As of 6/9 in Persona 3 FES and Portable, we have gained access to the Antique Store! We gain access to it later in Reload, and I probably won't go in too detail on it since it is considerably less interesting there. FES and Portable, on the other hand, have plenty of notable things to remark on. Going forward, this will probably be the store service we use the most. Kurosawa only sporadically has things I care about, Be Blue V will have the last of its wares in the very near future, and Aohige Pharmacy doesn't get anywhere near the repertoire of good items it does in Reload, so the Antique Store is where the bulk of our business will be directed. Now on its most basic level, the Antique Store is analogous to Rag's Jeweler from the mainline MegaTen franchise. In fact, this was all it was in Vanilla. In FES, a brand new mechanic was added in Weapon Fusion (Brand new for Persona 3 anyway, weapon fusion as a series mechanics has been a thing since SMT 2), which was retained for Portable with some minor tweaks and additions while still mostly working the same. Let's go over the trading post aspect first before delving into the more complicated weapon fusion mechanics.
Trading Gems
If you're playing FES or Portable for yourself, you'll have noticed that upon entering Arqa enemies begin to drop gemstones every now and again. We're now at the point where we can begin to make use of those, as the Antique Store does not accept money. All transactions are conducted via trading gems, with every item having a specific gem cost to obtain. Now we're not able to collect every variety of gem at this stage of the game, so it'll be a bit before we can trade for all of these things. Definitely note down enemies that drop gems that trade for particularly valuable items, in the event you want to do some farming. Gem trading has two dedicated menus.
For Cards
In Vanilla and FES, this menu was dedicated to the stat boosting Minor Arcana cards, and is the one stop shop for powering up your Personae independent of levels in these versions of the game. In Vanilla where the arcade didn't actually do anything, this was your only option for bulking up your Personae. There are 4 types of cards with 4 different levels of potency. The types are Sword, Cup, Wand and Coin(Like the shuffle time cards!), with the potency levels being Page, Knight, Queen and King. Sword boosts ST, Cup boosts EN, Wand boosts MA and Coin boosts AG. The bonuses are +1 for Page, +2 for Knight, +3 for Queen and +4 for King. Additionally, Page and Knight cards give +1 LU, while Queen and King cards give +2 LU. There is not a dedicated card type for boosting LU specifically. The gems required for these cards are actually rather varied in Vanilla, with more standardized costs being introduced in FES and retained in Portable. To obtain these cards in Vanilla, you needed:
Sword: 1 Turquoise at any potency level plus an additional gem that differs from level to level. Page requires 1 Aquamarine, Knight requires 1 Onyx, Queen requires 1 Emerald and King requires 1 Garnet.
Cup: 1 Onyx at any potency level, and then Page requires 1 Emerald, Knight requires 1 Garnet, Queen requires 1 Opal and King requires 1 Topaz.
Wand: 1 Aquamarine at any potency level, and then Page requires 1 Onyx, Knight requires 1 Emerald, Queen requires 1 Garnet and King requires 1 Opal.
Coin: 1 Amethyst at any potency level, and then Page requires 1 Turquoise, Knight requires 1 Aquamarine, Queen requires 1 Onyx and King requires 1 Emerald.
Pretty complicated and difficult to farm for as you can imagine. Atlus must have thought the same thing, as the costs were heavily simplified in FES and Portable. In these versions of the game, Onyx has become the standard gem to trade for stat cards, with Page requiring 1 Onyx, Knight requiring 2X, Queen 3X and King 4X. Additionally, Knight and King require an additional gem depending on the card arcana, with Knight requiring 1 of the additional gem while King requires 2. These additional gems are as follows:
Sword: Amethyst
Cup: Turquoise
Wand: Garnet
Coin: Aquamarine
If you plan to take on the big bonus boss of the game, you will want plenty of stat cards to max out the stats of your best Personae. Keep in mind the types of Shadows that drop the gems that allow you to get the cards you need, particularly those that provide gems for Cup and Wand cards. Now this is the end of what you can get here in FES, but Portable expanded the menu further with Skill cards as well! Some valuable cards can be traded for at the Antique Shop, and then you can turn around and dupe them at the Inari Shrine to have as many as you could ever want for no cash investment. The Skill cards you can trade for in Portable are:
Regenerate 1, 2, and 3: 1, 5X and 7X Aquamarine, respectively
Invigorate 1, 2, and 3: Same as Regenerate but with Amethyst
Growth 1, 2, and 3: Same as Regenerate but with Opal
Null Poison: 1 Turquoise
Null Charm: 1 Turquoise
Fire Boost: 1 Turquoise and 1 Garnet
Ice Boost: 1 Turquoise and 1 Garnet
Elec Boost: 1 Turquoise and 1 Topaz
Wind Boost: 1 Turquoise and 1 Emerald
Auto Tarukaja and Auto Rakukaja: 4X Turquoise
Resist Slash, Strike, Pierce: 1 Sapphire and 1 Diamond
Resist Fire: 2X Sapphire and 1 Ruby
Resist Ice: 2X Sapphire and 1 Pearl
Resist Elec: 2X Sapphire and 1 Ruby
Resist Wind: 2X Sapphire and 1 Pearl
Arms Master: 10X Pearl
Speall Master: 10X Diamond
Megidolaon: 10X Ruby
Some very powerful skills to be had here! The most notable ones for my money are Growth 3, the physical resists, Arms Master and Spell Master. The elemental resist cards are occasionally helpful for patching out weaknesses, while the boost are mostly just there for if you have the spare gems and don't feel like spending money on the Personae that produce them as cards. Invigorate sounds like it might be good, but it actually scales really terribly in this game so I wouldn't recommend investing in it. Plus it's just a pain in the ass to remember to set the Personae that have it after every fight unless you card Invigorate 3 onto everything you have. Definitely pick up a Growth 3 as soon as possible and have the Inari shrine dupe the hell out of it, as it makes leveling up Personae much easier and faster. (For those who don't know, Growth 3 is a passive that gives Personae full experience at the end of battle even if they were not your equipped Persona at its conclusion) With all that laid out, lets move onto,
For Items
Now it'll be a bit before we can get a good supply of cards of any type from the Antique Store, but something we can do a bit more readily is trade for the copious valuable items that are available. The Antique Store is the main place for us to reliably obtain the most powerful healing items available in the game plus numerous other useful combat items such as reflecting mirrors and sutras. The full selection of items are as follows,
*Bead: 1 Opal and 1 Garnet
Bead Chain: 2X Opal
*Snuff Soul: 2X Emerald
Chewing Soul: 3X Emerald
Precious Egg: 1 Ruby and 1 Pearl, 2X Ruby and 1 Pearl in FES/Portable (This is the only non-card item that had its cost changed across versions)
Balm of Life: 1 Pearl and 1 Garnet
*Purifying Rice: 2X Aquamarine
*Cursed Paper: 2X Turquoise
Homunculus: 1 Diamond and 1 Sapphire
Magic Mirror: 1 Sapphire and 1 Topaz
Attack Mirror: 1 Diamond and 1 Opal
Dekaja Gem: 1 Topaz and 1 Opal
Dekunda Gem: 1 Topaz and 1 Emerald
*Fierce Sutra: 1 Amethyst and 1 Aquamarine
*Agility Sutra: 1 Aquamarine and 1 Turquoise
*Protection Sutra: 1 Turquoise and 1 Amethyst
Megido Gem: 2X Garnet
Traesto Gem: 2X Topaz
**Trafuri Gem: 2X Amethyst
Teddy Bear: 2X Amethyst
Japanese Doll: 2X Onyx
Kaleidoscope: 2X Aquamarine
Goggle-eyed Doll: 2X Turquoise
*Means the item was added in FES
**Means the item was added in Portable (yes it was just the Trafuri Gem that got added)
A bevvy of useful and not so useful items to be certain! For the former category, stuff like the date gifts like the dolls and Kaleidoscope are not really useful at all outside of very rare cases in Vanilla. By the time you actually get the gems for them with any regularity, items like Snuff Souls and Beads are also generally not that useful to grab. On the better side of things, Bead Chains, Balms of Life, the mirrors and the sutras (specifically Fierce and Protection) are fantastically useful and this is the only place you can reliably get them. Sutras are doubly good in Portable as your party members can now use them, giving everyone the capability to support the party! Another thing you may want to stock up on is Homunculi, as nothing will ruin your day faster than your Protagonist getting tagged by an insta-kill. The more Homunculi you have, the less of a problem that will be. Keep in mind the necessary gems for the aforementioned items and keep notes on what drops them when you see them. A healthy supply of these will help you go a long way. With that done, onto the bigger draw of the Antique Store.
Weapon Fusion
From the moment we unlock the Antique Store and receive our first Nihil Sword from the proprietor, Rare Forms will now begin to drop Nihil weaponry that we can then fuse with Personae from our stock to create unique weapons with effects they otherwise cannot get randomly. Nihil weapons come in various forms, with all types of weapons our party both current and future can use. Within FES, all but two of these weapon types can be used by the Protagonist, giving him a very large selection of powerful unique weapons once we get further in the game. Once a Nihil weapon has been fused, it can be fused once more to create a new weapon if you so desire. This means you never have to worry about getting multiple copies of a single Nihil weapon type and can just upgrade your already fused weapons when they begin to fall behind in power. All well and good, but why should you bother with Weapon Fusion if you can just buy or find weapons? Because fused weapons trump those options at every stage of the game, and by a huge margin once we're far enough along!
So how does this work exactly? Naturally we'll need to actually have a Persona to fuse with a weapon in order to do this. It also cannot be a Persona you currently have equipped, to make sure you don't leave yourself Personaless. Once those conditions have been fulfilled, we first need to determine the attack power and accuracy of the weapon. This is derived from your Persona's current level, so you can actually level up Personae to improve the strength and abilities of the weapons they fuse into. The way this works is that every experience level will fall into a "range", and within these ranges the resultant fused weapons will have an Attack and Accuracy stat derived from the relative value of the Persona's stats. Don't take this to mean high stats influence weapon power, rather stats are compared against each other to determine a weapon's Type, which can be one of three distinct stat spreads. (Shout outs to Misfit119 for their guide that has this handy dandy chart!)
Type A happens when the Persona's highest stat is either ST or EN, and this type has balanced attack power and accuracy. Type B is when MA or AG is the highest stat, and trades a small amount of accuracy for a decent amount of attack. Type C is when LU is the highest stat, and focuses on accuracy over power. The only exception to this is a Weapon variety we won't see for a little bit. Gun type weapons invert Type A and B for some reason.
So a handful of things to remark on here. As you can see, even from the jump fused weapons trump anything Kurosawa is selling in FES. His best stuff has around 50 attack power and even fusing off a piss gremlin like Pixie will get us something stronger than that. Kurosawa is a bit more competitive in Portable as his stock updates more regularly and he's selling some ~80 power weapons at the time of this writing, but we can still pretty easily create Personae that will trump his inventory on a fused weapon. As the game goes on, Fused Weapons rocket past all other available options. The level ranges for hitting the next tier of power can be as little as 4 levels, and as we develop our social links we can easily have situations where a Persona starts in one range and then upgrades to the next upon fusion, giving us access to a much stronger weapon for the stage of the game we are in. Having your team kitted out with fused weapons wildly accelerates your All Out Attack damage, and your physical fighters all too often can deal better damage with their fused weapons than their skills. And keep in mind that the best weapons we can find or buy top out around 290-310 Attack power by the end game, so there's never going to be a point where we luck into something better than Fused Weapons. That alone makes Fused Weapons a great investment, but there's something else going for them. Fused Weapons will have special abilities otherwise not seen on weapons you can find or buy, often replicating the effects of powerful accessories. These abilities are dependent on the Arcana of the Persona used in the weapon fusion. These abilities are as follows,
Magician: Replicates the Ice Evasion line of skills, with the effectiveness of the ability improving with the level of the Magician used. The ranges for this are,
Level 1-29: Low Evasion Chance
Level 30-59: Medium Evasion Chance
Level 60+: High Evasion Chance
Note that for reasons we'll get into later, you're not liable to ever actually see the Level 60+ variant of this effect without doing some impractical prep work. Regardless, this is something Akihiko obviously likes and is a good investment for him. This ability is similar for the Priestess, Emperor and Justice Arcana, with them instead covering Fire, Elec and Wind respectively with the same level scaling for the ability's effectiveness. Obviously good pick ups for the characters that have the relevant weaknesses.
Empress: At all levels, Empress Personae convey low resistance to Wind damage. I'm not sure if this actually overwrites weaknesses though, so I'd only really use it in lieu of not having a dodge ability. The Tower, Star and Sun Arcana have the same effect with the same level scaling for the Elec, Ice and Fire elements respectively.
Hierophant: Grants Auto-Sukukaja. Not bad for the Protagonist if you'd prefer they rock a Bracer instead of a Speed Enhancer, but of minimal use for anyone else. Strength and Temperance work similarly, conveying the Auto-Tarukaja and Auto-Rakukaja abilities instead. Strength is probably the most useful as everyone would enjoy stacking Tarukaja and another damage boosting passive from the battle's offset. That being said, all of these abilities get invalidated by later Persona passives, so late game they're essentially useless options.
Lovers: At all levels, Lovers weapons give you a flat resistance to the Charm ailment, though not immunity. Situationally useful, but I'd rather just farm the accessory that grants Charm immunity since that isn't actually that tall an ask. Hermit, Death and Devil do the same thing for the Poison, Rage and Fear ailments respectively. Hermit and Death are never helpful, while Devil can be useful for exactly one fight I can think of offhand. I'll leave it up to you if you think that's worth keeping it in mind for.
Chariot: Replicates the Counter line of skills, scaling depending on the level of the Persona used.
Level 1-29: Replicates Counter, a roughly 30% chance to repel physical attacks for low damage. (Note that Persona 3 Reload nerfed these abilities a ton, not that it's relevant to the rest of this post)
Level 30-59: Replicates Counterstrike, roughly a 40% chance to repel physical attacks for slightly more damage than they would have dealt to you.
Level 60+: Replicates High Counter, a 50% chance to repel physical attacks for about double the damage they would have dealt.
Like the most of the evasion abilities, you're not liable to see the 60+ variant without taking some special preparations. Note that these abilities do not stack with characters that learn them naturally, when two counter skills exist on a skill set the game either uses the stronger of the two or just cancels one out if it's the same ability. That all being said, this actually isn't a bad choice for your low hp, defensively frail characters like Yukari. It's essentially an extra dodge chance against any physical attacks hurled your way, and that can be useful in many situations though not something to bank on.
Fortune: Gives a bonus to your Max SP depending on the level of the Persona used. The scaling is as follows,
Level 1-39: +10 Max SP
Level 40-69: +20 Max SP
Level 70+: +30 Max SP
Absolutely terrible, what the hell is this scaling!?! Even at the game's offset, +10 SP will let you cast 2-3 more single target spells. This ability does not take at all to the end game, where +30 Max SP will only buy you one more spell, and you'll have likely come up with an SP engine anyway. Never create a Fortune weapon, this ability blows.
Hanged Man: Gives a bonus to your Max HP. The scaling for this is as follows,
Level 1-19: +20 Max HP
Level 20-39: +30 Max HP
Level 40-69: +40 Max HP
Level 70+: +50 Max HP
Much better, from the scaling to the effect! More HP is one of the simpler ways of improving your character's survivability, so pretty much everyone benefits from having Hanged Man weapons. That being said, for boss fights specifically, there is something that can trump Hanged Man weapons when it comes to survivability. In general though, Hanged Man weapons afford great power AND extra defense to those that use them, so nobody suffers from having them. If you're not interested in Dodges or more niche abilities like Counter, Hanged Man weapons are the ones to create for everyone in your party.
Moon: Provides a critical rate boost to your normal attacks, scaling with the level of the Persona used. The scaling is as follows,
Level 1-39: Small crit rate boost
Level 40-69: Medium crit rate boost
Level 70+: High crit rate boost
Now boosting the critical hit rate of your normal attacks sounds pretty unappealing, but as mentioned previously weapon attacks don't actually suck in Persona 3, and can often trump your skill damage precisely because of fused weapons. Boosting the chance of landing crits is great for characters like Junpei, who never get access to the weapon boosting passive relevant to them. I believe this also improves the chance you land a double hit strike (when you get the longer animation that isn't a crit), so it can be a remarkably big boost to your outgoing damage. The main caveat to this ability is that it's tied to the Moon arcana. It is going to be forever and a half before we pursue that Arcana in FES, so it's kind of tough to get the most out of this one. Portable actually benefits a bit here, because not only will we be addressing the Moon social link sooner, we'll be maxing it in short order as well. Still, if you see a Moon persona that falls into a good level range, don't hesitate to fuse it for your physical bruisers.
Judgement: Grants the ability to inflict all ailments in the game to your weapon (Excepting for Down, Freeze and Shock). The scaling for this is as follows,
Level 30-59: Medium Chance
Level 60+: High Chance
Note that the lowest leveled Judgement Persona is level 59, so it's just barely possible to even get the weakest version of this effect. Anyways this is a whatever effect. I'm not a huge fan of ailments in this game since they mostly only work on regular enemies, with the exception of things like Freeze and Shock which do work on most bosses. Since this can't inflict those and there are abilities that inflict them 100% of the time, I don't consider this to be worth much. It can be fun to screw around with, but I wouldn't recommend it as a serious ability to use.
Aeon: Boosts all stats of the equipper (Except HP and SP). The new Arcana to FES gets the simplest but arguably most useful effect. Because the lowest level Aeon is already level 63, like Judgement there's not much to the scaling on this.
Level 60-79: +4 to all stats
Level 80+: +5 to all stats
Simple and effective, like I said. Once you're able to fuse an Aeon, there's essentially no reason not to just use it to create Aeon weapons for your entire party. +4 to everything is a decent bit of power that everyone appreciates, and most weapons that boost stats don't even afford this kind of boost to a single stat. That said, it's not the end all be all.
Now you may have noticed I skipped over the Fool Arcana. Fool works a bit differently. Regardless of level of the Persona used, Fool weapons will always have 1 attack power and 99 accuracy. Pretty useless against anything except Rare forms, but the caveat is that each Fool Persona has a unique ability it conveys to a fused weapon. As follows,
Orpheus: Small chance to inflict all ailments on attack. Same as Judgement but weaker. Not a fan, but it may come in handy against strong single enemies early on.
Slime: SP +20. Fortune can't catch a break huh? This is the same effect you get from a level 40 Fortune. Still sucks obviously, but if you're really hard up for casting 5 more Zio spells with the drawback of tanking your All Out Attack damage, here you go.
Legion: Grants +100 Max HP. Christ, this one is on steroids. This is the ability I mentioned that invalidates Hanged Man weapons for most boss fights. +100 HP is a huge durability boost, and I highly recommend having this on hand for your protagonist and squishier characters like Yukari. For fights where you will be using All Out Attacks, it's a bit of a bad idea because it drops your damage so much, but when survivability is all you care about, this fused weapon is aces. It eventually falls off, but it'll be a long while before that happens.
Black Frost: +10 MA. This one is okay, it's decent for characters who just hurl spells like Yukari and Mitsuru. +10 Magic is about 25-50 more damage depending on the defenses of what you're dealing with, so it can help close out fights faster on occasion. We can't get this until mid September though, so we'll see if I can remember to cook up some weapons with it.
Ose: +10 ST. Okay they're just taking the piss on this one. It makes your skills stronger, but since Fused Weapons tend to trump single target skills, I really could not recommend going for this one. I guess it's okay for boosting up AOE skills, but I'm not a huge fan of AOE physicals in this game save for one.
Decarabia: +10 EN. This one is okay, that's a pretty solid defense boost. The HP from Legion is probably better for most characters, but there are some high HP characters who might benefit from the durability boost this provides instead. Again though, you need to really consider if it's worth tanking your All Out Attack damage.
Loki: Medium chance to inflict all ailments. See Judgement.
Susano-o: +3 to all stats except HP and SP. What the hell is this!?! The weakest Aeon in the game gives you literally the exact same effect but better, and gives you a strong weapon on top of it. Susano-o is 13 levels higher than the weakest Aeon for a worse effect and weapon. Absolute trash, never get this.
Orpheus Telos: Halve incoming Magic damage. Thankfully the real ultimate Fool gives a way better ability. An Orpheus Telos weapon halves the damage of most attacks in the game, affording you a huge durability boost. This one is good to pick up for something later in the game.
But wait, there is more! Because there's one more aspect of weapon fusion I have yet to go over.
Special Fusions
There are a number of Personae that, when fused into a weapon, will ignore the normal rules of Weapon Fusion and instead create a Unique Weapon. These weapons are extremely powerful and have useful abilities tied to them, often being way ahead of anything else you can get at the stage of the game they become available. Like, even more so for fused weapon standards. Note that these Unique Weapons will always be a specific weapon variety, even if the base weapon used is something different. For instance, Cu Chulainn will always produce the Spear Gae Bolg, even if you fuse him onto a bow. These Unique Weapons also cannot be re-fused once created, so be mindful that they represent a lost weapon to fuse once created. This is a more than acceptable cost, as you'll see when I list them out.
1-Handed Swords*
Deus Xiphos: 400 Attack Power and 94 Accuracy. +10 to MA. Created by weapon fusing the Level 72 Judgement Persona Michael.
Lucifer's Blade: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to All Stats. Created by weapon fusing the level 89 Judgement Persona Lucifer. (Shocker, I know.)
Look at those numbers! And those stat bonuses! Yes, these unique fusions create the strongest weapons in the game by a ridiculous margin. Memorize which Persona creates what, because you'll want to be able to make these when it's time for the final boss. This does actually represent something unfortunate for the MC in Portable, as he will not be able to get his ultimate weapon come time for the final boss unless you did a ludicrous amount of grinding that would invalidate the need for the sword anyway. In FES, the protagonist has his pick of the litter when it comes to Ultimate weapons, and not all ultimate weapons are created equal in terms of their materials. Some can be obtained much sooner, including funnily enough, the FemC's ultimate weapon.
*In FES, Mitsuru and the MC use the same 1-Handed swords, so these are also the best pieces of gear for Mitsuru. Portable introduced a new Rapier sword type that is used by Mitsuru exclusively, while 1-Handed swords are now MC exclusive weapons.
2-Handed Swords
Balmung: 310 Attack Power and 93 Accuracy. Gives +100 HP to the equipper. Created with the Level 59 Strength Persona Siegfried.
Laevateinn: 340 Attack Power and 83 Accuracy. Gives the Fire Boost ability to the equipper and has the unique property of making your weapon attacks Fire elemental. Created with the Level 52 Magician Persona Surt.
Masakado's Katana: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 73 Tower Persona Masakado.
Balmung replaces Legion weapons for Junpei and the MC in FES, but it's not one of my preferred weapons since it's less useful at the time you get it compared to Legion weapons. Laevateinn on the other hand is awesome. It's the first Elemental weapon we can get, boosting its own attack power with Fire Boost to sweeten the pot. Elemental weapons cannot crit, but they have high attack power and can have their damage augmented with elemental passives. Slap the Agni Bracers on Junpei or the MC and they can run roughshod with this weapon! I believe Elemental weapons can also get an extra boost from weapon boosting passives, though I need to test this more to make sure. Finally, Masakado's Katana is the ultimate 2-Handed sword and is available at reasonable time for the end game. This is invariably what I put in the hands of the MC in FES.
Fists
Sabazios: 340 attack power and 85 Accuracy. Grants Ice Boost and makes your weapon attacks Ice element. Created with the level 68 Lovers Persona Cybele.
Evil Gloves: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 77 Tower Persona Mara.
Sabazios allows Akihiko to blow Mitsuru's Ice damage out of the water (no pun intended) if you gear him up properly. Evil Gloves are the ultimate fist weapon, and they're ideal for beating off your foes. Mara is quite a high level though, so you're only really going to have them in time for the final boss really. Still a more than worthwhile pick up for it though.
Axes/Cudgels
Mjolnir: 340 Attack Power and 80 Accuracy. Grants Elec Boost and makes your weapon attacks Elec element. Created with the Level 53 Chariot Persona Thor.
Corpse Rod: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 81 Devil Persona Beelzebub.
These are mostly useless in Persona 3 Portable for reasons we won't be covering for a long time. In FES, the protagonist can make good use of Mjolnir if geared for it, but the Corpse Rod is available too late for me to really think it's the ideal ultimate weapon to slap in his hands.
Spears
Gae Bolg: 260 Attack Power and 85 Accuracy. Grants Wind Boost and makes weapon attacks Wind Element. In Portable, it grants the fairly useless Dodge Wind ability instead, though still makes attacks wind elemental (There may be other changes like this I haven't gotten a chance to discover, will update this post if I see any). Created with the Level 40 Tower Persona Cu Chulainn.
Gungnir: 310 Attack Power and 97 Accuracy. Grants the Elec Boost ability but does not change your weapon attack type. Created with the Level 57 Emperor Persona Odin.
Pinaka: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 82 Tower Persona Shiva.
So many of these come from Tower Personae now that I think about it. Anyway, Gae Bolg is an incredible weapon for the stage of the game it's available in. While it is the weakest Unique weapon, it's available so much earlier and is so much better than everything else at that point, it secures itself a place as one of the best weapons in the game. Augmenting it with Wind Amp creates wind damage that makes Yukari deeply jealous, and it makes the dedicated Spear user of the game alongside the protagonist in FES the premiere damage dealers for a huge chunk of the game. Portable nerfed it slightly by removing Wind Boost from it, but Vayu Bracers still give it tremendous punching power. Gungnir is kind of whatever honestly, if only because the character that uses it will never really reach the same height for Elec damage that Akihiko or the protagonist will. Pinaka might just barely be fusable in time for the final boss, but don't be surprised if you have to supplant it with an Aeon weapon instead.
Bows
Saarnga: 400 Attack Power and 90 Accuracy. Grants Wind Boost but does not change your weapon attack type. Created with the Level 78 Sun Persona Vishnu.
Quintessence Bow: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 86 Tower Persona Chi You.
Man Yukari stays losing here. Why do these both require such high level Personae? You're not liable to get the Quintessence Bow in time for the final boss and while Saarnga will more than likely be available, it's not that big of a help to Yukari. She'll mostly be on healing duty if you use her, and you'd likely prefer the defensive bonuses of an Aeon weapon or even a Legion bow. Poor girl can't catch a break.
Guns*
Metatronius: 450 Attack Power and 94 Accuracy (I can appreciate the irony). +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 87 Aeon Persona Metatron.
Only one weapon for guns. Available too late and the character that can use it is pretty bad in fights anyway.
*Guns are exclusive to the party member that uses them, and are not usable for the protagonist even in Vanilla and FES. So there's not even a preference reason to use this for the bonus boss.
Knives*
Vajra: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 85 Sun Persona Asura.
You ever get the feeling of deja vu? Read the description for Unique guns.
*Like guns, this weapon type is exclusive to the party member that uses them and cannot be used by the protagonist in Vanilla and FES. Methinks they put a little less care into the options for these weapons.
Naginatas*
Khakkhara: 400 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 80 Aeon Persona Atavaka.
Vel Vel Muruga: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. Created with the Level 70 Star Persona Kartikeya.
No I did not make any typos there. For some reason, there are two Naginatas with the exact same effect except one is stronger and made with a much lower leveled Persona. Kartikeya is a sidequest reward, so I guess Khakkhara is there as a back up in case you didn't get that. Regardless, Vel Vel Muruga is available way sooner than Lucifer's Blade, creating an amusing example of game preferred gender as the MC is not going to have this level of power at his disposal in time for the final boss, much less anything in the last block of Tartarus. Definitely pick up Vel Vel asap.
*Naturally, Naginatas are exclusive to Portable and only make an appearance for the FemC. Since I won't get to mention it anywhere else really, Naginatas also have a different naming scheme for their base materials for some reason, you get Void Naginatas instead of Nihil Naginatas.
Rapiers*
Kokuseki Senjin: 400 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. Grants Ice Boost but does not change your weapon attack type. Created with the Level 84 Empress Persona Alilat.
Snow Queen Whip: 450 Attack Power and 100 Accuracy. +10 to all stats. Created with the Level 80 Empress Persona Skadi.
What's with these fusions where the lower leveled Persona creates the stronger weapon? That being said, if you want to free up an accessory slot for Mitsuru while still getting the most out of her Ice damage, the Kokuseki Senjin isn't a terrible option. +10 EN and MA though is pretty hard to pass up, and Skadi can be obtained just in time for the final boss, so that's probably what you should go for regardless.
*Rapiers are Mitsuru's new exclusive weapon type in Portable, neither of these exist in FES and are newly added.
Phew, that was quite a lot! Weapon fusion is a service I'll be making heavy use of going forward, and we can probably expect me to do some Rare form hunting in the very near future.
