'Persona 5' The Lovers Confidant Guide: How to max relationship with Ann Takamaki
Confidants are Persona 5's answer to previous entries' Social Links. They can grant your main character incredible buffs and crafting abilities to take into the game's dungeons, or palaces. Some confidants, like Morgana, are leveled up through story progression. Others, including your party members, involve getting to know them as people, giving them gifts and helping them out in their lives.
Ann Takamaki, your third party member (behind Ryuji and Morgana) is represented by the Lovers arcana, and makes negotiating with Shadows much easier.
If you'd like to know how to max out your relationship with Ann Takamaki, read on for tips on how to do so.
Persona 5 The Lovers confidant guide: how to boost your relationship with Ann Takamaki
According to Eurogamer, as with any confidant, you should make sure you have a Persona from the same arcana as the confidant you're trying to level up. In Ann's case, this is the Lovers, so make sure you have a Persona from that arcana equipped when talking to her. This will decrease the amount of time you need to spend trying to level your relationship with her.
You'll get your first rank with Ann for free on April 15 as part of the story progression, but you won't be able to start getting to know her until May 6. GGEZ says that you'll need a rank two in kindness in order to start getting to know Ann. (So make sure you read those books.)
Ann is available to hang out with on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and is normally either at the 2-D classroom or the underground mall in Shibuya.
If you're interested in maxing your relationship with Ann quickly, Paste Magazine has some tips:
You'll make the most headway with Ann if you commit to throwing your vocal support behind her 100%, no matter how goofy she's being.
If you're still dissatisfied with the headway you're making with Miss Takamaki, you can always give her gifts. She likes chocolates, cake, pudding, lipstick and perfume. You can buy all of these items at the underground mall that she likes to hang out at.
It's possible to romance Ann if you get to a high enough rank with her, or you can opt to keep it platonic. You'll get a trophy for romancing her though, so let that guide your decision.
Persona 5 the Lovers confidant guide: what you get from each of Ann's confidant ranks
Since Ann is a party member, a lot of her confidant ranks are similar to what other party members can get, including an ability to make follow up attacks against enemies Joker has attacked, surviving fatal attacks or shielding Joker from the same.
According to the Megami Tensei Wikia, here are the abilities Ann will give you as you raise her confidant rank.
"Baton pass," her rank one skill, will allow you to combo attacks with her once you've achieve a "One More" by exploiting an enemy's weaknesses or scoring a critical hit. Rank two's "girl talk" will allow Ann to step in after a shadow negotiation fails, giving you another opportunity to recruit a Persona. Her rank three skill, "follow up," grants her a chance to, well, follow up and perform an additional attack if Joker fails to kill an enemy.
Ann doesn't get a skill at rank four, but rank five will get you "crocodile tears," which has a chance to force an opponent to ask for less during negotiations. At rank six, she'll get "Harisen recovery," which gives you a chance to cure your party's status ailments. The somewhat mortifyingly named "sexy technique" will give Ann a chance to seduce an enemy during negotiation and give you some insight into how to proceed. "Endure" and "protect," her rank eight and rank nine skills respectively, will give Ann a chance to survive an otherwise fatal hit with 1 HP and take a fatal attack for Joker instead.
Reaching rank 10 with Ann will allow her to achieve "second awakening," changing her Persona Carmen into Hecate, and allow you to create the persona Ishtar through fusion. Not bad.
More Persona 5 news, updates, tips and tricks
For more on the latest entry in the Persona series, check out the rest of what Mic has to offer. Here's a guide to building relationships with the game's Confidant system, and a guide to when and how you can name your main character.
