Disgaea -Hour of Darkness

[Bassman]

Tranmigrated the Mage back up to Lvl 1600 or so. At Lvl 1000 ATK and DEF were down but the important INT was up significantly. The Mage is now at Lvl 1690 and can hit for over 100K on a basic Star, Fire, Ice or Wind. Tera Star (the only other I have at a reasonable level) is marginally better. Being a Star Mage originally I never bothered with the stronger Fire, Ice and Wind specials. She is also capable of healing about 80,000 on a Giga Heal which has its uses I suppose. Mega will pretty much heal any other character and she has a decent range as well.

The Cosmic Blade only went to Level 30. I now need to find a better one (not easy). Rare goes down further I assume.

Enemy strength is still on low so I am working through a legendary Dragon Jacket to try to find another. So my best sword user is approaching Lvl 700 with around 20,000 ATK with the levelled Cosmic Blade. Still need to find some more Armsmasters as I haven't got that far with them yet.

Managed to boost the party courtesy of a couple of Lvl 500+ Great Wyrms (a Fire and a Wind one). First time I had seen them other than the story stage I think.

I don't think I have access to the Space Pirate yet, I have been slowly getting my thief class levelled up but it is still at around Lvl 100. What is the best way to level up with a gun?

[Saurian]

Dont bother levelling up with a gun tbh.

Give the user a sword and good armsmaster and learn Winged Slayer - achieve the required level then go and level up his/her gun weapon level on Jotunheim etc.

It's hard sometimes to find legendary versions of stuff, have a go at searching inside a rare Testament/Arcadia/Exodus. I'm having a nightmare at the moment trying to do the same as you for the Axe and Staff weapons.

With your Cosmic Blade you should be able to get a Thief class power-levelling on Cave Of Ordeal, learn the move in Jotunheim then use CoO3 to level him up to 1000 and transmigrate as a Space Pirate.

On Jotunheim if you have a character lift and hold up the combined enemies - just keep attacking him with the character to be levelled (equip a good armsmaster)

[Bassman]

Thanks

I don't have a space pirate yet. I'll have to check on the pre-requisites.

[Saurian]

It's just a pirate @ lv120 to unlock that one man - 1 turn on CoO3 will sort that out

[Moodmon]

After 2 all day sessions, I've reached the giddy heights of chapter 12. I'm getting a little cheesed off at the cheap tactics the levels use (I stopped playing after the level with red invunerability/ally damage and green enemy boost * 3). I think I may need to level up my characters, and at the moment Jout-thingy seems the best way.

However, I need statiticians. What's the best way for a bloke who's party is around level 40-45 to get them? Do I go for the weaker items, cream them, but have to do lots of them? Or struggle on the higher level items to get the higher level residents straight off the bat? I struggled levelling up a legendary Blessed Bow to level 30, so I'm not sure how I would cope on stuff like a hibernal sword. Any suggestions?

[The Sheriff of Nottingham]

I'd say go through a few of your weak items that have statisticians in them, subdue them and then combine them in your weapon of choice. That's the way I did it a few weeks ago to get a lvl 150 statistician into Laharl's sword, and that was when Laharl was still < lvl 20. With a team in the 40s you should have a lvl 300 statistician in next to no time.

Question for the experts: if you go through an item that has already-subdued specialists in it, do you get to fight them again and double their levels again?

[Saurian]

Question for the experts: if you go through an item that has already-subdued specialists in it, do you get to fight them again and double their levels again?

Fraid not man - you cant re-steal items from the Item bosses either.

Best way to get residents is to save up all your Gency Exits - I have loads of them now, I combine all residents if needed in the Item World menu and skip floors until I find and subdue what I'm after. Once you get what you want, Gency out and repeat on another item.

It takes a while to save up these residents at first but once you are powerful you start earning better items which in turn have higher rate residents (you'll get values of around 300 before subdue in some). Where I am in the game it doesnt take long to max out residents, I can max a gladiator (1900) in around 30 minutes.

Equip a 300 stat and an high grade armsmaster onto your strongest sword, max it out if poss but if you are having problems stop around 300-400. If you can - save up a load of gladiator and add that aswell.

Celestia (first stage) is better than Jotunheim for power levelling quickly, but nothing compares to CoO3. Once you have CoO3 open this is where you should do all your power levelling, it's important to have 5 people with Braveheart and MagicBoost to boost weaker characters, Jotunheim - Terrible Cold is best for weapon levelling imo.

[The Sheriff of Nottingham]

Cool, thanks Saur. Back to Item World tonight then I think...

[Moodmon]

Ah, knew those exits would come in handy sooner or later. The highest resident levels I can cope with in item world at the moment are around 20-30 non subdued. However, if I can find the stat types quickly enough then I'll be up to around level 50-60 (which should do me for a while) in no time.

As a side note, are mages worth it? I find you have to protect them at all costs in, otherwise they'll just fall to the ground. Yet I want Laharl, my ninja and my samurai to be attacking. The Omega spells are good, but the mages are a bit too weak to be useful. I find I'm better off just steaming in and killing stuff.

Having said that, they are great in item world for sniping dangerous enemies.

[Saurian]

Manz dont believe me but serious - Mages are ****!!!

There is no point in spending ALL that time getting a good mage done when you can spend left than half the time on Laharl and a team of Divine Majins or other good attacking characters. Get and level-up a good sword, one levelled statistician, one high-level armsmaster - learn winged slayer by repeatedly slashing something on Jotunheim then use CoO3 to power level to lv1000 then transmigrate and do it again and again. Once you have a team of sick characters using this method (3 swordsmen + laharl + 1 support + 1 Space Pirate @ lv2000ish) - go on a mission to get the Yo****suna and Hyperdrive, these two items are what take Item World apart. Once you have the Yo****suna level it to 100 to get the Hyperdrive and another Yo****suna.

You might want to get yourself someone who can Geochange aswell - if you are trying to max out the bonus gauge in the Item World but the chain reaction you did is not enough - Geo Change to reset the Geo Panels to another configuration (or if the stage is too skank for you - Geo change)

My Laharl is taking 800K each way on moves like Nightsever now, no enemy apart from Uber Prinny Baal can hurt him proper - equipment is:

Yo****suna lv100
Prinny Costume lv100
Prinny Costume lv100
Hyper Drive

His movement and jump are at 99 his sword range is similar to a gun - you just appear somewhere (anywhere) on the map and one-slash-kill anything. This equip makes getting residents much easier too - you just appear next to them, kill then exit.

For mage/support - I have a Bahamut Dragon with all Tera spells, Braveheart, MagicBoost and healing/shield etc. This way you have a character with insane HP and attacking power, ranged attacks and INT decent enough to be a good magic user.

[Moodmon]

[Looks at Saurian's party]

[Looks at mine]

[Crys]

I'd try to open up CoO, but I'd be too low a level at the moment to even have a good go at it. Hell, all I want to do is beat the crap out of Kurtis and his pointy nose. Thanks for all the advice though, soon the game will be in the palm of my hand, and all will be glorious.

Mwhahahahahaha.

[Saurian]

Just wait till you get to the final chapter - I swear down to you once you see the potential you'll have a stupidly sick party in no time.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Manz dont believe me but serious - Mages are ****!!

I totally agree. You can get some use out of them when you start playing (offensive spells can be significantly more powerful than standard attacks in the very early stages of the game, provided you take note of the enemies' weak element when using them), but by the end of your first run through the story you'll be wishing you'd never bothered spending the time levelling them up.

Best use you can get out of mages it to create them, use them to teach their spells to their mentors, then get shot of them at the senate. Easiest and quickest way I've found of doing this is through Beauty of Evil - if you place a lvl1 mage next to a character who can kill a Divine Majin and execute a successful combo attack, that mage will jump straight to lvl65 through the combo, without actually having done anything. Best thing about this is that because mages learn spells depending on their level, not their weapon mastery, that one will now know all of theirs up to and including the Omega ones. Do it once or twice more and you'll have the Tera spells.

Now go to Terrible Cold and use a variant on Saur's tactic for learning Winged Slayer - combine all enemies into one, have one character lift it, then use the mentor/pupil system to teach all the spells you've just learned to the mage's mentor. Simple as. Even easier if you've got access to the Galaxy Mage class.

[MartyG]

A powerful mage has a much greater reach in spells than any physical attack, but by the time you get to that stage, you'll have already rinsed the story mode anyway, so I sort of agree. Playing through the story mode again though does have it's advantages with strong mages due to that range.

[Bassman]

Ok, I spent too much time on my mage, but it is paying off now for trawling through items. At Lvl 2312 (ought to consider another transmigrate) with three levelled to 100 rarity 4 defense items and a level 60 rare Galactic Staff I can get around a 350K hit, useful at end level of the next legendary item as with Magicboost I should be able to deplete half the HP in the first hit. Interestingly the last 1,500,000 HP item boss had considerably worse stats than my mage... other than HP and SP of course. Those stats of hers have now improved somewhat as she has the three matching rarity level 100 items and ome more levels now. Highest stat is intelligence at around 204K (HP is 198K and SP is 180K). TIme to get to grips with levelling up Tera Star I think as there are plenty of SP to play with!

I finally have a decent Space Pirate (currently level 1076 having transmigrated his previous incarnation at level 1000) and a very good stock of ordinary Cosmic Blades. My best sword character has a level 30 one (max for a normal unfortunately) as has the Pirate who I will probably continue as a sword user. May consider transmigrating him again, though enemy strenght is on minimum at the moment for the purposes of going through items. Currently searching for a suitable set of items for him. I levelled up a Champion Belt for him and am trying to find a Cosmic Blade of the same number plus two other suitably numbered high level defence items.

Initially I just did the story with the Pirate on his own as it needed doing (recently started Cycle 3 and hadn't started it). TooK a few chapters to get Winged Slayer unlocked (need more Armsmasters definitely). At least with the level 300 Stat I get quick levels, especially in Item World (same with the Mage).

I am making good use of the EXP bonuses from the levels I actually complete in Item World to level up other characters though given the stats of the items I used to level up the Pirate it would probably be more sensible to do it on CoO3 as I still need to unlock the Majin. Something to do tonight I think after fully levelling the legendary Fleche Imflamee (or whatever) that I may consider for the Mage until I can find a suitable legendary staff as it is the same rarity as her other three items. It will be interesting to see what level of hit she can get with a bow. Currently she gets around 30,000 with the staff (she has one counter).