Shuffle Time is a mechanic in Persona 3 Reload that is activated after winning a battle. It rewards the player with certain special effects or items after a battle, making raising your Personas and Social Stats much easier if you use it properly.
Persona 3 Reload Shuffle Time Explained
Shuffle Time has been present in all previous versions of Persona 3, but it has been slightly reworked for Reload. It activates after winning a battle at a random chance, but getting 1-Mores increases its chances. Finishing the battle with an All-Out Attack guarantees a Shuffle Time.
During Shuffle Time, three different types of cards can appear: Minor Arcana Cards, Persona Cards, or Major Arcana Cards. You can only pick one of them per battle, so choose wisely.
Minor Arcana Cards
Shuffle Time’s Minor Arcana cards immediately give the Protagonist a reward or buff. They’re divided into:
- Yellow coins – Money.
- Green leaves (wands) – Experience.
- Blue cups – Healing or buff.
- Red swords – Skill Card.
The higher your current Floor is, the better the rewards will be. Your Minor Arcana options will also get a nice boost if you manage to pick up enough Major Arcana cards.
Deciding which Shuffle Time card to choose can be difficult, but we recommend prioritizing money and experience. The growth from extra EXP will help you have a properly leveled team in the long run, and you’ll always need money to engage in most activities outside of Tartarus and to collect stronger equipment.
Healing cards will always act on the protagonist unless they specifically state that they’ll heal the whole party. These are good options to keep you in Tartarus longer, allowing you to conserve MP and items. Typically, you should consider grabbing a healing card from Shuffle Time if your HP is at half or lower or if you anticipate your next enemy being particularly tough, like the strong Shadow minibosses that guard particular floors.
While Shuffle Time’s Skill Cards can be helpful to complete a few requests from Elizabeth or to add certain unusual skills to your Persona’s repertoire, they’ll likely be the least useful to you. If you know you want a particular skill for a specific Persona, go ahead and grab its Skill Card when given the option, but otherwise, you may want to largely ignore them. You’ll be able to buy more powerful Skill Cards from the Mayoido Antiques Shop once you get far enough, and you can always fuse Personas to gain useful skills. But, with that said, some amazing skills out there can seriously shake things up, so use your best judgment.
Persona Cards
Shuffle Time’s Persona cards will give you a new Persona immediately. Higher Floors yield stronger Personas, but they’ll always be weaker than fusion-made Personas as these get immediate EXP bonuses and can inherit skills. If you already have that Persona (i.e., you get a Pixie card but already have Pixie), all Personas for its Arcana will gain a significant Experience bonus.
Major Arcana Cards
A new addition to P3R, Major Arcana cards are unlocked and will start appearing in Shuffle Time after defeating the special Shadows during the Full Moon operations, but some can be found in special Monad doors on higher floors in Tartarus. These special doors occasionally also increase your maximum number of Major Arcanas at a time. Once you pick a Major Arcana during this exploration’s Shuffle Time, it won’t appear again until the next day.
After a certain point, you get more Major Arcana than slots to fit them, so you’ll have to choose which Arcana is the most useful for you at the moment. Their effects range from giving you more Experience to immediately increasing your Personas’ stats:
- Fool – More XP after battles.
- Magician – Gives you a rare item.
- High Priestess – Increases All-Out Attack damage.
- Empress – Increase Endurance, Agility, and Luck of all of your Personas by 2.
- Emperor – Increase the Strength and Magic of all of your Personas by 2.
- Hierophant – Increases your equipped Persona level by 1.
- Lovers – Increases Social Link Bonus Exp. during fusions.
- Chariot – Increases maximum HP by 10.
- Justice – You can pick an extra card from Shuffle Time.
- Hermit – Increases maximum SP by 7.
- Fortune – All current party member have their HP increased by 8.
- Strength – All current party member have their SP increased by 5.
- Hanged Man – You get a random Incense card.
- Temperance – Bonus points for increasing a Social Stat during the next day.
- Devil – Doubles the number of items you get from breaking objects and fighting monsters in Tartarus.
- Tower – Increases all of your Persona status by 1.
- Star – You can pick an extra card from Shuffle Time.
- Moon – Fully restores your current party’s HP and SP.
- Sun – You can fuse Personas up to 5 levels higher than your own until you leave Tartarus.
- Judgment – The lowest level member in your party gets extra Experience after this fight.
Reaching the maximum amount of Major Arcana possible (which increases as you advance through the game) grants you Arcana Burst, which increases the rarity of each Minor Arcana you find. It also immediately grants you another Minor Arcana card for that battle.
All bonuses from a Shuffle Time’s Major Arcana are removed when leaving Tartarus, except the status increases from Arcana like Emperor. These are permanent and a great way to get stronger fast. If your goal is to simply train your Personas, for example, you can ignore some Arcana like Temperance or Magician for that day. Combos like Star + Justice go crazy for getting extra bonuses during the run, although achieving them could take a while.
One trick we recommend in achieving Major Arcana quickly is to start on the lower, easier floors of Tartarus. If you’re currently on floor 46, start on floors below 28F. Once you achieve Major Arcana maxed out, you can then proceed to the higher floors as normal. This will give you significantly more exp, cash, and skill cards without needing to grind out as much.
You should always aim to get Major Arcana as soon as you enter Tartarus as the Major Arcana bonuses are by far the best ones you can get here. And enhancing your Minor Arcana will give you better rewards in the long run, especially when talking about Skill Cards, which can sometimes be game-changing.
