[This article contains spoilers for New Game+ content of Persona 5 Royal]

Congratulations! After saving the world from Yaldabaoth a second time in a NG+ playthrough and unlocking the third semester, Atlus has seen fit to reward your dedicated efforts in saving the world with an all-new secret boss fight. That’s right. Players can now have their pride personally obliterated by the real Velvet Room attendant, Lavenza.

If defeating her when she was two tween-sized amnesiacs wasn’t hard enough for you, Lavenza offers players a second helping of hurt if they decide to challenge her in the Velvet Room during Persona 5 Royal’s third semester. It’s time to put all those hard-earned levels to good use and hope you can power-of-friendship your way past this Goliath of a fight. She’ll be waiting for you once you secure the route to the final treasure, just where Justine and Caroline were found.

The major rub with Lavenza’s fight is the fact that some of it comes down to luck. The strategies outlined in the guide will help to mitigate risk, but there are two phases in which it is possible to get wiped simply for being unlucky, no matter how prepared you were. If this happens, don’t lose heart - reload a save if you wasted too many items and try again. Lavenza is here to help; or at least, she’s nicer than the twins about grinding Joker into the ground every time she beats him.

Team and Item Preparedness

As with the twins, you’re going to need some heavy duty personas on Joker if you hope to survive the onslaught. A dedicated healer like Maria, the ultimate Faith persona, will serve players well. None of Joker’s personas should have any weaknesses. Yoshitsune, while good for the fight, isn’t quite foolproof: in order to help with the third phase, it’s highly recommended you fuse a persona specializing in Gun skills instead. Shiva with One-Shot Kill, Trigger Happy, and Gun-boosting skills (with something to patch up the Nuke weakness) is a good, high-level choice. Finally, you want a strong persona to maximize spell damage with almighty attacks that won’t be resisted. In most cases, Black Viper is overkill but Lavenza lives and breathes overkill: go ahead and bring Satanael along with that and some Almighty-boosting passives.

In short, throw everything you’ve got at her. She is the hardest boss in the game.

Onto the rest of the team. There are two recommended team compositions: Queen, Noir, and Violet, or Panther, Skull, and Violet. Violet is essentially a necessity if you want to survive the third phase thanks to her Brave Step ability and high critical chance. It’s recommended to patch up her curse weakness with an item to avoid getting killed by Lavenza’s insta-death curse abilities. The other two members have different strategies attached, but a high degree of synergy with each other as used. This strategy will be using Noir/Queen as the baseline because of the recommended personas for Joker outlined above. For those interested in the Panther/Skull strategy, Joker takes more of a supporting role for the first two phases, managing Debilitates and status afflicting moves himself.

Noir should learn Debilitate at the Jazz club ahead of time and hang onto the Ring of Pride to cast Charge on Joker/Violet. Her One-Shot Kill ability is also a potential failsafe in case you don’t manage to get a crit with Violet or Joker during the third phase, but that’s more for emergencies. Queen and Noir together are also good for the fight in case your team gets afflicted with status ailments, although Harisen Recovery will usually save you before that becomes necessary.

Try to get everyone you bring in up to their final awakening. You will also benefit heavily from maxing out the Technical Rank (or at least getting it to the point where Technical damage induces knockdowns). Have Haru plant some Star Dragon Onions for you to use, be prepared to drop a Soma or two if you have to, and bring status-inflicting items if you lack a persona/party member who can inflict them. If you lack status-inflicting items, bring a persona for Joker to inflict them with or have Makoto remember Makajama at the church.

The Fight

Like her predecessors, Lavenza’s fight can be broken down into phases. Unlike the twins, the phases aren’t limited by simple damage checks: each phase has a gimmick and a damage check, amounting to four phases, each requiring 5000 damage within nine turns to proceed. If you fail to perform the phase’s gimmick at least once per round (like the technical damage or critical hits) she will instantly wipe you. We’ll be looking at the fight phase-by-phase.

Phase 1 

Throughout the fight Lavenza will swap her personas, but it’s only in the first phase that her switching opens up a weakness. As she’s switching, she will cycle through a weakness to Elec, Ice, Fire, and Wind. She’ll generally use her extra turns to remove buffs on your team and remove debuffs on herself. This phase, you only need to worry about damage: deal 5000 damage to Lavenza before nine turns pass. Charge Joker and Violet, keep her from casting Heat Riser on herself, and prepare to deal damage. Cast Brave Step and angle for criticals with Violet - if you get a knockdown, rather than initiate an all-out attack, baton pass to Joker and unleash his charged up move as well. Keep everyone’s HP up with Queen, and this round should pass by relatively easily.

Phase 2

In this phase, Lavenza temporarily becomes susceptible to status ailments to give you a chance to demonstrate your technical prowess. Have Queen cast Makajama (or use status-afflicting items if she doesn’t have the skill) every turn, then capitalize on it with Noir’s Psy skills. If you didn’t bring Noir, make sure you’re inflicting a status that can be targeted with physical damage instead of Psy, or make sure you’ve unlocked all Technical combinations beforehand. Use Joker’s turns to keep everyone healed/charge or concentrate if no healing needs to be done, and use Violet’s turn to use Brave Step or use Star Dragon Onions to maintain Joker’s charge. When Noir knocks Lavenza down, baton pass to Joker and unleash a charged-up Black Viper for as much damage as possible.

Phase 3

Lavenza is telling the truth: a big part of this phase comes down to luck. Violet generally pulls everyone through, but on an unlucky playthrough it’s possible to wipe here through no fault of your own. On the other hand, it’s potentially a very easy phase. Cast Brave Step, crit with Violet, then Baton Pass to Joker and crit with One Shot Kill. The other two just need to keep Joker and Violet Charged and supplement with healing or buffs/debuffs.

Phase 4 

Everything’s back to normal: there is no gimmick, as this is the final phase of the fight. Repeat the first phase’s pattern of Charge, buff, debuff. Just be careful to avoid Lavenza’s supercharged Megidolaon. If she casts Concentrate on herself, get your HP up and consider guarding: it hits hard. She’ll attack with it about every six turns or so, but you should be able to whittle her down to zero before it comes up too many times.

Now that you’ve taken out Lavenza: Congratulations! You have defeated the hardest boss in the game. Lavenza grants an achievement and the ever-broken Omnipotent Orb item for your struggles in taking her out.

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