This guide is made for everyone who needs a lil' help when it comes to grind. If this is your first Disgaea, just so you know, you are in for the grind... the REAL grind, dood!

This guide features:

- Some useful stuff you may need to know (?).

- The zones you may want to grind out.

- How to max out your stats. (or atleast a part of it).

- Unlocking some pretty cool and harsh dimensions, dood!

- Getting some incredibly powerful weapons and armor.

- May contain traces of sardines.


And hopefully beating this guy!

- Learn the main mechanics! I know it's stupid and all, but if you can master those, you might be able to make your own grinding techniques, like "geo blocks" destroying or monster fusing!

- That's right, if you throw enemies into each other, they just "fuse" and gain levels! This can be mighty useful in early game when you can get level 99 enemies since they give an exp value of a level 323 thanks to how the experience formula work.

- Want to learn weapon skills and dominate the whole battle field with AoE attacks? Well, weapon proficiency is no more in D4 and you'll need to buy them with Mana instead.

- Get the cheat shop ASAP, it gives bonus exp/mana/HL and the cap limit increases each chapters! You can also increase the difficulty which increases how strong the enemies are in each respective levels (which can also net you more if you use it well...).

- Do you have a monster on your team you want to level up but it's too weak? Try out magichange! Not only it powers up humanoid characters, but it also levels up with it, meaning that each kill you do gives experience both to the humanoid character AND the monster! (really comes in handy once you unlock Desco)

- Try to get a Professor ASAP since their evility increases the experience gain by 20% when they are present on the map (it even stacks if you try to add more!).

- Please don't hoard equipment for too long and sell it! Not only it makes alot more space in your inventory for better loot but you can get large sums of HL too for even better equipment in the early game!

- Talking about equipment, do know that emblems are the best equipable you'll ever get (next to shoes and power belts) since they give a hefty boost to every stats!

- As for fighting tactics, always try to attack from the rear or the back of enemies, it deals extra damage even if it seems the enemy is overleveled! (it works both way and the AI is programmed to always abuse this so be careful too!)

- While it's not as a big deal as magic extracts from Disgaea 5, Serums are still a great way to boost your stats if you got the innocents! You can only find them in the Item World's mystery gate high towers.

Chapter 1

1-1(Episode 1: Rebels of Hades - Rehabilitation Room

Please, do abuse geo blocks/panels, especially the experience/mana ones, you can lift and throw 'em at your leisure!


1-3(Episode 1: Rebels of Hades - Prinselytise Room

Pretty straightforward, move out some geo blocks which can give 150% more EXP! You may also try to destroy one of 'em...


1-4(Episode 1: Rebels of Hades - Albatross Collar)

This is where geo block destroying becomes important! Not only it damages enemies (and yourself) if you are on respective panels, it also boosts your bonus gauge and HL at the end of the chain reaction!

Chapter 2

2-2(Episode 2: Prinny Wars - Hypha Invasion)

Try to throw the blue block next to the green block and destroy it ASAP, it will create a HUGE chain reaction, enough to fill up the entire bonus gauge (including first tier emblems!) and kill every enemies!

Note: this also works if you throw the green block next to the blue one




2-3(Episode 2: Prinny Wars - Forest of Corpses)

Works wonder if you can manage the cheat shop's difficulty changer and the amount of enemies on the map! (Note: You can go up to level 75-80 just by adapting the difficulty too!)


2-6(Episode 2: Prinny Wars - Altar of Waste)

Do I really need to explain this one? Just beat 'em into a pulp multiple times and you'll level up quickly! (Note: Try fusing 'em if you are feeling it!)

Chapter 3

3-2(Episode 3: Enter the Final Weapon - Searing Euthanasia)

Need to level up? Need mana? Or simply need more HLs? Then this stage is made for you (atleast for a good part of the early game)!

Chapter 5

5-2(Episode 5: The Angel of Avarice - Lost Dignity)

You can get level 99 enemies if you change the difficulty up to 8 stars (no more, no less!). If you 2*2 AoE skills, be sure to use them, and they better hurt. You can also destroy the yellow geo block if you throw it into the panels, this will ensure a 150% EXP boost.

If you can manage it, you'll get ALOT of experience, trust me! (Note: You'll waste alot of time on this particular stage, since you can go up to level 450-500 just by grinding this)

5-4(Episode 5: The Angel of Avarice - Ruin Coaster)

If you prefer a lighter way to grind, you can always fuse the 3 level 33 bouncers to form a level 99. There's 3 sets of them too but let me tell you it's not very optimal to grind for experience. (You can always train your diagonal throws over here though).

Chapter 9

9-4(Episode 9: The Moon, Earth, and the Promise! - Concrete Knowledge)

If you didn't stick to the previous grind spots and Mt. Ordeal isn't in your scopes yet, do not worry! This stage is the second best grind spot you'll ever get! All you have to do is move the 50% EXP (and mana if you need said ressource of course), and wipe out the well-placed enemies with a AoE skill.

Grind this as much as you can till you are certain you can handle Mt. Ordeal 4, and if the level gain is too low, do not forget the cheat shop!

Late/Post-Game

- Training Mt. Ordeal 4

Once you got enough mana and are strong enough to take on the senators, you'll be able to unlock the perfect grinding spot, which is probably the place you'll always come back to grind a bit more.


Combat tip: If you have only one strong character and you need to protect it from attacks, you can always lift that said character so he doesn't get targeted at all during the enemy turn. The only one taking the damage will be the one lifting though.

Note: By this point (even prior to that), HL just flows like water. So go ham and buy everything you need for your characters.


Have you completed the 3 ordeals before getting this ultimate grinding spot? If so, congrats. Now the real late-game portion begins.

Evil Symbols is a unique feature of Disgaea 4, which introduces multiple goodies for your characters in your cam-pain HQ(Note: If you have played D5, just think of them as Squads).

That's right, Evil Symbols are basically buildings you place around your characters, giving effects such as XP/Mana share, or giving them movement bonus or simply allowing some of your army to appear during bills. The most notable ones are the Aura Pyramid and the Training Ground.

Respectively, one gives you 50% mana share for two characters depending on a third one.
The other works the same but at a lesser rate of 10% but for EXP and for 3 characters instead.

In Disgaea, reincarnation is a recurrent feature that lets you reset your character progress to level 1 to either give you more stat points or go to the next tier of your class (if it's a generic character) or simply both. Yet, in D4, reincarnating not only gives you those benefits, but it also upgrades all of your aptitudes by 5% each times.

The better your aptitude, the better stats you'll have from equipment!


Sardine Man after 5 Reincarnations and w/o Chara World

Note:

- You may reincarnate as much as you want, but do know that the aptitude upgrade has a cap of 25%. So it's only really useful to reincarnate 5 times.

- Promoting a generic character also gives you the 5% apt. bonus into its next tier for a lower mana amount, really good if you don't want to grind too much mana in the early game!

The Item World is a recurring feature in Disgaea that let's you level up your items throughout randomized maps (tilesets, monsters and geo-blocks effects).

Just know that if you to have more floors in your item, it needs to be "Rare" or "Legendary" which is represented by lower rarity values.
If you want stronger enemies, either use the cheat shop for higher difficulty or pick higher rank items to begin with.

The Item W. is also available to do in Land of Carnage, which gives higher rank loot!


An Item's level caps at 300, but can be optimized with innocents and bills you pass at the senate during your travel in the Item World.


Pirates returns once again in Disgaea during your excursion in the Item W.. This time around you can collect ship parts to make up your own!

Pirates shows up randomly now and then during the first or second turn of a floor and some may only spawn during specific routes (or only during LoC Item worlding).


You'll need to beat those particular pirates if you want to reach some late-game content.

Once you beat up your first fleet of pirate, you'll be able to pass a bill to unlock the pirate editor and start what we call "Reverse Pirating". This will be very useful to grind out innocents in your items!

Note: You might also get multiple pirate ships boarding on a single floor, so be careful!



Reverse pirating is available at your Item Worlder once you save your first ship (they give you one for free) but can only be done if you level your weapon up past floor 20/40/60/80/100. Meaning that you can reverse pirate an item up to 5 times maximum in a legendary item.


A rare item can be reverse pirated 3 times whenever you want.

It's simple really, you get exclusives innocents during R. pirating and instead of beating them up like normal, you need to throw them onto your ship to double their value! Plus, the extra level spheres comes in pretty handy when you can handle the heat.


Once you cleared the floor a bit, keep one enemy alive (stall by lifting) and throw what you need onto your ship.

It may involve a bit of save-scum to get what you want, and a way to get every innocents/spheres aboard, but it can really be worth it in the end, especially for high rank items in late-game.


See you, space cowboy!

Note: Do know that you are limited in time (turns) and can only be increased by certain ship parts, so make it quick!

You may also (very rarely) get pirated while you are reverse pirating, and they are no joke, so put someone on defense duty unless you want to get flanked by the main stage AND the pirates.

Dual magichange is a new mechanic in Disgaea 4 that let's you dual-wield two monsters through magichange, though the restrictions are quite harsh (unlocking the dual dojo by defeating a level 1000 enemy with a magichange/passing said bill & only two monsters allowed to join the dojo), the positives are just too good to ignore it.

D-magichanging lets you attack TWICE in the same round while gaining evilities of both monsters to your character. Plus, everyone gets the same XP and mana.

The main downside is just like the normal magichange's one though, limited turns and if the character using Dual Magichange is defeated, all 3 units will be counted as defeated.


Mt. Ordeal 4 w/10 star difficulty, one tyrant flughude isn't enough to take them down at my level, but since I got D-Magichange, I can just strike twice for a guaranteed kill and just not worry anymore.

If you have played Disgaea 5, you probably know it's board game version, which is simpler and faster than it is in D4 (I hate it personally). This time around, it's just like the Item World except each floor upgrades your character's aptitudes by a few percents every time you clear it (better if you kill the special residents inside it).

There's also mystery rooms which can help you get more exclusive evilities, apt. bonus and other benefits for your own character.

The main thing about Chara World though, is the fact that there's an abundance of geo blocks, which you either ignore or destroy them (either by brute force or throwing them accordingly). If you do manage to destroy them all, it can either spawn a guaranteed mystery room or lower the mana required to boost your character.

Before you enter the Chara World, you'll be asked which stats you want to upgrade / thing to inherit.

Do know that there's a limit on how many times you can enter the chara world on one chararacter (the better the reincarnation, the higher the counter is).


The stronger your character his, the toughest the enemies will be so it may be advisable to reincarnate for easier time and grind mana at 0% XP. Plus, reincarnating resets your counter to 0.


It all correlates to Evil Symbol and it's members. If you enter the 8th floor mystery room (and choosing skill/evility inheritance beforehand) and have your character designated to a Evil Symbol, you'll get the chance to get one skill/evility of the other characters inhabiting the same Evil Symbol.

This way, you can equip overpowered Evilities such as Prideful Comrade (20% more stats for every adjacent allies on cam-pain HQ, totalling a 80% stat bonus) or 3 Transformations (20% more stats at 1/3 HP, which can be easily obtainable with weights).


You can only get one per travels, so choose wisely!


If you want to upgrade your aptitudes to the maximum (300%) as fast as possible, you may want to get Overlord Priere which has an amazing innate evility that lets her do another action in the turn as long as she kills an enemy with a normal attack.

Give her your best equipment (a few shoes if you need movement), and speedrun through the exit. If there's an enemy, stand next to it and one-hit kill it (if you can) then move on.

Rinse and repeat it for every floor, till you get to F9, where you can get your character's improvement. Then just try to wreck F10 a bit to either get aptitude/evilities blocks or the character's clone to improve your aptitudes even more, and don't forget to kill the chara World's President too!

Overall, one run shouldn't take more than 5 minutes if you boosted Priere a bit.

While it's main translation might be a bit vague, if you read out the tutorial given by Fenrich once the Cabinet is introduced, it basically improves your growth rate for specific stats (or does senate stuff in online which is not here for now).

It's simple really, once you think you are done upgrading your aptitudes (300% is the maximum) and mainly done reincarnating, I suggest reincarnating one final time as the Cabinet President to insure you get the most stat boost from level 1 to 9999.


You can boost your growth rate by equipping a Rising flag (either from stealing it from Warrior Pirates or finding Wandering Engryi 10 times in the Item World). This raises it by 5% thanks to its unique innocent.



You may also find Priere's Power Charge evility useful if you want to be a glass cannon. It raises the ATK's growth rate by 30% but decreases the defense's growth rate by 30%.

The X-Dimension is an alternate world that can only be accessed by obtaining promotionhell tickets which can be bought by scalpers in the Item World's mystery gates (be aware that they are quite expensive in the early-game).


Good luck getting one of them!

Once you buy one, a new character (a Magic Knight) will appear in your base so you can go visit the X Dimension, which is basically a harder version of the story's stages (like the dark world in D2).

If you wish to reach the next portion of the game, do know that you need to clear atleast 40% of this alternate world and some other requirements, which will be our next subject of discussion.

The Land of Carnage makes its return in Disgaea 4, this is where you're going to get most of the end-game stuff (R30+ weapon/armor) throughout more difficult stages that you've already completed (mostly overlevel'd enemies).



- Clear atleast 40% of the X Dimension. (atleast 25 stages)

- Collect 6 ship parts by capturing specific enemies:


Note: Reminder that you need to unlock the specific tier of enemy to capture them in the first place


Be sure that the treasure is in the X-Dimension, if not, just save/reload till you get an appropriate one. IF it's not a Flonzor part, reload your save and do the whole thing again (it's probably the worst part of the game btw).



If you have trouble finding the meowkins pirates, the cheat shop allows you change the spawn rate of certain pirates at your leasure! (only available during post-game)


After all this, check out the Professor in your base and you are free to go to the Land of Carnage!


You're in the real late-game now, all's left to do is grind up at LoC Mt. Ordeal 4 and higher rank equipment exclusive to the Land of Carnage.

R40 weapons/armors are the strongest in their own categories but can only be obtained through the Item World of a R39 weapon/armor. But that's not all, you've gotta steal it from a powerful foe! That's right, at floor 100 of a R39 weapon/armor, sits a Item God (2) with the R40 weapon already equipped on it. So not only you'll need the patience to go from floor 1 to 100, but you'll also need to STEAL it from the foe.

Thus, you need a high level thief (since they got a natural boost at stealing) and high tier stealing hand. Do know that you can "gency" out of a item before going to floor 100, so you may aswell use it in floor 99, save and do your thing. If you fail stealing the item, just save-scum (or retry if you survive the assault and have enough materials).


You can only get a Baal Sword from Yoshi-tsuna's Item God 2

If you do succeed in stealing, you can either beat the crap out of the Item god or just scram and keep your legendary R40 item.

But it's not over yet, you can also get the R40-2 weaponry if you feel courageous, only found on floor 100 of a R40 weapon/armor.


This took some time, but it's worth it!

Note:
- Do know that some past tier weaponry can only be obtained through LoC from Bonus Gauge or stealing

- Some unique items can only be obtained through unique enemies too (Zetta with "Makai Wars" for example)


Good luck stealing and beating that in the first place!

It's the process of duplication, our main objective is going to be copying mass amounts of high tier weapons and armors. Hopefully, you'll be doing it on your recently acquired and level'd up R40 weapons, but this can also be done much sooner if you want to!


This is getting out of hand.


You'll need two things first:

- The Battle Suit generic character (lvl 30 Heavy Knight and Warrior).

- The Puppy Paw Stick (PPS for short).

While one is easily available after a certain chapter, the other one can be quite tricky to get since it involves more capture and treasure shenanigans. Firstly, you need to capture high levels Nekomata (for a better chance of getting treasures in the X dimension), then SAVE and hope you get a treasure with the PPS.

If you are feeling lucky, keep savescumming, if not, you might need to get every ship parts out of the way.


2 hours for this ain't worth it, right?

Once you get the PPS, just equip it on a character that specialize with axes and wreck a few Battle Suit allies equipped with the stuff you want to dupe and with the skill "Run Wild" in effect (makes the ally neutral). There's 10% chance you'll dupe an item it's equipped with


Just go to 1-1 and do the setup over and over for the desired item until you dupe it.


Proof

Note: You can abuse the dupe for innocents too since it's the same item!

Innocents are entities living in items and have multiple abilities depending of their types ranging from boosting your item stats, giving more exp and more.

I'll be focusing on two types of innocents to power your weapons/armor to the maximum:

- Stat based innocents.

- Item Stat Innocents.

Respectively, one gives a fixed boost depending of their level (maximum is 19998). While the other gives a % bonus on the whole item if it correspond (maximum is 500). But do note that the 2nd one is the most important (I mean, who doesn't a 500% boost on their item?).


With a level 300 armor, it's advisable to put a level 500 guardian in it to boost its potential by 500%, especially if it's the R40-2 one!

List of Item Stat innocents

Note: You can only get those type of innocents via Reverse pirating. Once you got one, I suggest putting them in a item and start duping then combine. It's a long process but it's just so worth it.

Lemme enjoy the game itself a bit and you'll get your guide, I promise!

Feel free to check my other guide around Disgaea 5 too!

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1545587391