by Madarame’s Shadow is the second final boss of the Palace that we will have to defeat in Persona 5 Royal after, as usual, finding its Treasure and sending the notice, as it happens in all Palaces.
I don’t think it’s a boss that is particularly difficult, although it can be a problem if we don’t know him well, so this guide should be of great help if for some reason the boss is giving you problems or you’ve got stuck. The most important thing in this battle is to know very well the weaknesses/resistances of each of the different enemies that we will encounter, something that of course we will see in this post as well as the ideal strategy to defeat him and various tips.
BATTLE PREPARATION AND WEAKNESSES
From the outset comment on the usual, the more equipped and leveled you have your characters, the better. That will depend more on how well or poorly you optimize your time in the game than anything else. But leaving that aside, here are some tips:
- Use the Persona “Kaguya” : It is one of the persons that you can get for Joker through fusion (you can get it using the shadows that you are acquiring in Madarame’s Palace) and the truth is that it is very broken. She will feature an attack that she possesses called “Shining Arrows” that will deal very high Light damage to multiple enemies. She will be very key (although not strictly necessary) in phase 2 (we will discuss each phase in detail below).
- Use the Vanity Crystal : It is the object that we obtain by getting the 3 Seeds of Madarame’s Desire . I recommend equipping it to Joker since he will remove weaknesses from all his people and that can be quite relevant in phase 2 since they will attack you with many different items.
- Bring PS and PE Medicines : It shouldn’t be necessary, especially if you use this guide, but it never hurts to be cautious about what might happen, which is ultimately a final boss of the Palace.
- Physical Attacks in the Area : They will be great for us in phase 1.
Facing the weaknesses , you will have to take into account the following:
- In Phase 1 each part of Madarame can absorb certain types of damage:
- The Eyes absorb Electric, Ice, Fire and Wind.
- The Nose absorbs Psychic, Curse, Light and Nuclear (although we all know it’s called nu-cellar).
- The Mouth absorbs physical attacks (also from ranged weapons).
- In Phase 2 each copy of Madarame will have a specific weakness.
- The Fire copy is weak to Ice.
- The Ice one is weak to Fire.
- Electric is weak to Wind.
- The one of Wind is weak to Electric.
- They reflect all magic damage that isn’t from their element or their weakness.
- All resist physical damage.
STRATEGY TO DEFEAT MADARAME’S SHADOW
We will divide the battle into 2 clearly separated phases:
PHASE 1: THE PORTRAIT OF MADARAME
In this phase, the important thing is to know what elements each part of the body absorbs (you have it above) and that you try to defeat all the parts more or less simultaneously (because if you don’t do it like this, the living parts can revive the other parts). deceased, although luckily they will return with little life). Of course, when you start, simply focus on a specific part of the body so that the event in which it revives said part jumps (the first time you have to eat it, yes or yes).
When he revives the first part of the face, he will start to randomly apply an ability to one of your characters that will paint him completely black. The black painted character will be weak to all elements so be careful with him. Also, this effect surpasses even the debuff removal effect of the Vanity Crystal, so you’ll have to pray that it doesn’t apply to Joker (assuming you’ve equipped it to him as I recommended above).
The case, that the best strategy that you can follow here is to use Physical Attacks in the area such as «Madness» or «Violent Blow» (people like «Oni», «Captain Kidd» from Ryuji or «Goemon» from Yusuke) since with this «element» you can hit both eyes and also the nose simultaneously. So after this you will only have to hit the mouth with magical attacks (individual attacks if you do not want to heal the other parts in case they are alive) to end this phase.
Another thing I would like to comment on is that sometimes one of the Eyes will increase the ATK of the Mouth, it is highly recommended to lower it when this happens or else it will do a lot of damage.
PHASE 2: THE MADARAME COPY PASTE
After this, Madarame will begin to create copies of himself (his greatest gift). Here forget about using attacks in the area of the Electric, Ice, Fire and Wind elements since it will be easy for a character to be killed if we do (above in the weaknesses section it is better explained). Do not use physical attacks in area either since they resist them.
The strategy to follow is to hit each copy with its weakness (with individual attacks, use Relay and so on) until, ideally, you finish them all off as quickly as you can, and after that proceed to hit Madarame a bit (it won’t take long to summon again). new to other copies, it’s random what items these will have). Since you need to have Fire, Ice, Wind and Electric damage, it is important that you can hit with all these elements through your characters (if you do not have Yusuke in the group, for example, make sure that Joker has someone who does damage of Ice such as “Jack Frost”).
This would be the usual strategy, but if you get the Kaguya Persona I’ve recommended above, you’ll want to use its Shining Arrows attack to literally fan all copies in one turn (you’ll also damage Madarame); It sounds crazy but I did it and the damage that attack does at this point in the game doesn’t make sense. It consumes a ton of XP though, so you’ll most likely need to use an XP recovery item on Joker at some point in the battle.
Also keep in mind that when Madarame has summoned several copies, he will start to summon some with altered states, something that will make things much easier. If he summons you some that are asleep, his thing is that you do not attack them since they will not be able to attack until someone wakes them up with a blow. Although in my case, as I was going with Kaguya, I didn’t care a bit and I kept blowing them all up with «Bright Arrows».
You will have to lower all his life during this phase, so nothing, follow this strategy until you defeat him.
