Bring Everything. Just make sure for every god you believe in you have something that can either cure rage or has a magic focus.

Trust me on this.

Don't remember Madarame's being hard at all.

So long as you're at level you should be fine.

It wasn't. But then everyone in my party got hit with rage. On the guy who's immune to physical attacks.

okay, well:

i have mokoi, arsene, jack frost, agathion, obariyon, and bicorn with me

anyone to keep/ditch?

I brought Thanatos Picaro.

Izanagi picaro was with me for the whole game. Also personas that I interrogated.

Have personas that have all type of skills
Also matador is a persona that stayed with me till the end of the game

Arsene is awful there's zero reason to want to use him

Just capture stuff until your stock is full, reach a saferoom, fast travel to the entrance, go fuse everything you don't need, keep a nice spread of skills/resistances if possible, then return to the saferoom and keep going. That'll get you through basically the whole game, and if you get something with nice stats/resists later you can level boost it with sacrifices and skill cards