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Disgaea – Hour of Darkness – (2003 game) >

Yes, it’s a very old game, but I decided to make a little project out of it so I don’t miss out on unlocking anything and I otherwise have an efficient path for my characters. This began as a PS/2 guide, but it got released on Steam so it’s been updated with that in mind.

For grinding on the PS/2 port, consider AutoHotkey.

Also:

• Disgaea guide – Items

• Disgaea guide – Item Specialists (item dots)

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These notes were started for the PlayStation 2 version: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

However, I’ve audited these notes while playing the Steam port: Disgaea PC

Male Warrior

Female Warrior

Female Cleric

Ways this guide could be improved ∞

• The Female Cleric has the Mage and Knight under her. Consider a melee.

Tips ∞

• Prinnies are a bridge between human units and monster units:

  • You can reincarnate a human into a Prinny and then into a monster
  • You can reincarnate a monster into a Prinny and then into a human

• Ineffective actions still increase a skill

  • Such as an attack or spell that does 0 damage, or a healing spell that heals 0 health.

• Attacking or casting

  • You can use the defensive buffs Shield and Magic Wall.
  • If against an ally, equip the defender well.
  • Equip the attacker poorly. I keep very low level weapons for this.
  • Be aware that a defender may counter.
  • TODO – Do nearby allies contribute to a team attack against an ally? I presume so.
  • You can use one ally to attack, and a second ally to heal.
• When a pupil levels up, their mentor gains a little strength based on the pupil’s, but it’s too minor to obsess over.

• A master and its pupils have a high combo/assistance chance.

  • If you want a core team of melee characters, make one mentor with a couple of pupils.
• I manually organize my teams, and use Etna as my “separator”. I put her at the bottom of the characters I’m currently interested in, and the others I’ve set aside I put under her.
• If you are on an Attacks +1, it’s possible to miss with the first attack and hit with next attack (or the other way around).
• Reincarnating will degrade ability levels. It is therefore important to learn more than the bare minimum for all things so that you don’t essentially “forget” something when reincarnating.

• Safe often.

  • Save into a spare save slot, and cycle between two or three of them; you don’t want to overwrite your only save slot and then realize you did something stupid and now cannot roll back.

• Item levels

  • Always have a Gency’s Exit and a few Hands items to   steal with.
  • Consider having some health/sp/cure items just in case, especially if you have Ninjas.
  • Some can be created which are extremely difficult or even impossible. Be aware of this, and build toward a very well-rounded group which can push, lift, jump and throw to deal with various levels.
  • Sometimes it’s a good idea to enter an item world, kill some Item Specialists and immediately exit. This way you can re-enter and hope for another Item Specialist at that same item difficulty level.
    — See Disgaea guide – Item Specialists (item dots)
  • It’s okay to enter an item, go for a single Item Specialist and then abandon any further spelunking.
  • It’s okay to capture Item Specialists from useless items you will just sell after.

• A character cannot hurt itself with it’s own spell.

  • Allies can hurt (or kill) one another.
• The maximum Mana is 9999999 (9,999,999)
• The maximum Weapon Mastry is 255

Mentors learning skills from their pupil ∞

• Most mentors can learn most skills from their pupil.

  • There are guides which claim that Ninjas cannot learn spells. This is false, they can learn spells.

• The pupil does not need to have the appropriate weapon equipped, it just needs to be next to the mentor to “teach”. The mentor does need the correct weapon equipped.

Earning money ∞

1) Don’t lose money

This can be a problem in the early game. Be careful with money, because you can run out and be unable to heal.

• Don’t kill your own units or allow them to die.

  • Retreat whenever possible and bring out something powerful rather than lose a guy.
• Getting hurt costs you money to heal, so it’s best to outright murder an enemy than risk being damaged.

• Using sp costs money to heal, so it’s best to use basic/combo attacks to kill enemies when that’s easy.

Some of these things matter more than others, and later on in the game money becomes nearly meaningless, though the PC version has a music feature with expensive songs to buy.

2) Kill high level things for more rewards.

Combining enemies by throwing them at one another is an option.

3) Earn bonus ranks for more rewards.

This is easier said than done, but try to make combination attacks wherever it’s simple to do and you won’t have a counterattack.

You can take advantage of either healing or invulnerability geo squares, and grind a bunch.

A Rogue contributing to a combo attack will contribute more to the bonus score.

Creating a new unit ∞

If you wish to create a pupil unit with a skillset to grant it’s master, or you want to create a super-unit with all skills, this is my recommendation.

It doesn’t really matter what class you begin with because it’s easy to get the necessary sword ability to start aggressively solo-grinding a 3×3 block of enemies.

You might think it’s easier to begin with an offensive caster character, but to get a 3×3 spell will take a very long time. Therefore you should use a sword and reincarnate that same character through all your desired classes.

Don’t forget to level all your skills past level 1 before you reincarnate or you will lose them!

Remember that a master can use it’s pupil’s skills when standing directly beside it.

—

• Prepare three characters:

  • first character: Capable of wounding a 3×3 of enemies.
  • second character (new): Equip a sword, and the best defensive and offensive physical gear you can. A little sp will make things more convenient.
  • third character: Capable of killing a 3×3 of enemies.
• Rearrange your characters for convenience.
• first character: 1-1 alone – Tutorial > Practice Map to improve your sword skill.

• all characters: Grind 10-1 – Stellar Graveyard > Valgipus IV by:

  • first character: Wound everything.
  • second character (new): Attempt to kill everything.
  • third character: Kill everything.

• Switched to using “Winged Cutter” once you can. This ability is important if you want to pass the promotion exams with a sword.

  • If doing so, also make sure you have some movement items.
• Use “Winged Slayer” once you can.
• Consider 10-4 – Stellar Graveyard > Cross-Point for your levelling character. It has a combination +50% atk and +50% def geo panel and all enemies are melee.

• Do not “end turn”.

Earning experience ∞

• Kill enemies which are higher level than you.

  • Consider throwing enemies at one-another to combine their experience total and give you something stronger to fight.

• Pay attention to the possibilities when you have a tile which gives invulnerability or restores health, that you can put a lower level character on it and let the enemies come to you. Be aware that knockbacks are a thing, and your low level character can be bounced out and killed that way.

Where to kill-grind for easy experience ∞

In the early game, you will find a few easier maps. I leave it to you to write down the ones you find fun and easy. Don’t forget that maps with lower-level enemies will award less experience.

It’s very easy to forget which map is which. There’s no preview and you can’t easily back out of a map once you’ve started it. See Disgaea 1 maps for help.

Consider wounding higher-level enemies with a capable character, and then delivering the finishing blow with something lower-level that you want to gain the most experience with. You can also have multiple units all trying combos. Remember that a master and pupils have an increased chance, as do units with the same weapon type wielded.

Once you come a point when you have a good enough set of units that you can easily push forward through the campaign, do so and don’t bother levelling your other units unless you want to grind them up a bit. You only need the maximum deployable number of units to be useful; spares don’t matter unless you kit units out for specific sorts of fights. Monsters are an example of that, but personally I just use a bunch of casters because humans are superior.

TODO – specific levels? ∞

• 1 — Tutorial

  • Good for grinding your single-target spells, even for high-level units. A beginner caster will do well here when they have support to finish things off. You can stay to the bottom of the map and nothing will approach. A reasonable melee character can just hang out in the middle and counterattack for practice, although an area with invulnerability is a better strategy.

• 2-3 — Vyers Castle – Corridor of Love

  • Your very first visit will have a patch of regeneration.
  • I used this and got enemies into a very lucky position such that one didn’t even attack me. I was able to easily level up my Female Cleric’s Staff skill, which turned out to be very important for high range later.
  • I confirmed this on a second playthrough. The southwest enemy does not attack. I threw things at it to make it high level, then created a block of high-assisting units to constantly attack it. This was easy to grind using my Mayflash PS2 Controller Programmable Convertor.

• TODO —

  • Only a few enemies will approach, the rest will wait for you and will be in a +exp area if you rearrange the nearby geo stones.

• 5-1 — Blazing Core > Road of Flames

  • Enemies are all melee, and they are on +100% experience. The first group is easily within immediate range, and the second group is close enough that you don’t waste much time here.

• 6-3 — Jotunheim > Terrible Cold

  • Has invulnerability, which would be highly useful for attack-grinding.

• 7-1 — Blair Forest > Calamity Woods

  • A massive patch of enemies.

• 8-1 — Salamander's Breath > Scorching Wind

  • Nice lines of enemies, and with enough movement you can take a single unit to pop out, kill a row, run away to safety, next round, run to spawn, pop out, kill a row, run to safety, repeat.
  • Ice is very useful. (I think this is a PS/2 preference because resistances are random for PC/Steam)

• 10-1 — Stellar Graveyard > Valgipus IV

  • One block of enemies. Amazing for levelling spells or a sword.

TODO – more?

Leveling weapons/spells/skills ∞

You can hit your own units. By removing the offensive ability of the attacker, and increasing the defensive ability of a high-level defender, you can do this safely until you run out of sp.

I have my attacker equipped with high-sp items.

There are several maps where the enemy won’t come near you, and you can do this safely.

Your allies can counter-attack against this, so if you are leveling a melee weapon, do so against a high-level caster.

Notes on units ∞

See your final character goals for notes.

• Majin are stupid-powerful; you want lots of these.

Ninja ∞

Ninjas are silly. Early on, equip one with a Rosary, Imperial Seal and the like. Later, try ninja shoes etc. They’re nigh impossible for an enemy to hit with an attack, special ability, or spell.

You can safely train others in a Spear or Gun by shooting at a Ninja with high defensive gear (especially spd). By positioning carefully it becomes really fast to grind this way. If you want train melee items, be aware that the Ninja has a counter.

For Item-Maps, you can sit on regeneration squares, use defense and let your counters kill things. For anything wounded enough, you can pop another unit out for an easy kill.

I highly recommend having a Ninja in order to get you to act 5-3 for easier experience-grinding.

Actually, I so highly recommend them that you could consider creating or reincarnating every one of your characters as a Ninja, grinding a bunch and then reincarnating them back into whatever you’d like!

Hitting Ninjas ∞

I’ve made a ninja with an int and hit higher than its spd.

It is equipped with my best things, including hit, int and more spd.

It can land its own spells on itself.

I don’t know if this is because of the high int or high hit which is allowing this. Ninjas cannot consistently self-hit with spells, but this one can.

Knight ∞

Knights sometimes (but only sometimes) cast when they melee attack, so consider not giving them a staff but making them a regular melee unit. This attack-cast ability still costs the same amount of sp as simply casting. Which of the spells they know that gets cast is random.

Knights are randomly created with one of the three elements (Wind, Fire, Ice). If you don’t like the element you got, you must delete and re-create it to try for another. If you do so, you will lose the mana you spent on each attempt! Consider cheesing this: Save the game, re-load it, reincarnate, repeat until you get the element you prefer.

I highly recommend making your first knight Ice for grinding through 8-1 *Salamander's Breath > Scorching Wind). (I think this is a PS/2 preference because resistances are random for PC/Steam)

Knight casting a spell with a spear or gun ∞

For the PS/2 – Knights sometimes cast a spell when they melee, but I don’t know if this applies to a spear.

For the PC – I’ve seen it with an enemy using a gun. Cool!

(unknown) – Knight melee and spell levelling ∞

When they do their attack-cast, I don’t know if the cast counts toward leveling the spell.

A guide to getting all Disgaea 1 units and skills ∞

Notes ∞

• Some units are labeled “deletable”. This means that once all other goals at that section have been met, you can choose to delete it. — TODO – confirm!

  • You have plenty of character slots to keep these units if you choose.
  • Consider keeping them to reincarnate them as something else. However, even early in the game it becomes very easy to create and level a pupil, so keeping pupils doesn’t matter too much.

• Anything labeled as “set aside” you can freely use and level. Read ahead if I note that such a unit can be deleted later if you choose.

Create your starting group ∞

When first beginning the game, arrange your group thusly:

• Laharl

  • Buy a bow.

• Etna

• Laharl > Make a Female Cleric

  • That’s the top Cleric with the long blonde hair.
  • Buy a better staff.
  • (When leveled to 100 later, this will help unlock the Angel.)

• Laharl > Make a Female Warrior

  • This is the top Warrior, with the green hair.
  • Buy a sword.
  • (When leveled to 10 soon, this will help unlock the Ronin.)

• Laharl > Make a Male Brawler

  • Buy a sword.
  • (When leveled to 200, this will help unlock the Majin.)

• Laharl > Make a Male Warrior

  • This is the bottom Warrior, with the brown hair.
  • Buy a sword.
  • (When leveled to 200, this will help unlock the Majin.)

• Female Cleric > Make a Female Brawler

  • Consider buying a sword, even though it’s bad with one.
  • This will be leveled to 10, will help unlock the Ronin.

Swords – The reason you are buying swords is that its first power is a line-attack. Multiple-kills in one turn will make leveling much easier. Later on, a sword will gain a 3×3 attack which is amazing for leveling later on, especially at 10-1: Stellar Graveyard > Valgipus IV

Non-mages – The reason you are starting out by making non-Mages is because a Mage has poor defenses (so they receive a lot of damage). Although it is possible for you to begin the game with only mages, you will have to play carefully, and heal sp frequently, be careful with money (to heal sp) until they are powerful enough, and then reincarnate them into various warriors later (so you can unlock all your units). Yes you can win the game with only mages if you’d like.

Your team is

• Laharl
• Etna
• Female Brawler (new)
• Female Cleric (new)
• Female Warrior (new)

• Male Brawler (new)

Set aside:

• Male Warrior (new)

Level your basic team ∞

• Laharl bow level 3
• Laharl leveling a little bit.
• Female Cleric leveling a little bit.

• Level other characters as desired.

Remember that the Female Cleric, Male Brawler, and Male Warrior will be kept for a very long time, so feel free to improve their skills.

Your next steps ∞

Make these new characters:

• Laharl > Make a Rogue

  • Equip a sword.
  • (When leveled to 200 later, this will help unlock the Majin.)

• Laharl > Make an Archer

  • Equip a bow.
  • (When leveled to 100 later, this will help unlock the Angel.)

• Female Cleric > Make a Blue Mage

  • Equip a staff.
  • (When leveled to 5 soon, this will help unlock a Star Mage.)

• (any, see below) > Make a Green Mage

  • Equip a staff.
  • (When leveled to 5 soon, this will help unlock a Star Mage.)

• (any, see below) > Make a Red Mage

  • Equip a staff.
  • (When leveled to 5 soon, this will help unlock a Star Mage.)

Note that a Blue Mage should be made by your Female Cleric, and the other two can be made underneath any of your melee fighter-types. You give the Blue Mage to your Female Cleric so it can learn the ice spells, which are very important for grinding later, on 8-1 — Salamander's Breath > Scorching Wind. (I think this is a PS/2 preference because resistances are random for PC/Steam)

Your team is

• Laharl
• Etna
• Female Cleric
• Blue Mage (new)
• Green Mage (new)

• Red Mage (new)

Set aside:

• Female Warrior
• Male Brawler
• Male Warrior

• Archer (new)

  • Unlocked by Bow Mastery 3 on any character.
• Rogue (new)

why a Rogue should use a Sword

• Two of the sword powers are excellent for leveling with.

  • You won’t be leveling a Rogue for a while, and by then you can and should have Armsmaster Specialist(s) in the weapon the Rogue uses, to boost the weapon leveling.
• Many of your characters will be using a sword for a while, and other sword users will have a higher chance to assist with a combo.

• When a Rogue participates in a combo attack, its has an increased contribution to the combo meter.

Later on maybe you want to use a gun, because hit is used for gun damage as well as   steal chance.

Create your mages ∞

• The mentor(s) of the three mages should learn their appropriate spells from their Mage pupils: “Ice” “Fire” or “Wind”. e.g. your Female Cleric will learn Ice.
• Blue Mage to 5
• Green Mage to 5

• Red Mage to 5

Create a Star Mage ∞

Make this new character:

• Male Brawler > Make a Star Mage

Your team is

• Laharl
• Etna
• Female Cleric
• Male Brawler

• Star Mage (new)

  • Unlocked by a level 5 Blue Mage
  • Unlocked by a level 5 Green Mage
  • Unlocked by a level 5 Red Mage
  • (When leveled to 35 later, this unlocks the Prism Mage.)
  • (When leveled to 120 later, this unlocks Tera Star.)

Set aside:

• Blue Mage
• Green Mage
• Red Mage
• Female Warrior
• Male Warrior
• Archer
• Rogue

Skulls ∞

FIXME – this needs to be re-evaluated.

In the PC version, these seem to have been removed.

This is the same as above, but with Skulls.

Make:

• (your Mage) > Blue Skull

  • (When leveled to 5 soon, this will help unlock the Star Skull.)

• (your Mage) > Green Skull

  • (When leveled to 5 soon, this will help unlock the Star Skull.)

• (your Mage) > Red Skull

  • (When leveled to 5 soon, this will help unlock the Star Skull.)

Goals:

• Male Brawler – Equip a Staff. Have it beside it’s pupil’s Star Mage, and cast use “Star” until the Male Brawler can cast it independently.

  • Learning this is so you can at least help a little bit when this character is not in melee position to attack.
  • Once complete, give it a Sword again.
• Blue Skull to 5
• Green Skull to 5

• Red Skull to 5

Upon completion ∞

Personally I grind up my Female Cleric and then transmigrate it to a Star Skull.

• Male Warrior > Make a Star Skull

  • When leveled to 120, unlocks Tera Star.
  • When leveled to 35, unlocks the Prism Skull.

• You may choose to delete your Blue, Green and Red Skulls (It is safe to delete them all)

  • FIXME – is it? Don’t I need to learn their giga?

Your team is

• Laharl
• Etna
• Female Cleric
• Female Warrior
• Male Brawler
• Male Warrior

• Star Skull (new)

Set aside:

• (your choice) Mage
• Star Mage
• Archer
• Rogue

Your next goals – Rounding out your team ∞

• Laharl – Learn “Star” from either your Male Brawler or your Male Warrior.
• Male Brawler to 5
• Female Warrior to 5

• Female Cleric, work on your heal spell.

Upon completion ∞

• Archer > Make a Scout

  • Give it a gun.
  • (When leveled to 200 later, this will help unlock the Majin.)

Your team is

• Laharl
• Etna
• Female Cleric
• Female Warrior
• Male Brawler

• Male Warrior

Set aside:

• (your choice) Mage
• Star Mage
• Star Skull
• Archer
• Rogue
• Scout (new)

Improving your Cleric ∞

Have your Female Cleric learn Wind, Fire, and Star from those three Mage pupils.

This gives your Female Cleric some spell attack options so it can be effective against any resistance.

Leveling everything ∞

• Female Brawler to 10
• Female Warrior to 10
• Male Brawler to 10
• Male Warrior to 10
• Female Cleric to 9
• Female Cleric – Work on Espoir
• (your choice) One Mage to 8
• (your choice) Another Mage to 9
• (your choice) A third Mage to 10

• Laharl

  • Learn Espoir from your Female Cleric.
  • Learn all available Mage “Mega” spells.
  • Learn “Magic Boost” from one of the Mage pupils.

Upon completion ∞

• Female Brawler is deletable.

  • Because it helped unlock the Ronin.

• Female Warrior is deletable.

  • Because it helped unlock the Ronin.

• Male Brawler > Make a Ninja

  • Assign any bonus points to spd.
  • Equip with a sword.
  • The Ninja is Unlocked with the Male Brawler level 10, and Male Warrior level 10.
  • (When leveled to 200 later, this will help unlock the Majin.)

• Female Cleric > Make a Knight

  • Equip the Knight with a staff.
  • (When leveled to 100 later, this will help unlock the Angel.)

• Note that the Ronin has now been unlocked by the Female Brawler level 10, and Female Warrior level 10. This guide does not use the Ronin, but note that it is excellent with swords.

Your team is

• Laharl
• Etna
• Female Cleric
• Female Warrior
• Star Mage

• Star Skull

Set aside:

• Knight (new)
• Ninja (new)
• Male Brawler
• Male Warrior
• Archer
• Rogue
• Scout

Improve Star Mage and Star Skull ∞

You will be keeping your Star Mage and Star Skull for some time. Most of the time they’ll be used offensively, but it’s good to have the option to heal if necessary.

• Star Mage > make a Cleric

  • Have this Star Mage learn Heal.

• Star Skull > make a Cleric

  • Have this Star Skull learn Heal.

Upon completion, you can optionally:

• Delete the Star Mage’s Cleric.

• Delete the Star Skull’s Cleric.

Level freely ∞

You are now free to level any of your characters.

• Regular use of the Ninja is highly recommended; it is overpowered.

• Ronin

  • If you choose to make a Ronin, it can be safely created, upgraded and deleted. It isn’t a prerequisite for anything.

• Consider creating duplicates and having them reincarnate to other classes.

Characters to care about the most ∞

The following end-game units need to have pupils under them to make them stronger. In order of importance:

• Ninja to 200

  • The Ninja is overpowered. Make it even more overpowered. Resistances are particularly important in case it does actually get hit. Poison and other debuffs suck.
  • The Ninja’s big flaw is that it’s very difficult to hit them with spells, including by allies attempting to help them. Therefore, if you want to do one long item dive with Ninjas you must carry heal and espoir items with you. I have found that giving a Ninja a lot of +hit will help them cast helpful spells on themselves.
• Rogue to 200

• Female Cleric to 100

  • She’s a key caster.
  • The Male/Female Cleric is how you get Omega Heal.

• Scout to 200

  • You need a very powerful gun-wielder to get to skill 30.

• Archer to 100

  • Very good abilities, plus ranged is useful. It gains a multi-attack special early on, which is very useful for leveling it.

Give your core team Espoir ∞

Make more pupils just for this purpose if you have to.

Consider making another reincarnateable-cleric-type, underneath the Knight perhaps.

Getting your best basic Mage spells ∞

You want each of your Green, Red, Blue, Star (maybe Skull) mages to get very high level so you can learn their best spell, and then their respective masters can learn them.

Prism Mage and Prism Skull ∞

• Star Mage to 35

• Star Skull to 35

Endgame Star Mage and Star Skull ∞

• Star Mage to 120

• Star Skull to 120

They learn Tera Star at 120. Note that Prism/Galaxy casters do not learn Tera Star.

Then have their respective masters learn the spell.

Prism Mage and Prism Skull ∞

• Reincarnate the Star Mage to a Prism Mage

  • This was unlocked by the Star Mage leveled to 35.
  • (When leveled to 50 soon, this unlocks the Galaxy Mage.)

• Reincarnate the Star Skull to a Prism Skull

  • This was unlocked by the Star Skull leveled to 35.
  • (When leveled to 50 soon, this unlocks the Galaxy Skull.)

Galaxy Mage and Galaxy Skull ∞

• Prism Mage to 50

• Prism Skull to 50

Then you can:

• Reincarnate the Prism Mage to a Galaxy Mage

  • This was unlocked by the Prism Mage level 50.

• Reincarnate the Prism Skull to a Galaxy Skull

  • This was unlocked by the Prism Skull level 50.

There’s no particular reason to level these, other than keeping them as good casters.

Late-game goals ∞

Achieving the following will unlock new classes!

To get an Angel (Angel, Angel Cadet, Angel Soldier, Crusader, Avenger, Paladin)

• Archer to 100
• Female Cleric to 100

• Knight to 100

To get a Majin (Majin, Mega Majin, Giga Majin, Omega Majin, Tera Majin, Divine Majin)

• Male Brawler to 200
• Male Warrior to 200
• Rogue to 200
• Scout to 200

• Ninja to 200

To get a Recruit (Recruit, Officer, Cyborg, Psi-Soldier, Space Police, Space Marine)

• Gun mastery on any character to 30 (likely your Scout).

On Tera spells ∞

• There is no Tera Heal, it only goes up to Omega Heal

• To get Tera Fire/Ice/Wind, get a regular mage of each color to level 100.

Your final character goals ∞

• Ninja

  • Any weapon will do. I recommend an axe because axe abilities reduce armor.
  • This will probably be your most important character, with all your best stuff. When entering items an excellent ninja can be the only combat-engaged unit you use, with the rest used for lifting, pushing, throwing and running so as to end levels very quickly.

• Majin

  • staff: Have a few completely-capable casters (all elements, star, heal, buff)
  • anything: All with the same weapon to do combo attacks. Be aware that combo attacks are more frequent with associated Master/Pupil relationships.

• Rogue 1

  • staff: Transmogrify an amazing caster into a rogue. Then it can finish enemies off with powerful magic to level safely.
  • For   stealing. Steal chance and gun damage are both based on +hit, so you might want to give a rogue a gun if it is to be used like a regular combat unit. The “type” of Rogue doesn’t matter for stealing.

• Rogue 2

  • One of your rogues should be specialized for   stealing.

• Rogues (a bunch)

  • Strongly consider more than one rogue; the last thing you want is to lose a rogue and then discover an item you really wanted to   steal but now can’t.
  • These are excellent at throwing. Only pull them out to assist in towers of throwing.
  • Give them all +hp gear so they assist in capturing things you throw into the base.

• Scout

  • Geo Change can be very useful.
    — I don’t know if improving it has any meaning at all.
    — Consider using this when there is only one unit left and with a lot of characters with available actions so they can deal with how wacky things can get.
    — It can only be cast once for any individual level.
  • Dark Cannon has unlimited reach. It can be blocked by terrain.
    — It can turn on you if your units are closer than an enemy.
    — It’s a physical unit, so it can block a path, become interesting to enemies, and can be lifted and thrown.
    — It can only be cast once for any individual level.
    — It seems to have very low health and do quite low damage. TODO – I don’t know how to improve this.
    — If you clear a stage, then it will shoot one final time before you continue.
    — All bullets are removed when your timer runs out; it isn’t that the gun stops shooting, all bullets vanish.
    — I don’t know if cannons are subject to Clone tiles.

• Anything

  • fist: To use its beginning ability to knock things away, including allies or geo stones. This lets you clear paths to get to exits easily.
  • High movement and jump are useful.

• Anything

  • Movement and jump: To run to the next level portal. You can also give this one a fist.
  • Remember that you can also pick many characters up and toss whole towers away to improve your distances.

Characters you don’t need to care about ∞

• Other characters

  • None of them ever matter, including your main/original guy, Laharl; you don’t have to use or improve them at all.
• All the characters you have unlocked in this guide, such as the Angel, don’t actually matter at all; just use what you like.

• Monsters

  • None of them matter.

Combat tips ∞

Character tips ∞

more TODO

• Counterattacks do count for raising weapon skills.
• It is possible to level a staff skill by using it as melee.
• A character who has attacked or used an ability cannot then return to the home base.
• Even if a character has attacked or used an ability, it can be thrown back to the home base.

• You can run out, step into your home base, and re-exit and your movement is reset.

  • This is useful for exiting your base, using an ability, and then moving away to safety. Following turns will let you run back to base, and then repeat.

• Lifting and throwing

  • A character which is lifting another character can itself be lifted. You can lift and then throw huge towers of characters this way. This will get you closer to an exit and let you throw right over enemies. When you get good at this, you can exit a level before the enemy even has a turn.
  • Rogues have a great throw range, so you should make a lot of level 1 Rogues just for the lift/throw trick.
  • You can take a unit, run it out to attack or use an ability, then one by one you take a character out to lift a tower of units back to safety, or throw them to safety.
• You can deploy a unit so it can lift something, then another unit can get past. Then you can cancel and un-deploy that lift unit so it hasn’t spent it’s turn. This is useful for moving both enemies and geo-stones.

• You can use a punch ability to move units out of the way with no fear of counterattack.

  • You can do this on ally and enemy units alike.
• +spd is very useful for running directly to bases.

• Guide to stealing items

  • Some items are only found within item worlds on monsters and you must steal them.

• “Glass cannon”

  • This is when units are built for pure offense, to one-shot enemies.
  • This is an excellent strategy. This might let you kill all surrounding enemies and make it quite a bit safer before you allow the enemies to have their turn.

• Killing your own units

  • Do this or don’t do this, by your choice. There is an alternate ending which you may or may not want.

• Don’t bother about shifting gear around in the middle of a battle, It’s more convenient to have a few very good characters that can survive anything and the rest of your characters should be rounded enough to be helpful in combos or at a safe distance.

Geo panels ∞

• Invulnerability geo panels

  • Strongly consider using these. Be careful the board does not have any Clone panels, lest you be crowded.
  • You are also immune from affliction on those panels.
  • Enemy abilities can move your characters. Remember that enemies cannot lift your characters.
  • Although you cannot take damage, enemies can still “steal” health to heal themselves.

• Regen geo panels

  • Strongly consider using these.
  • You are still subject to afflictions. If you have the poison affliction, note that poison is applied before the regen, so you can still die from the poison.

• Clone geo panels

  • Clones do not grant experience.
  • Cloning your own characters might be a terrible mistake since your characters might be high level or well-equipped.
  • You cannot steal from clones.

• Geo stones

  • Yes it is worth setting up some geo stones to destroy many of them.
  • This is a great way to do some damage to enemies. Note that killing enemies this way does not give you experience.
  • Destroying one does grant experience.

• A panel under a character influences them at the time they are set, not the time they are executed. Setting an action, geo-changing a panel under a character, then executing all actions will not for example remove a +1 attack.

  • TODO – I do not know if it will also doubly-apply the new geo color, but my intuition says it will not.

Map tips ∞

Also be sure to read about geo panels.

• Bonus meter

  • Yes it is worth trying to get the high bonus meter, sometimes this is the best way to get items.
  • Rogue combos are fantastic for increasing your bonus meter.
  • Don’t obsess over low level bonus meter stuff unless it’s a huge upgrade.
  • Sometimes the only thing you can do is take advantage of invulnerability panels, or switch to terrible weapons with some characters and cast or attack your own units. Beware of killing your own units. You can weave in some heals if you wish. It’s best to use some sort of macro device and repeat this constantly.

Misc tips ∞

• Alternate endings

  • TODO – I have no notes on this. Other guides do.

[TODO – Absorb] – Tricks and tips ∞

• Make sure that all the characters you make are children of Laharl.
• Don’t combine units in a weapon which has unallied specialists in it. Your allied specialists will be absorbed and will make the unallied ones stronger. =(
• Fight the assembly and toss good guys together. Then toss bad guys at it. Be careful and have a tough good guy to throw them into it.
• You can lead slow monsters back and forth in the assembly. Just have a ninja and a mage. The mage runs to the ninja and uses magic, and the ninja throws them left or right. The ninja can also move to escape a little. You can do this back and forth and a unit would run left and right, always keeping out of range. I nuked a level 250ish guy with a level 50ish mage doing this.
• If you fight all guys in an item world level, and don’t manage to kill the specialist but kill everyone else, you beat the level and get the specialist anyway.
• +attacks squares will not influence Geo Change.
• When learning skills from your pupil and intending to rebuild, don’t rebuild until you have x% more with all of your skills, otherwise you’ll have 0 ranks in the skill and can’t use it.

• Ninjas are practically invulnerable. Their high speed makes everyone miss, and somehow when a fighter-type has more speed than a ninja-type the ninja is still missed all the time. Spells have a very hard time landing on a ninja, even your allied healing spells. Odd.

Resources ∞

• IGN [ 1 ]

  • General FAQ [ 2 ]
  • Walkthrough [ 3 ]
  • Skills FAQ [ 4 ]

• TODO – DoubleJumpBooks guide

  • doublejumpbooks took their free PDFs offline.
  • guide PDF (gone)
• https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/589678-disgaea-hour-of-darkness

• neoseeker

  • https://www.neoseeker.com/disgaea/cheats/ps2/
  • https://www.neoseeker.com/disgaea/faqs/138975.html

Footnotes

1. was https://web.archive.org/web/20170113180441/http://www.ign.com/faqs/games/disgaea-ds/ps2-535848 and was https://web.archive.org/web/20120218011238/ps2.ign.com/objects/535/535848.html[ ↩ ]
2. was https://web.archive.org/web/20180926105923/http://www.ign.com:80/faqs/2003/disgaea-ds-general-faq-450558[ ↩ ]
3. was https://web.archive.org/web/20180307125607/http://www.ign.com:80/faqs/2004/disgaea-ds-walkthrough-438247[ ↩ ]
4. was https://web.archive.org/web/20180216034344/http://www.ign.com:80/faqs/2004/disgaea-ds-skills-faq-538009[ ↩ ]