1,000 or so EXP away from levelling up, exit Monad, head to the Velvet Room and register that version of him.

After that, exit the Velvet Room, save the game and then head out into the Monad Depths again. Get the EXP you need to level up and see what item he gives you (it could be 1 of 6 different items). If it’s one of the items you need, discard Messiah in the Persona menu, after pressing Y or triangle, and pressing Y or triangle again when he’s highlighted and then proceed to save the game.

The next step is going back to the Velvet Room, purchasing the saved version of Messiah and doing it all over again. If it’s not the item you want, or it’s a dupe you don’t need, load the save. This is likely going to set you back a few million yen, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

Accessory

In terms of accessories, you’ll want to equip the Divine Pillar accessory on the main character, which “Lowers damage, but cannot dodge.” You’ll get this from levelling up Alilat to level 90 and unlocking the heart item gift (you’ll only be able to fuse Alilat if you max out the Empress Social Link (Mitsuru).

In terms of the other 3, you have 2 choices: 1. Grind out the Divine Pillars like you did the Messiah heart items and get one for all of them; or 2. Equip them with boosting abilities for their magic, like Vayu Bracers for Yukari (which greatly boosts wind), Indra Bracers for Akihiko (which greatly boosts electricity) and Eye of Thunder for Aigis (which gives her a higher chance of avoiding electricity attacks). The latter was key to stop Margaret exploiting her weakness and giving her an extra attack. Those three items can be found in rare chests throughout Tartarus, and we had in our inventory when we were setting up our build for Margaret in late January.

Your call there. We opted for the latter, if that helps.

Items

I also bought a load of supplies from the Shinshoudo Antiques, to make sure I had enough back-up solutions, in case I needed them. These items included:

  • Homunculus - you’ll need at least 10 for this fight. The more the better
  • Magic Mirror (you could ignore this, to be honest, as using it is a risky strategy if it doesn’t pay off).
  • Attack Mirrors (these can turn the tide of battle late on - do not use in phase 1 unless you want to heal Margaret).
  • And I loaded up on King of Wands cards, so that as many of my fighting Personas had 99 magic (more on that shortly).
  • You can also buy an Armageddon if you have enough resources. We’ll pretend we don’t have one in this guide, so don’t worry too much about that.

I also bought a handful of Fierce, Agility and Protection Sutras, just in case Akihiko wasn’t able to act, or if he needed to use his thunder/bash attacks. I also had a ton of gems that were going to waste, so I bought a load of Megido Gems too, so that no-one had a wasted turn.

On top of that I also bought as many Yawn-B-Gones from the school reception, so that we’d all go into the fight with at least “Good” status. If you go in with “Tired”, you’re going to lose.

 

Which Personas should you use?

Unlike the Elizabeth boss fight, this one is going to take multiple Personas to get through… that is, however, unless you fused a super Persona with all tier-4 elements. We’ll assume you haven’t, as that can be a long winded and frustrating affair.

We took 6 Personas into battle against Margaret, all for very different reasons:

  • The first can be anyone, as they’re a throwaway Persona who were imbued with Auto-Mataru and Auto-Maraku before the fight, so the party had its attack and defence power up going into the fight.
  • Odin - For “Thunder Reign.”
  • Orpheus Telos - Who we imbued with “Niflheim” (the same one we used to fight Elizabeth).
  • Norn - For “Panta Rhei.”
  • Surt - For “Ragnarok.”
  • Helel - Who should have “Mind Charge” and “Morning Star” for phase 1.

Firstly, for the opening Persona, it can be anyone, just get the Auto-Maraku and Auto-Mataru skill cards from Raphael (at level 68) and Melchizedek (at 68 too) respectively, and put them on any Persona, as long as they’re not mentioned above.

These don’t all need to be level 99, in truth. Going into the final battle mine were far below that: Odin was 70, Norn was 70 too, Surt was 67, Helel was 94 and my Orpheus Telos was 95.

The key here is though, that if they’re not level 90 or so, you need their magic to be 99. In order to do that you’ll need to buy a load of “King of Wands” cards from the antique shop (these will boost the Magic by 4 on any Persona).

You’ll need a ton of Onyx and Garnet for these though (2 Onyx and 1 Garnet per card). At this point of the game I had more than enough Garnet, but if you don’t try repeating the Emperor/Empress Vision Quest when you pass through the Paradigm Door in the Tartarus lobby. After getting Absorb Strike and Last Judgement, you’ll be able to get 25 Garnets (in two batches: a 20 and a 5).

In terms of Onyx, you can grind at the end of the Arqa block in Tartarus (block 2) for these. You’ll find that the Lustful Snakes, Killing Hands and Enslaved Beasts drop a decent amount. So, try the 47th floor and just sweep the floor killing everything, until you reach the top of the second block. If you don’t have enough, exit and do the same.

Once you have all those Personas, all those items, everyone is level 99 and you have all the best armour and weapons, you’re good to give it a shot.

 

Persona 3 Portable Margaret Boss Fight Strategy

The Margaret boss fight in Persona 3 Portable is effectively broken down into 4 phases. Phase 1 is a purely physical stage; phase 2 is a combination of status ailments and magic; phase 3 is all magic, all the time; and finally, phase 4 is all-out war.

Margaret has an impressive 30,000 HP and each phase consists of 10 rounds (except the last phase), with each turn of said round, she has 2 turns. If you’ve not done enough damage in a phase, like her sister she’ll summon Pixie and she’ll drop a 9,999 Megidolaon on your party and that’ll be that. In order to avoid that, you need to do 5,000 damage a stage for the first 3 phases. If you do more damage on the previous phase, that’ll effectively carry over to the next. In short: you need to have done 5,000 damage by the 10th round, 10,000 by the 20th, 15,000 by the 30th, and then 30,000 by the 50th. If it gets past wave 50, yup, you guessed it, it’s Pixie time. 

Those are the basics, now to get into the strategy. 

Phase 1

Phase 1 is a purely physical stage. She’ll deal physical damage, you have to deal it back. However, if you hit her with the wrong physical damage, you’ll actually heal her. In essence, her pattern is:

  • If she uses Piercing attacks like Primal Force or Myriad Arrows - Use slash or bash attacks on her.
  • If she’s using Blade attacks like Brave Blade or Vorpal Blade - Use bash or pierce attacks on her.
  • If she’s using Bash attacks like Akasha Arts or God’s Hand - Use slash or pierce on her.

I tried many strats for stage one, including a Vorpal Blade, Primal Force and God’s Hand setup, with a boost to melee damage, but the actual best strategy for stage one bypasses all that. Stage 1 is Helel’s stage.

We found that using Helel’s Mind Charge and then using Morning Star in the next turn did significantly more damage. Well, it did when we got the strategy down. Here’s the best way to beat phase 1, which honestly, was her hardest stage.

First things first though, the first turn is a free turn, so we opted to bust out Odin and use Thunder Reign, and then followed up with physical attacks, which are guaranteed crits against shocked parties. This allowed us to cause over 1,000 damage in the first round alone. The rest of the phase should play out like this though.

  • Round 1: Change from your starter Persona, who makes sure you start the fight with Auto-Mataru and Auto-Maraku (boost attack and defence of the party), and use Odin and and cast Thunder Reign on Margaret, then crit her with every subsequent attack from Akihiko, Yukari and Aigis.
  • Round 2: Mind Charge with Helel, while Akihiko debuffs Margaret by dropping her defence. Yukari, who is on healing duty usually, is free to heal if necessary, or attack if Margaret is susceptible to piercing damage. Same with Aigis, who would usually buff the party here, but because the Auto-Mataru and Auto-Maraku are still in play, so that’s not needed. She can either attack, or improve the evasion and hit-rate of the party.
  • Round 3: With your attack up, and Margaret’s defence down, cast Morning Star, a spell that ignores the rules of the physical fight, and does great damage. Aigis can either buff or attack, while Yukari can heal or attack, depending on the circumstances. Remember, in round 3 the Auto-Mataru and Auto-Maraku will still be in effect.

That’s pretty much the crux of the first phase though. The next round of attacks you’ll want to get Aigis to go hard on the buffs, as Auto-Mataru and Auto-Maraku will have worn off. In terms of debuffs and buffs, you want to time it so that after you’ve cast Mind Charge with Helel, Aigis boosts the party damage, while Akihiko drops Margaret’s defence. This strategy should see you through the first phase relatively easily. As long as you remember:

  • Main character Mind Charges and then Morning Stars.
  • Yukari attacks, heals and throws Megido Gems when she has nothing else to do.
  • Aigis buffs your party and attacks when buffs are all in place.
  • Akihiko debuffs Margaret. Because Margaret takes 2 turns at a time, the debuffs don’t last as long. So it’s likely that’s all he’ll do here in this phase. Maybe the odd attack.

Phase 1 will end when Margaret breaks the pattern of physical attacks and heads into the status ailments phase.

 

Phase 2

Good stuff! You’ve got past the hardest stage, in my opinion, the rest is about patience and concentration. It’s hard, yes, but nowhere near as testing as that first stage. Especially with the frustrating crits coming left, right and centre! Phase 2 is all about status ailments, interspersed with magic spells. This is the cute little Neko Shogun’s phase who will be on attack duty, with Mokoi dropping the status ailments on your ass. So it’ll be very obvious when you’re in phase 2.

For this phase, my honest bit of advice would not be to use Salvation or cure the poison that Margaret deals to you. The poison is a far more manageable status ailment to deal with, especially with Yukari on healing duty. Plus, if you get rid of the poison state, you could be open to much more… like Charmdi… and let me tell you, folks… Charmdi is the worst if you don’t have Orpheus Telos equipped with Unshaken Will. So, leave the poison in place, have Yukari heal every turn.

In this stage, Margaret only has defences against light and dark magic, meaning everything else is fair game. In this phase I opted for a straight up barrage.

In this phase I used Odin’s Thunder Reign, as I did in the very first turn of the whole fight, to shock and do damage to Margaret. Yukari would heal (or heal every other turn, attacking when she isn’t healing), while Aigis and Akihiko would periodically buff and debuff the party, and attacking with standard attacks when they weren’t. Aigis can basically buff the attack and then attack for 2 turns before she has to buff it again. In terms of Akihiko, I decided not to go for debuffs too often, and to take the opportunity to land a critical hit. With the main character shocking Margaret, and 2 crits, I was doing around 1,000 damage a round. And there were 10 rounds of this!

So, we needed to do 5K damage to pass the round, we definitely did over 10K, meaning time was on our side for phase 3 and 4.

When Neko Shotgun goes away, Margaret starts using the blobby Mitamas. Phase 2 is now complete.

 

Phase 3

The first thing you want to do in phase 3 is cast Salvation and remove the poison status. This will open up Yukari for wind attacks, should she be able to.

Phase 3 is a straight up magic face-off. Margaret will cast 2 heavy elemental spells back to back. So, watch out for Maziodyne, Magarudyne, Maragidyne and Mabufudyne. The only one of real issue here is the Maziodyne, as it can crit and will crit Aigis. When she does, she’ll get “1 More.”

When it comes to your turn, you basically need to hit her with the opposite elemental effect to the spell she just used. So, counter Maziodyne with wind attacks. Counter Magarudyne with electricity attacks. Counter Maragidyne with ice attacks, and Mabufudyne with fire attacks. It’s that simple.

In this phase your main character would pretty much use the severe versions to counteract what Margaret just used. Meaning, you’d use Odin’s Thunder Reign after a wind attack; Surt’s Ragnarok after an ice attack; Norn’s Panta Rhei after an electricity attack; and (in my case), my Orpheus Telos, who has Niflheim, after a fire attack.

As for Yukari, Akihiko and Aigis. 

Aigis would be on buff most of the time. When all the buffs are still active, if you have elemental gems opposite to what Margaret cast, use them. Yukari will, of course, be on healing duty, only taking a break to use her wind attacks after Margaret last casts an electricity attack. Similarly, Akihiko will be all about debuffing, only to take a break to use lightning attacks after Margaret uses a wind attack.

That’s pretty much it for 10 turns. The only issue in this round is Margaret hammering Aigis’ weakness to electricity. In order to get around this, have Akihiko debuff her hit and evasion rate, while Aigis buffs the party’s hit and evasion rate. That works an absolute treat. Well, it did for me.

When Margaret casts Mind Charge and Power Charge, phase 3 has ended and phase 4 has begin.

 

Phase 4

Stage 4 is all out warfare, with Margaret using whatever she pleases, whenever she pleases. So, that means physical attacks like Akasha Arts, status ailment spells, elemental spells and plenty of Mind and Power Charges. There are no rules in this stage. If you have an Armageddon, and you’re convinced she’s under 9,999 health, use it if you wish. If you don’t have one, like we didn’t, it’s time to go toe-to-toe.

My first bit of advice would be to use an Attack Mirror. First time I got this far I used a Magic Mirror as well, which was great until she busted out Thor, who used Maziodyne, it reflected, and healed Margaret for an insane amount. So, my advice: Attack Mirror is fantastic, Magic Mirror can be great, but it’s also super risky.

In this turn, you’re pretty much going to repeat what you did in phase 2, which is have Odin use Thunder Reign, and your other squad members to do standard attacks, dealing great critical damage. This works until at some point she’ll go more elemental, with the likes of Thor coming out of the woodwork to deal elemental damage. At this point you’ll use the opposite spells to what was last cast, like you did in phase 3.

From here it’s a straight up fight to the finish. Whenever you repel her physical attacks, use another Attack Mirror. Whenever she uses Mind and Power Charge, go back to the Odin rotation. Your main attack character should be damaging Margaret, all of the time, while Yukari goes between damage and healing, Akihiko goes between debuffs and attacks, and Aigis goes between buffing your party and attacks.

Stick to this formula and you’ll have Margaret beaten in no time whatsoever. And once you beat her, congrats, you can now say you’ve beaten one of Persona’s toughest bosses… ever!

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