Hi! This is my first time writing a guide or walkthrough of any kind, and as such, feedback is appreciated. If you feel anything listed in this guide is incorrect or hard to understand and generally confusing, please let me know in the comments and I will make revisions as necessary.

This guide will go over exp/money/item grinding methods in Disgaea 2 prioritized by efficiency, from the start of the game all the way to the highest levels, listed in chronological order. This guide is primarily intended for players with some experience and understanding of the game's mechanics, but is written to be understood by beginners as well.

The goal of this guide is to cut down on the already immense grind with the hopes of making it feasible for knowledgeable players to get all of the achievements within about ~120 hours of starting a fresh save, providing some room for leisure. This is still a long time, but much shorter than the 200-300 hour range many people report even while following many of the best guides out there, and hopefully, this will be a reasonable expectation by the end of this guide.

With that out of the way, let's begin!

Right from the moment you gain control, there's already a step you can make towards better efficiency: unequip and later delete the starting generic classes. The generic units given to you by Adell's dad do not benefit at all from creation stat bonuses, the mentor/pupil system, or team attack bonuses. This is a minor detail that won't affect you much immediately, but doing this now will be more beneficial for you later on. You don't have access to the dark assembly right away, so until you do, just use Adell and Rozalin to hog all the EXP and mana on the early stages until you're able to delete them and make new ones. Speaking of said mana...

As soon as possible, make at least one thief, preferably two or more. The reason for this is simple: thieves are available to be created right from the start, are incredibly useful in acquiring many of the best items later in the game, but most importantly right now, they learn incredibly useful status afflicting moves. They are as follows:

• Health (level 1): Inflicts Poison. As you'll soon see, this is the most useful status effect of them all, and it's available right away, although you'll need some SP if you want to use it frequently. Poison inflicts 20% of the target's max HP every turn, meaning they'll die in 5 or 6 turns, depending on if their HP is odd or even numbered. Poison lasts 2-3 turns when inflicted through this method, meaning you'll have to inflict it several times before the target would die to poison alone. Still, all of the thieves's skills have 100% accuracy, meaning they should rarely ever miss (barring certain factors), regardless of the enemy's level. Keep in mind that enemies killed via poison will not directly give EXP or mana to any of your units.

• Consciousness (level 10): Inflicts Sleep. This is the second most useful status effect, and it's learned fairly early, too. You can focus solely on leveling your thief early on in order to get this skill, but you'll probably unlock this soon enough anyway. Being able to deny the enemy turns by setting them to sleep is invaluable, especially when going against enemies much stronger than you, as we'll be doing shortly. Sleep in this game acts much like the first generation Pokémon games, where waking up takes a turn, and they can't act until their next turn. So with a single thief, you could keep a target asleep indefinitely, or until you run out of SP.

• Freedom (level 20): Inflicts Paralyze. While not important for the purposes of this guide, paralysis locks the opponent in place and reduces their SPD to 1, meaning your attacks will be 100% accurate. Sleep is better, but this is occasionally more useful to help you land hits on high level enemies.

• Memory (level 40): Inflicts Amnesia. Not important for the purposes of this guide and the least useful overall, but not terrible if you want to use it to seal an enemy's skills and spells.

Now that you have your thief or thieves, it's time to start levelling them up. As they're often quite weak, you can use 1-1: Beginner's Field to level them safely, as the monsters here barely pose a threat, although they also give very little EXP. Just be careful not to let your frailer units get ganged up on. 1-2: Reflection Pond can be finished in one turn by tossing the prinnies into each other, meaning you can farm bonus gauge 0 rewards quickly, but this is luck based and generally not worth it. It will be important later, however.



You may want to progress through the story as normal for now, but keep in mind that unique bosses (such as Axel) provide x4 the EXP of a regular enemy. You can take advantage of this by getting him and a few of his allies to low health, throwing them into him, and then dealing the finishing blow on the now much higher level Axel. You can also use tower/team attacks to split the EXP among your party.

2-1: Banquet Room is probably the best place to work towards levelling your thief to level 10 or higher, if they're not there already. Thieves are one of the frailest units in the game, so make sure to take advantage of the DEF +50% tiles. Alternatively, you can break the clear geo panel for a boost to the bonus gauge and a little extra damage to all enemies. Your pick.



Now that your thief has levelled up enough to learn Consciousness, we're ready to try a strategy borrowed from speedrunners: unlocking the Dark World at level 10.

Note: If you're a beginner reading this guide, it's highly recommended to leave this step for later, as it can lead to you being overpowered for the main story.

There are several hidden switches in Holt Village.

1. Behind the Post Officer, behind the tipped over column.
2. The back of Adell's house, in the corner.
3. In the bottom right corner of the map, near trees.
4. In a broken part of the wall near the Orc.
5. Just to the left of the previous switch, there's a house with a crate. It's behind this house.

After flicking each of these switches, you will get the prompt "An eerie shadow lurks upon Holt Village..." After this, Friday MKII appears in the bottom right corner of the map where you previously found a switch, standing under a tree. Speaking to her and agreeing to her challenge will throw you immediately into a fight. Save before this fight.

As soon as you start the fight, check the bonus gauge. What you're looking for is either a fist weapon or a gun (for Adell or Rozalin) or a sword (generally very useful) in the 0 slot of the bonus gauge. If none of them are there, reset. You can try to boost the bonus gauge throughout the fight by employing combos, but this is risky, and you'll soon see why.

Once you have the desired bonus gauge, send out a non-thief unit as cannon fodder to lure Friday closer to the base panel. Once she's close enough to be in thief range, put her to sleep and inflict her with poison. You can even do this with one thief by inflicting sleep and poison back to back constantly, but you'll run the risk of running out of SP if you don't have any orbs equipped. After about 5 or 6 turns, Friday will succumb to the poison. She'll count as defeated, but you won't get any EXP or money for defeating her. However, you will get the highlighted bonus gauge item. This item should be of a much higher rank than what you can currently even see in shops, let alone afford, and will allow the one equipping it to carry you through the story, until you reach 3-3: Corpse Garden. This is where the Dark World will come in handy.

First, preparations. If you don't already, make sure you have a healer that can use Espoir, just in case. Go back to one of the earlier levels such as 1-1 and toss one of the monster enemies into the base panel to capture them. This will unlocks a bill in the Dark Assembly that allows you to create Beastmasters. On top of being helpful units, with 5 move and 5 throw and providing buffs to monster units, their attacks fill the bonus gauge twice as quickly as other characters do. Make about 5 of them, using little mana, and give them the cheapest bows available.

Now that preparations have been made, go back to 3-3 and repeatedly stack your allies on top of one another until you enter the Dark World version of the map. Make sure you stack this tower away from the large stump, lest your allies be killed by the level 500 zombie. You won't even be able to put a scratch on him right now without poison, but before cheesing him to death, we can take advantage of there only being one enemy. Have all of your Beastmasters swarm him from out of melee range and ready up their attacks into a combo, finishing with a thief setting him to sleep before hitting execute. This should fill the bonus gauge very quickly while also giving him no chance to retaliate. The only annoyance is the dark sun, which will repeatedly poison allies, hence the necessity of having a healer on deck. You can do this as much as you want, but it should only take a handful of runs before you have good equipment for your party members, decent money, and have levelled up to about 30-50 off of the bonus gauge EXP alone. The main story should be a breeze at this point.



(Alternatively to the above, instead of setting the zombie to sleep over and over again, you can toss him onto the stranded island in the corner before repeatedly attacking him from afar with Beastmasters to fill the bonus gauge without wasting SP. However, you'll also have to strand your thief/thieves when you want to go in for the kill, which can be risky.)

Now would be a good time to see about unlocking some new creatable classes via the Dark Assembly, especially the Magic Knight, which should be a priority from here on out. The EXP and equipment gained from Dark World 3-3 should be plenty to tide you over until you reach chapter 9.

From here on out, I recommend you select two characters you want to level up simultaneously. Preferably one of these should be a magic knight, due to their sheer damage potential. The other can be Adell, Rozalin, your thief, a lady samurai, whatever you'd like. Typically people like to overlevel one unit and plow through the game with them, and while that is actually quite often the most efficient method to playing Disgaea games, this one is a bit of an exception.

The reason for this is that the remaining grinding maps from here on out cannot be beaten by one character in one turn, and cheesing the maps for bonus gauge gains is both very tedious and very inefficient by this point. However, they can be finished in one turn by two characters splitting up on the enemies, and these maps almost seem deliberately made with 'split grinding' in mind, and therefore it's what I recommend to keep things flowing smoothly.

9-2: Grave of Alchemy is one of the best grinding maps in the game, and as soon as you're able to handle it, you should. Whenever it gets too easy, pass a "stronger enemies" bill in the Dark Assembly to increase their level, and therefore the amount of EXP/mana/money you get from killing them. The magic knights are a bit bulkier than the skulls and the skulls can hit pretty hard if you're not careful, but their 2x2 formation on EXP +50% tiles makes it easy to wipe them out in one hit, provided you have area of effect skills such as levelled spells or Winged Slayer (a very useful skill unlocked at sword mastery 10).



You shouldn't pass the "stronger enemies" bill any more than eight times, however, due to a known oversight in every Disgaea and most NIS games in general. To make a long story short, EXP gain up until level 100 follows an exponential curve, as with most JRPGs, to keep levels flowing at a steady pace through the story. However, from level 100 onwards, the exp gain increases at a flat rate instead. This causes an interesting effect where the exponential curve of levels 1-99 causes enemies that are level 99 to give much more exp than intended, roughly equivalent to an enemy at about level 320. This means that passing stronger enemy bills more than eight times actually lowers the amount of exp you'll make from killing the mage knights.

You should spend quite some time here, until your two main attackers are at least level 200, but if you struggle with the following maps, you might want to grind as high as even 300. Now, pass 'weaker enemies' bills until the levels reset back to normal, and then pass the bill for the Cave of Ordeals. You'll likely have to persuade by force to get it to pass. It's here where you'll find your next and final dedicated grinding map, but there's a gauntlet to go through first.

1. The first map of Cave of Ordeals could be used as another grinding map, but it's far less effective than 9-2, so it's not worth bothering. The enemies are only level 60 and standing in a pattern near the base panel, making them easy targets.
2. The second map of Cave of Ordeals is a little more tricky. One path blocks ranged attacks and is full of melee-focused enemies, and the other blocks melee attacks and is full of range-focused enemies. If you took my advice earlier though and levelled up two of your units at once, though, this shouldn't be much of a problem.
3. The third map of Cave of Ordeals can be very annoying and can easily result in a game over if you're not careful. The enemy levels jump up all the way to 150, and on top of that, they're all Cockatrices, which lower your unit's stats when they're on adjacent tiles. The only way to traverse the map is by leaving your units on warp tiles, which is random and can make the map take much longer than normal if you have bad luck. Bear with it and be patient and you'll be rewarded for getting past this map.



And finally, Cave of Ordeals 4, the best grinding map in the game. Eight marionettes line up in a 4x2 fashion on EXP and mana +100% tiles, making them very convenient to be wiped out by two party members. As soon as you're capable of grinding here, you should. You'll never need to bother elsewhere again. Whenever beating the marionettes isn't giving as much EXP as you'd like, gradually turn up their levels with 'stronger enemies' bills and you should be pushing past level 1000 in no time. Probably everywhere else on the internet has already told you about how good this particular map is, so that begs the question, now that you're here...

What next?

As Cave of Ordeals 4 gradually gives more and more diminishing returns, you might be tempted to consider reincarnating for higher stats. This is not a terrible idea, but you'll have trouble catching back up if you do this, requiring you to go back to older grinding spots and work your way back up. First, you'll need to make some preparations. Make sure you've maxed out your customer rank at the store, if you haven't already, and then pass bills for 'more expensive stuff'. Having a few rank 38 items will make the following steps much easier.

Start farming felonies. I know, I know. It takes forever to reach the effective cap of 300. (Your portrait can only display up to 99, but your 'gross criminal records' in your character's info can go up to 300). But it's worth it, because on the characters you max out felonies on, you get a permanent 300% bonus to exp, which will make grinding way, way faster after. You can stack characters on top of each other and toss all of them into the court gate and all of them will get the felony charges. You can have up to nine different units gaining felonies this way. Generally, you don't want to bother giving felonies to monster units, since you can only have one at the top of a stack and they can level up quickly through magichange later anyway.

While you're doing this, start farming Armsmaster and Professional specialists from items. Again, it takes a while, but you won't regret it. Armsmasters help you level up your weapon mastery faster up to a 1900% bonus which can lead to massive stat boosts. Professionals increase your critical hit rate up to 100%, making every successful hit a critical hit, essentially doubling your damage output. You can also go after mentors as well, which increases your skill EXP gain by up to 300%, but this is optional.

Since you're in the item world so much for this segment, keep an eye out for pirates. Pirates appear randomly whenever you finish a turn on floors X1-X9 of an item (meaning that floors ending in 0 will not have pirates appear). As you progress deeper into an item, different kinds of pirates may appear. Defeating them or stealing from them will give you a treasure map. Equipping these maps to your units, even ones you don't actively use, makes pirates more likely to appear. There are 16 pieces to the treasure map in all, and some of the pirates can be very rare, so be patient. The reward for finding all of the pieces of the treasure map is the Land of Carnage, which I will detail later.

Remember, the items you have are neat and all, but they could always be better, right? Always check enemy equipment to see if they have a legendary rank 39 item. Your particular priorities should be the rank 39 sword, staff, and armour pieces. It might not be a bad idea to take a note somewhere of what all the rank 39 weapons are to reference later and note which ones you already have. You want them to be legendary because it will allow you to access the rank 40 equipment, which is the strongest in the game. You'll need to have your thief at a high level (roughly 6000) for the latter step.

This particular part of Disgaea 2 can get quite monotonous and boring, so try to focus on switching between different goals and changing things up so it doesn't get too much to bear. At the same time as you're focused on farming the above, you can also focus on levelling up your weapon mastery, trying out EX maps and Dark World maps, and so on. I also highly recommend playing through Axel mode before taking on the Land of Carnage, but it is by no means a requirement. Around this time, you can also work towards getting the alternate endings, such as the Mid-Boss ending, Etna ending, Laharl ending, and so on. I suggest leaving the Tink ending, crime ending 1, and especially crime ending 2 for last. (You can also savescum for the former two. You shouldn't savescum for crime ending 2 because the boss you face counts as an EX boss and counts towards the EX Clear! achievement.)

The Land of Carnage gives a constant 50% EXP bonus at all times as well as having higher levels, making Cave of Ordeals 4 far more efficient than ever before. Provided you've maxed felonies and stronger enemy bills as well, it shouldn't take you long to reach level 9999, and now would not be a terrible time to consider reincarnating for bonus level points. However, you might want to hold off until you've made some strong equipment to make that grind a bit less risky.

You can level up rank 39 equipment in Holt Village. My recommendation is to pass bills in the item assembly to increase the counter rate on rank 39 weapons, which will make them useful for weapon mastery grinding as well. You could also increase the move and/or jump of rank 39 armour to make it more useful for item worlding. You can do whatever you'd like with the items, but be sure to escape using a Mr. Gency's Exit on floor 99, and then save. Rank 40 equipment can only be found by stealing from floor 100 of a rank 39 item in the Land of Carnage. Since this is very risky and difficult to pull off, you'll want to save first. You always want the legendary items you steal to be of the same rarity. It doesn't matter which rarity this is. It can be anything from 0-7, your pick. The reason you want them all to match in rarity is due to the fact that equipment with matching rarity gains a bonus, up to 30% extra stats if all items are matching.

Around this time, if you haven't already, you might want to wrap up all of the story endings and set about unlocking all of the bonus characters. (Summoning Experiments characters are entirely optional and can be safely left out if so desired.) Have a run where you unlock all characters, all Dark World stages, etc. and can safely challenge some of the tougher bosses without worrying about missing out on missable characters in that playthrough.

So, now that you presumably have some of the best items in the game, be they rewards from EX bosses or from stealing rank 40 items, how do you go about levelling them to their max potential? Well, that's quite the tricky thing, and requires a lot of steps. There are many guides out there with complicated processes of using an exit every few floors to soft reset and stopping at floor 99 to handle lovers innocents and so on, but I've found a method that still results in perfect item stats (tested on both PSP and PC) that streamlines the process into being a little more straightforward and less confusing.

(Note: the next two sections are long and complicated, you may want to check out other guides on making perfect items before continuing.)

You've finally gotten a rank 40 item, be it the Makai Wars from Baal, the Felicitation from Priere, or maybe you've already managed to steal one from an Item God 2 in the Land of Carnage item world. But now you have to level it, and if you're not careful, it's easy to mess up and lose out on stat gains. Here we'll walk you through the process, step by step.

The start of the process is simple. Before doing anything else, equip your rank 40 item(s) to one of your units, and then return to 1-2: Reflection Pond. I told you it would come in handy later. By repeatedly ending the map in one turn by tossing the prinnies into each other, you can very quickly cause lovers specialists to spawn on your items. The reason you want to do this is because each item can only spawn a lovers specialist once. By doing this, you remove the risk that you accidentally get an unsubdued specialist that you can't remove on an item you've finished levelling. Items barely have space for specialists as is, so you don't want these slots to be wasted after you're done putting a ton of time into an item.



Next, of course, you want to work removing the specialists. Do not progress past floor 9. Basically what you want to do is clear the item's specialist slots before we start going through the process of killing item bosses. This will cost you some Gency Exits, but don't worry, you'll be getting them back soon. The reason for this is because having a stat boosting specialist equipped to an item gives extra boosts to that stat when an item boss is killed. Gladiators boost ATK, Dieticians boost HP, and so on. Dual-stat specialists born from the unique Mediator specialist do not grant extra stat boosts when killing item bosses.

Now that the item is cleared out, you can put in the stat specialists of your choosing and start levelling up the item. The first time you kill an item boss, gency out and save. The item boss kill bonus will apply to your item, but it can be applied again when you go back into the item, kill the item boss for the second time, and complete the floor. This is referred to as 'double killing' the item boss. If you gency out after killing the item boss without clearing the floor, the boost won't apply, so this can only be done twice (the first time you reach a floor ending with 0, and when you clear the floor ending with 0). You should always remember to double kill item bosses to ensure maximum stat boosts.

Occasionally on clearing any floor with an item boss, you'll enter the 'innocent world', and the innocent world has a chance to contain a Dark Assembly representative that will allow you to give boosts to your item. Soft reset before finishing floors 10, 20 and 30 until you get the Dark Assembly after each of those floors, and pass the "more [stat]" bill for the stat you want to maximize. Dark Assembly boosts do not apply retroactively to item boss boosts, so you want to get the Dark Assembly boosts as soon as possible. They do, however, apply retroactively to level boosts, so you don't need to worry about when you decide to get level boosts.

An item gains 100 levels by going through it normally, but the maximum level an item can have is 200. You can get bonus levels through:
- Ambush mystery rooms. Groups of one type of monster surround you and you won't be able to leave until you initiate a fight and either survive two turns or kill them within those two turns. Killing them within two turns grants 3 bonus levels.
- The fortune teller mystery room. When you speak to the fortune teller, he will either raise or lower your item's level (bad luck: -3, good luck: +3, great luck: +10). However, talking to him repeatedly to initiate a battle and then killing him grants 3 additional bonus levels (bad luck: no change, good luck: +6, great luck: +13). In the PS2 version, it's possible to get terrible luck, which drops your item's levels by 10 instead of 3, but this has been removed in all later versions.
- Level spheres (not available in PS2 version). These appear more frequently the further you are into an item. Having one of your units hold the item sphere above their head (not breaking it!) while a map is cleared or skipped grants you 5 bonus levels.
So, when should you go about getting these bonus levels to maximize your item's stats? While other guides might give you complicated floor-by-floor steps to follow on when to gency out and reset and so forth, the answer is any floor you want before floor 100. Let me explain.

Mystery gates's spawn logic isn't entirely known, but what is known is that a mystery gate cannot spawn if one appeared in the last three item world floors you skipped or cleared. (Using a gency to escape does not count as clearing or skipping a floor.) Because of this, you theoretically shouldn't be able to get more than one mystery gate on the same floor, right? Well, not quite.

Mystery gate spawns only check the last three item world floors you were on, not which item those floors were in. Because of this, if you get a mystery room on floor 1 of item A, Gency out, and then go through item B, you'll be able to find another mystery room on floor 1 of item A, provided that the last three floors of item B did not contain a mystery room. This can be done on any floor that doesn't contain an item boss, all the way up to floor 99.

On top of this, item boss floors also count towards the 'not mystery room' counter, as well as the floor immediately after you exit a mystery room. Provided you clear them or go through the gate, of course.

If this is still too confusing, allow me to use an example. I want to get bonus levels on a Super Robo Suit. I soft reset on floor 1 until I find an ambush mystery room, which increases the levels by 3. I Gency out, and save. Then, I take an innocuous item from the store, like a Hell Strike. I go through the item like normal, and on floor 8, I encounter a mystery room. I enter it, exit, and then I'm back on floor 8. I clear floor 8, 9, and 10, and now I'm back in Holt Village. I will now be able to find a mystery gate on floor 1 of the Super Robo Suit again, because the last three item world floors I went through didn't have mystery gates on them, even if it was a different item.

So, what are the benefits to this method? For one, it's very easy to track how many bonus levels you've accrued/still need, because you're not actually going any deeper in the item. You don't have to keep gency'ing out every two floors, and constantly having to go farm gencys to keep up with demand. In fact, it creates a gameplay loop of its own, where you soft reset a few times until you get a level boost in the item you want, gency out and save, then you go into a different item, subdue the specialist, clear the last floor for the gency, save, rinse and repeat. You should never run out of gency exits using this method. You're also farming specialists at the same time, and the throwaway items you're levelling can be sold, as well. And you're also getting weapon mastery EXP and skill EXP at the same time. Win-win all around.

Personally, using this method, I only get about 60 bonus levels or maybe even 50 before deciding to commit to the normal stat perfecting method (going through an item full of stat specialists, double killing item bosses, soft resetting for item assemblies, etc. etc.). Because of all the additional mystery gates you'll come across naturally, as well as the level spheres that show up in the PSP and PC versions, this many bonus levels right at the start can sometimes be overkill, and it might be more beneficial for you to wait until floor 99 before deciding to commit to forcing bonus levels.

Some of you may be asking, "but what about item boss kills and Dark Assembly boosts? does getting bonus levels early affect these stat boosts, leading to an imperfect item?" According to my testing, no. I've tried and compared both methods on Super Robo Suits only to find that the stat results are the same every time, and match up with 'perfect item values' I've seen others post online, and it's generally accepted that the stat bonus for killing an item boss applies retroactively to level bonuses. The main factor there is simply the specialists you bring, and how many of them. Whether you decide to force bonus levels on floor 1 or floor 99 does not affect the end resulting stats of the item.

If the above was too word-y for you to follow, here's a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Spawn a Lover specialist on the item you want to perfect (1-2: Reflection Pond is best for this).
Step 2: Go into the item and subdue the specialist, gency out, and repeat until all specialist slots are empty, before reaching floor 10 (do this on floor 1 for the sake of ease).
Step 3: Load up the item with six specialists corresponding to the stat you want to increase.
Step 4: Reach floor 10, kill the item boss, gency out, save.
Step 5: Kill the item boss again and finish floor 10. If you didn't get an innocent town with a Dark Assembly, reset.
Step 6: Pass the stat-boosting bill in the Dark Assembly, leave the item, save.
Step 7: Reach floor 20, kill the item boss, gency out, save.
Step 8: Kill the item boss again and finish floor 20. If you didn't get an innocent town with a Dark Assembly, reset.
Step 9: Pass the stat-boosting bill in the Dark Assembly, leave the item, save.
Step 10: Reach floor 30, kill the item boss, gency out, add another stat specialist, save.
Step 11: Kill the item boss again and finish floor 30. If you didn't get an innocent town with a Dark Assembly, reset.
Step 12: Pass the stat-boosting bill in the Dark Assembly, leave the item, add another stat specialist, save.
Step 13: Go through the item as normal, while double-killing every item boss and collecting level bonuses along the way.
Step 14: Reach floor 99, gency out, save.
Step 15: At any point between steps 2 and 14, soft reset until you get a mystery floor that gives a level bonus and then gency out and save. Now go through at least three floors of a different item and come back. Soft reset until you get another level bonus. Repeat this step until you have 100 bonus levels.
Step 16: Reach floor 100, check if the Item God is holding an item of the rarity you want, and then reset until you get the right rarity. Steal the item, kill him, gency out.
Step 17: Kill the Item God a second time and finish the final floor.

While that's still a lot of steps to remember, it removes the need to gency out every three floors or so and reset until you get a mystery room or level sphere, allowing you to focus on not messing up the other steps.

Now that you have a strong item or two, you might be considering levelling up and reincarnating until you max out your bonus stats as well. However, the boosts given by these aren't very necessary.

Storing levels via reincarnating gives you bonus points up until you've stored a very hefty 186,000 levels on one character, at which point you get 210 stat points to allocate. However, generic classes also get 10 additional bonus stat points if they have reincarnated into the same tier of the same class at least 10 times in a row. This adds up to 220 bonus points. On top of that, base stats have an increased starting value depending on what your stats were before reincarnating. By having stats of at least 280,000 and HP of roughly 1,100,000 you ensure that you'll have the maximum base stat increase of 40 in every stat. These stats can be achieved by reincarnating with base stats of at least 67. Once you reach level 9999 and reincarnate again, you'll have the maximum increased starting value of 40 added to each stat.

By putting the maximum amount of points into one stat, it will come out to roughly 1.14 million by the time you reach max level, which is pretty high. However, by the time you're able to achieve these reincarnation numbers with relative ease, you'll likely already have several weapons that give stats so high that 1.14m is nice and all, but not particularly noticeable. I'd say it's only worth it if you're planning on tackling Pringer X with said character, otherwise it might be a big waste of time. Reincarnating a little here and there to have higher stats to fight certain bosses isn't a terrible idea, but 186k is a LOT and will take you a LONG time just for one unit.

But let's say you want to go through with it anyway, whether it's to face EX bosses or just because you like a particular character that much. An important question is, "when should I reincarnate"? Well, reincarnating at level 9999 would allow you to reach 186k stored levels in 20 reincarnations. It takes quite a while to reach level 9999 though, and doing this is not as time efficient as it may seem.

I don't know the exact numbers and have not personally done any tests as to the best level-to-reincarnation ratio for maximum time efficiency. I did find, however, that levelling only to 4000 at Cave of Ordeals 4, was roughly three or four times as fast compared to levelling all the way up to 9999. This meant that I would have to reincarnate about 50 times, but because the reincarnations were always after just a small handful of map clears, it flew by much much faster. You might find that a different level is more efficient for you, however, and I encourage you to experiment if you're unsure.

Strangely enough, there exists a grinding map that's even faster than Cave of Ordeals 4, but it might not be what you're expecting: Land of Carnage Baal Castle: Viewing Room. Four Baals surround a single Uber Prinny Baal.



Now, I know what you might be thinking. "Isn't this one of the strongest bosses in the game? Is that really efficient?" The answer is, surprisingly, yes. Unlike Cave of Ordeals 4, it's not any faster or slower if you decide to solo it or use multiple characters. Additionally, there's no restriction on what weapons you can use; while other grinding maps typically require you to use swords, fists or spells, for this map you can use any weapon you feel like. You can even solo it with a monster unit if you feel so inclined (although you may as well magichange at that point). The best part? With the Land of Carnage EXP boosts, max felonies, and max stronger enemies bills passed, you can reach level 9999 in about 10 clears. For Disgaea 2, that's ridiculously fast. So, what's the catch?

You need to have, at the very least, a perfected weapon equipped with a high weapon mastery level (~200) and preferably a perfected Super Robo Suit or two to be able to take on this map at lower levels. It's not unfeasible to take on this map at level 1 under these conditions. If you followed my guide on perfecting items and you now have, for example, 3 perfect Super Robo Suits and a perfect Omniscient Rod, even this map becomes a breeze. However, by that point, you have more or less all the strength you need and may or may not already have a unit or two with max stored levels at level 9999 already.

General tips for clearing this map; the first two Baals are a threat while your character is at level one, so either weaken them and have your low level character take them out for the EXP, or lift your low level character with a fodder unit before ending your turn and they'll take the hit instead. After your character gains some levels, item level bonus will kick in and their stats should now be high enough to where they don't take any damage. (Maybe bring a healer just in case, though.) Try to kill Prinny Baal before killing the two Baals in the back; Prinny Baal's stats double if it's the last one alive, and it will pack a punch if it lands a hit at that point. He won't move until provoked, but the other two Baals will start moving if you get into their range or enough turns pass, so try to lure Prinny Baal away from those two before they 'activate' and start attacking.

This map is technically the best grinding map in the game, but requires so much setup in advance that it's questionable if it's even worth it by the time you're ready. Still, if you've gotten this far and you still want to keep grinding, or you feel like you need the extra strength to take on Pringer X, it's definitely worth it.

These are methods I commonly see listed that are, in my opinion, made obsolete by other methods listed above, but your mileage may vary. None of these methods are necessarily bad, but they may cost you more time. Still, if you personally prefer any of these methods or find them less confusing, nothing's stopping you from using them.

In the original PS2 version of the game, this map was great, but is no longer worthwhile in any of the ported versions. Why? Well, the map is full of Nekomatas, resting on panels that increase their level by 10% every turn. If you were to leave a character out of their reach and end your turn repeatedly, their levels could go as high as 9999. You can even capture them by throwing them into the base panel! So, why is this not recommended?

The main issue is a balance change made from the PSP version onwards. In the PS2 version, you could capture enemies that were a higher level than Adell, but this is no longer the case. Adell has to be a higher level than the Nekomata in order to capture them. If you have a level 9999 Adell, congratulations! You don't need this map. If you want to capture level 9999 enemies, it's much faster to do so from the Land of Carnage item world.

What about the EXP/money gain? Killing high level enemies does grant higher EXP and money, but the sheer amount of setup time, not forgetting to mention the difficulty of killing a level 9999 enemy if you're at a low level, makes this take significantly longer than, say, grinding on 9-2. That may be much further in the story, but there's nothing stopping you from using another map like Dark World 3-3 or the item world until you're ready to advance the story or unlock Cave of Ordeals.

This stage features four sets of two level 48 Geomancers with one space between them, sitting on geo panels that inflict reverse damage and grant +100% mana. Reverse damage means that attacks will heal, and healing spells and items will attack. This map is great for levelling healers, or at least getting some extra mana on them. Healers will generally be lacking for mana, unlike most characters, and their high RES means they'll have no trouble surviving any attacks from the Geomancers while dealing high amounts of reverse damage.



If this map is so great for healers, then why is it in this section? Well, that's for the simple fact that any unit you might want to use as a healer (Healer class, Rozalin, Marona, etc.) will have good-to-great INT as well, and possibly one other high offensive stat, that you can use to have them grind alongside your offensive units. It's easy to have them create a pupil, such as a Star Mage, and then learn a basic spell like Star (or higher versions of it) from the pupil, then delete the pupil when they're no longer necessary. By the time you've unlocked 11-3, you'll have access to 9-2, which is way, way better for grinding levels. This map is good, but unfortunately overshadowed.

There is another use for this map, however, and that comes in the form of weapon mastery grinding. If you clear away some of the Geomancers and throw two of your own units onto the reverse damage panels, they can attack and counter each other repeatedly without ever taking damage. With a level 1900 Armsmaster on one or both of their equipment, and weapons with "more counter attacks" assembly bills passed, and even a weapon mastery scroll or two bought from a mystery room in the item world if you deem it necessary, you'll start gaining weapon mastery levels much faster than normal.

However, this is only relatively faster. This method is still slow and monotonous, and it's usually better to grind mastery levels while doing other things, like clearing story and Dark World maps, doing extra NG+ cycles to see more endings/unlock more of the extra maps, item worlding, or even just other methods of grinding like Cave of Ordeals 4. Still, if you want a (relatively) quick boost to a character's weapon mastery to take on a tough map or you've finished reincarnating and levelling said character and want to get to 255 with their chosen weapon, this is worth keeping in mind.

There are two main ways to use this map, one is for grinding levels and the other is for grinding skill levels.



The first way, beating the level 60 Archers repeatedly, isn't recommended. You'll usually have access to maps that give better EXP, mana and money by the time you can unlock Cave of Ordeals, and this will be an immediate downgrade. This map isn't very difficult to complete, however, provided you keep your units out of sniping range, break the geo panels giving the enemies buffs, and you can have two characters run to either end of the map to throw two EXP +50% effects onto geo panels for double EXP. The only reason you might want to grind on this map is if you entered Axel Mode too early and got stuck because the enemies were too high level (happened to me once. Remember, don't level only Adell and Rozalin!).



The second way, levelling up your skills, is a little more complex, but not worth it in my opinion. You can level up your skills while going through the story, clearing EX and Dark World maps, and item worlding. You also don't need to max out skill levels, the added damage boost from doing so is unnecessary. However, if you'd like to do this method, it works as follows;

Equip your chosen unit (preferably a skull mage with a level 25 Lover innocent for the class's innate skill level gain boost) with an item that has a level 300 Mentor on it, and make sure they have lots of SP as well. Depending on the skill you want to boost, have one of the following 'tank' units nearby:
- Holy Dragon, who is immune to non-elemental skills.
- Dragon, who is immune to fire elemental skills.
- Fenrir, who is immune to wind elemental skills.
- Warslug, who is immune to ice elemental skills.

Repeatedly set your unit to attack the tank with the skill you want to level, benefiting from the +1 attack geo panel, and the skill's level should climb fairly quickly. Your tank shouldn't be taking any damage due to their innate ability to negate certain elements, and you can keep doing this until you run out of SP or get too bored, at which point you finish the map like normal. For buffs/healing skills, you don't need a tank and can target any unit, including the caster. There is no class that can negate star element skills, unfortunately. You can always have the unit whose skill(s) you want to level unequipped of any particularly strong items, and then bring out a character with very high defenses to act as the tank.

• Add screenshots of items perfected using alternative method.
  
• Add screenshots/videos of alternative grinding methods.

Thank you for reading, I hope I've been able to help.