Confidants#

“Coop” is the official Chinese localization’s name for the Confidant system—some older guides write it as “bonds” or “connections,” but they all refer to the same system. The game has 22 rankable Confidants in total, each tied to a Tarot card face (officially called an Arcana); raising a rank grants combat support, daily-life conveniences, and story opportunities. Confidants are not a bonus friendship system: one line (Takuto Maruki) directly decides whether the Third Semester opens at all, making it the top planning priority of any playthrough.

How Confidants Work#

The Full Flow of a Single Meeting#

The standard flow for advancing a Confidant is: spend one time slot meeting the person at their location, pick dialogue options to accumulate affinity, and once affinity is full, the next meeting triggers the rank-up event and the rank goes up by one. The abilities unlocked at a rank are settled only after the rank-up, not gradually while chatting. Two conclusions follow:

• While affinity is not full, meetings only raise affinity and never the rank, so “fill the bar first, then visit” is far more efficient than burning slots on frequent visits;
• The rank-up event itself consumes a time slot, so when planning a week’s schedule, treat it as a separate meeting.

Three Types: Scheduled vs. Unscheduled#

The 22 Confidants fall into three types by advancement method; before arranging your calendar, sort out who costs time slots and who doesn’t:

Story-automatic does not mean there is nothing to do: Igor oversees Persona fusion and execution, while Sae Nijima’s Judgement rank is bound to story progress, and the interrogation choice she presides over on November 20 directly decides the main story’s direction.

All 22 Confidants at a Glance#

The table below lists all 22 Confidants by Arcana. Location-based Confidants require visiting them in their areas, while school-based ones are mostly approached after class:

The Velvet Room: The Fool, the Twins, and Execution#

The Velvet Room is where Persona fusion and execution take place; the Fool Confidant advances with the story, and each rank opens more fusion methods. Execution in this game has five official forms: the Guillotine (fusing a new Persona), Group Guillotine (sacrificing multiple Personas at once), the Gallows (feeding a Persona to level it up), the Electric Chair (turning a Persona into an item), and special executions during Fusion Alarms—executing immediately while an alarm is active gives a chance at high-quality Personas with stats far above level, an official high-risk, high-reward mechanic.

The twins’ “Strength” Confidant advances through requests: they designate a target Persona, and once you fuse it and hand it over, the rank goes up. This progress needs no extra scheduling, but fusing the target requires material and money reserves, so check the current request whenever you return to the Velvet Room. The twins merge into one later in the story—Lavenza.

Affinity Efficiency: Personas, Options, and Rank-Ups#

Carry a Matching-Arcana Persona#

Before a meeting, set a Persona of the same Arcana as the Confidant on standby in the Velvet Room to significantly raise the affinity gained per meeting—this is the core zero-cost trick for speeding up Confidants. Take Hierophant (Sojiro Sakura) rank 1 to 2 as an example: community-compiled official data tables show a single meeting yields 20 affinity without a matching Persona and 29 with one. The game never displays these numbers; the figures above come from compiled official data tables, but the mechanic applies uniformly to every Confidant.

Music-Note Hints and Best Answers#

Royal adds music-note hints to meeting dialogue: a note marker appears when you pick an option that raises affinity significantly. When unsure, prioritize options that fit the person’s personality and situation—they land far more often than random guessing. Also, when affinity maxes out after a meeting, an “upgradable” marker appears; at that point the next meeting must be reserved for the rank-up event, not more affinity grinding.

Social Stat Gates and Common Walls#

The five Social Stats are Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Charm, and Kindness, and they gate some Confidants’ rank advancement—when a stat falls short, the person’s meeting events simply do not open, usually with a “not quite qualified yet” hint. Known gates cluster around rank 2 and rank 7:

The remaining gates are spelled out by in-game prompts when their events unlock, which makes them open information. For planning, remember one rule: when you see a “next meeting requires a certain Social Stat” hint, spend your nearest free slots on activities for that stat instead of knocking on their door repeatedly. Wasted slots are the biggest hidden loss in Confidant management.

Three Confidant Lines That Decide the Story#

Takuto Maruki (Councillor): The Only Key to the Third Semester#

Maruki is the most unique Confidant in the game, bar none. After auto-unlocking with the story on May 13, his rank decides whether one third of this game’s story is available to you:

• Reach Councillor Rank 9 before November 17—this is the sole condition for opening the Third Semester;
• Once met, his Confidant automatically rises to max on November 18 and the Third Semester begins;
• Miss the November 17 mark and the main story wraps up at the end of December in the vanilla structure, with the Third Semester, the new Palace, and the true ending all out of reach.

His rank rewards are officially published; the ability names per rank are below, so you can plan your investment around them:

Since November 18 auto-fills the final step, the only progress that actually costs schedule slots is up to rank 9. Starting from the mid-May unlock, one or two fixed meetings per week will comfortably hit the mark—the earlier you put him on the calendar, the easier November gets.

Goro Akechi (Justice): From Automatic to Manual#

In vanilla Persona 5, Akechi’s Confidant ranks up automatically with the story; Royal reworked it into a full Confidant that must be raised normally, one of the most substantive differences between the two versions. His advancement has hard Social Stat gates (rank 3 needs Knowledge 3 and Charm 3, rank 7 needs Knowledge 4) and a locked deadline: reach rank 8 before November 17 to unlock the extended ending scene on top of the true ending (the Royal Ending). Note that his rank decides only whether the extra scene exists, not true-ending eligibility—if you miss rank 8 you can still enter the Third Semester and get the true ending; you just lose one cutscene.

Kasumi Yoshizawa (Faith): Not a True-Ending Requirement#

A widespread myth claims “Kasumi Yoshizawa is also a true-ending requirement.” It must be corrected: she has never been a condition for the true ending—the true ending looks only at Maruki. Her hard gate concerns only her own story line: reach rank 5 before December 22, or her Confidant cannot continue in January. The cost of missing it is that her Confidant becomes permanently unraisable for the rest of the playthrough—miss it and it’s missed, with no late-game remedy. In other words, she is worth scheduling for her personal story and romance line (see below), not for ending eligibility.

Hard Deadlines of the Three Lines#

The three lines do not substitute for one another: Maruki secures the ending, Akechi secures the extra scene, and Kasumi secures her personal story. The schedule page’s year-round hard-date table ranks them alongside the November 20 interrogation and the December 24 deal—use the two pages together.

Romance#

When and How Confessions Happen#

Romance is confirmed at each Confidant’s rank 9 story event: pick the right options during that event to establish the relationship. In other words, if you want to romance someone, you must first push them to rank 9—affinity alone doesn’t do it. Being in a relationship unlocks exclusive scenes for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and other events; if you maintain multiple romance lines at once, you get collectively confronted on Valentine’s Day, the game’s official answer to “two-timing.” Multiple lines affect neither combat capability nor ending eligibility—decide purely by preference.

Characters You Can Romance#

Kasumi’s romance is Royal-exclusive content and is layered behind her own deadline: to see her full story and confession opportunity, the December 22 rank 5 gate is not “recommended” but mandatory.

Priority Tiers and Scheduling Advice#

The developer has never published any Confidant power ratings; the tiers below are based purely on mechanical function and match the schedule page’s framing:

Constrained by the main story’s calendar and Social Stat gates, a first playthrough can realistically advance only 10 to 14 Confidants; leaving all 22 maxed to NG+ is more realistic. Two reusable slot-allocation tricks:

• Swap to indoor activities on rainy days. Rain closes some locations and outdoor activities, but the game arcade, shrine visits, and the like are unaffected; swapping the day’s Confidant meetings for these keeps the slot from going to waste;
• Vacations are sprint windows. Summer and spring breaks are fully open, ideal for clearing stat-gated Confidants—build the Social Stat in the morning, then chain meetings in the afternoon and evening; flattening one or two lines per vacation is normal.

Common Mistakes and Corrections#

Related Pages#

• Characters: quick reference for the nine Phantom Thieves and the 22 Confidants, with their starting Personas
• Schedule Planning: the year-round hard-date table and time-slot framework
• Endings Guide: full requirements for all five endings
• Personas: fusion routes for stocking same-Arcana Personas
• Mementos: a daily-progress line that doesn’t rely on Confidants