Persona 3 Reload

To get all 19 non-story related Social Links maxed before the deadline on January 31st 2010, you can use these tips:

1) Pick the best dialogue options to get the most points in every meeting. There are a lot of websites you can check these, such as https://www.rpgsite.net/
Simply type character name and check what you have to say. The more points you get, the more possibility you'll have him available to raise Link by one rank once again next time, otherwise the main character will say "I don't think our bond will become stronger" and you'll have to waste one day just to get missing points. If that happens, don't rush it just yet (I will get to that in point 5) and better spend time with someone else;

2) Try having in your possession persona of every relevant Arkana you currently completing, by fusing them in the Velvet room or simply from the Shuffle time in Tartarus. It's not necessary, but you will gain bonus points with every meeting;

3) Always prioritise Links from school over those from city, because they won't be available during vacations and one week before every exams (except for Mitsuru in December). Links like Gourmet King or Old Couple you can find in the city are always available, so better complete them only when there is nothing else to do.

In fact, you should complete all school Links by the end of the year, because on January 8th there will be a completely new Link appearing that you have to do from 0 to 10, and you'll have only 18 school days for it, after which the game ends. Be warned;

4) There are also two Links, Online Game and Dying Young Man (you must complete Maiko Link to unlock), that are usually available only on Sundays, so don't waste any chance interacting with them;

5) And finally, there are a lot of ways to gain bonus points for Links outside meetings. Shrine is available only during days, so it's mostly useless, and walk with Koromaru in the evening is kinda random, you won't have a chance to choose a character, so better spend evenings on Tartarus, raising stats (you need all level 6 for access to Fuuka, Yukari and Mitsuru Links) and two evening Social Links in Paulina mall. Everything changes in early December, when Suspicious Man in Club Escapade starts selling Dating Site Note. Buy as much as you need and spend evenings with the computer in the dorm, choose characters you don't have enough points to progress with and next time you meet them they will finally be free to proceed. Which means you won't need to waste precious days on getting missing points with them anymore, because you can do it on evenings.

And that's pretty much everything you need. By sticking to these tips, you must be alright and max-out every Link before the game ends.
Thanks for reading.

This achievement may seem a bit daunting, but I don't think it's too bad overall, I didn't have a perfect run but was still able to all the links, plus a lot of the other optional content with some days to spare.

Basics

Each social link has 10 ranks, and you will level them up by hanging out with them. For each rank, there is a certain number of points you need to earn before being able to rank up again. These are represented by yellow music notes.

You will get some points just from hanging out, but most of them are earned by picking specific dialogue options during the hangouts. Generally saying things that the person would like or agree with will give you more points.

There are guides online that can help you pick the best options, or you can make use of the rewind feature to redo hangouts and try find the best options yourself. There are normally only two or three opportunities for dialogue so it isn't too time consuming.

Additionally, you will get bonus points whenever they earned, if you are carrying a persona of the matching arcana (does not need to be equipped, just carried). The game will tell you that you have a matching persona before hanging out, if you don't see this message, you should backout and grab one from the velvet room.

The tricky part is the game does not tell you how many points you currently have, or how many more points you need until rank up. So you'll need to keep track of which links are ready to rank up yourself.

If a link is ready to rank up, the game will tell you before hanging out that your bond will become stronger soon, otherwise it will say your bond will not improve. Alternatively, if you go on the map and press X, you can see which links are available to hang out with in a specific area. If it says 'UP' next to their name, that link is ready to rank up.

If you always bring the matching persona, as well as pick the best dialogue options, you should earn enough points during the rank up event most of the time, so you can go straight to the next rank up event next time.

This isn't always the case though, so there will be sometimes be times where you don't earn enough. There are multiple ways to earn the points to fill the gap between ranks.

- Hang out with them as normal
- Accept a phone invite during a holiday. Note: You won't rank up from these so are only useful between ranks (or if you just want to enjoy the cutscene)
- Picking a relationship fortune at the shrine
- Using a dating site URL at the dorm. This is super useful as it can be done at night, which you have a lot more to spare than days, but is unlocked quite late into the game.

Male Dormmates

These are technically unrelated to this achievement, but more than likely you'd want to do these as well. They are also needed to complete the Persona Compendium.

The male students at the dorm do not have regular social links, however P3 Reload introduced something similar for them. On certain days or nights, you may receive a message from one of them to hangout. There are no points to worry about, however they are very time sensitive.

The tutorials warn you that they are missable, and the characters sometimes mention things related to current story events, so I went with the assumption that you are given only one chance to do it. If you get one of these invites, I'd recommend prioritizing them over anything else.

The only exception I know of is Koromaru's events, which can be skipped and done later. I'd recommend saving these for non-school days.

These can also be easy to miss, so I'd recommend getting into the habit of checking your messages at the start of each day/night so you get them all.

For the rest of this guide, I'm going to go over each of the different types of days/nights and what my general strategies were.

School Days

What you do on school days is what you'll need to be the most mindful of for maxing out all the links, other times are much more lenient.

Every school day, you should be ranking up a school friend's social link. These are the people that you can only meet at the school, so this does not include the Moon link who is also a student, but can be met with during off-school days. So even though you can choose to hang out with them on school days, you should NOT hang out with social links you meet with outside of the school.

I also don't recommend hanging out with school friends if they won't be ranked up, you should instead hang out with them or use relationship fortunes during off-school days to fill the gaps between ranks.

You don't have to be perfect, you can afford a handful of school days without ranking up links, but you'll want to try avoid this as much as you can.

I managed to finish all of the links (as well as the optional hangouts with the male dorm members) and had about a week's worth of school days to spare. I also didn't have a perfect run and had some days without rank ups so you could potential have more days to spare if you do it better than me.

Try to unlock all the social links you can as quickly as possible, the more social links you can hang out with, the less likely there will a day where no one will be available. A lot of the social links will require you to do some prerequisite steps, or level up other specific links in order to unlock them.

For example, I deviated slightly from my strategy and got the Hierophant link up to rank 3 using a school day, just so I could get the Temperance link unlocked early.

I also tried to rank up all the school friends evenly, rather than focus on and complete specific ones first. if you finish some early, you would be shrinking the pool of available links and may get more days with no availabilities. When I had a choice, I generally prioritized the link with the lowest rank.

The week before exams, school friends cannot be hung out with, so I'd treat these days the same as holidays

Holidays/Before Exams

There aren't that many links that can progressed here compared to normal school days, so you will be a lot more free to deviate from ranking up links. I would use this time to improve

These were generally my priorities from highest to lowest

1. Accept phone invites from school friends that are NOT ready to rank up
2. Hang out with Hermit or Sun
3. Hang out with Hanged or Star
4. Draw relationship fortunes for school friends that are NOT ready to rank up
5. Hang out with Hierophant or Moon

Night

Nighttime is by far the least strict, despite getting a bunch of new content in the remake. There are two social links to level up here, but you will have plenty of time to complete them. I instead prioritized improving my social stats and unlocking all the combat abilities from the dorm activities.

Before the dorm activities become available, you should be able to get your social stats up to around level 4. In the first couple months, I worked parttime at the cafe since money is scarce in the beginning, but otherwise I just went to one of the three restaurants at the strip mall.

In order to make the school days easier, I tried to max out each of the stats before the corresponding social links that required them became available.

You should focus on courage first as that link becomes available the earliest, then focus on charm then academics.

I think it should be possible to prioritize the dorm activities, and max out the stats naturally from that, however if you want to play it safe, you can just keep grinding the social stats and leave the dorm activities until after you're maxed.

Personally, I did a mix of strip mall dinners and dorm activities, and still maxed out my academics a month earlier than I needed it.