Overview
With the help of just two characters (and a handful more to sweeten the Bonus Gauge), you can get characters easily to Level 60, if not higher, with some pretty good HL and swag along the way – all by the time you begin Chapter 4.
History
While looking at some of the guides for this game, I was pretty impressed by Xeetos’ Early Item Farming Guide. However, his strategy for Adell Dark World 3-3 was a bit… puzzling, and in some ways, almost counterintuitive. It was an awful lot of work to isolate one zombie, just to make sure it couldn’t hit you, and you needed to do an Ally Kill in order to actually complete the map (which I’m not terribly fond of).
Surely there’s a better way to get the same effect, isn’t there…?
Of course there is.
I came up with this strategy and tried to paste it as a comment in his guide, but unfortunately, Steam Comments just won’t allow me the needed space for this strategy in a comment. Sorry, Xeetos! I tried to give it to you first, send your wrath to Gaben. :p
However, since the strategy is quite sound, I went ahead and made it into guide format.
Prerequisites #1 – Unlocking Dark World 3-3
To unlock the stage itself, you will need the following:
1) The Dark World must’ve been unlocked (by finding the five switches that enable it). You can do this as soon as you begin the game!
- 1) The small area behind the fallen pillar behind the Dark Assembly, Postman, and Music NPCs.
- 2) The window by the back door of Adell’s house.
- 3) The back of the house near Zommie III (the zombie, of course).
- 4) Roughly in the center of the clearing in a corner of the map that has two trees.
- 5) The crumbled stone wall near the NPC Mario Boy (the marionette on the stump).
2) The Dark World must be activated by defeating Friday Mk. II – she’ll appear after all five switches are hit, and you’ll need to talk to her a few times before she challenges you to a battle (that you have to be sure you want to face her in before you can). She’s Level 100, but this isn’t impossible even at game start. Create two thieves, and have one hit her with Health (which poisons her), have a sacrificial lamb come out every turn for Friday to destroy, and then once the poison wears off in three turns, have the second thief poison her and be sacrificed. As long as you got more characters than she has turns (it’ll take 5-6 turns for the poison to kill her, usually, so try to have at least 10 you can call on), you’ll beat her and unlock the Dark World. You’ll want these thieves, anyway…
3) Story must be played as normal up until you get to 3-3: Murder’s Vault, Corpse Garden. While clearing this map, make a tower of at least 5 characters high to unlock the Dark World version of it. Note that you don’t have to KEEP this tower or Execute/End Turn with it or anything like that – you can form the tower, unlock it, then immediately cancel everyone’s move and send them back to the Base Panel on Turn 1. It’ll work just fine.
You’re now ready to tackle the Dark World version of the map… in name. In practice, you’ll need a few things further.
Prerequisites #2 – Preparing for Dark World 3-3
More than just actually unlocking Dark World 3-3, you’ll need to do some smart preparation for it as well. Sure, you could race right in with your two Thieves and pull the same trick you pulled with Friday Mk. II, but that would also get you the same results – one character leveling up… if they got a EXP Bonus on the Bonus Gauge Level 0 reward.
But you’d probably like to level up 9 characters at once with a LOT more EXP, HL, and weapons to go around, right? Especially since the stuff you get here can last you to the end of the game?
Sure you do! So make sure you have these as well.
1) 2 Thieves, which you likely already made in the process of getting here, but if you haven’t for some reason, make ’em. These thieves must be leveled to at least Level 10. While you could theoretically do this with two Level 1 thieves, you’ll definitely be getting killed aplenty as the zombie chases characters and mows them down due to his movement boosts… kinda nerfs your ability to level characters up quickly except for one at a time.
2) 7 Beastmaster-class units. The reason for this is pretty simple: In Disgaea 2, for some reason, a Beastmaster gives double the Bonus Gauge boost of any other class doing any other kind of attack. While you could use (in theory) any other attacker doing any other kind of attack, this boost to the Bonus Gauge is exactly what we want to maximize the amount gained per attack and make this as quick as possible. That said, neither their damage, level, nor equipment matters, so just make seven Good-For-Nothing Beast Tamers (nerf their INT – not like it matters, but maybe you’ll eventually want to keep one, and INT is certainly their most useless stat), equip them with seven cheap bows, and you’re all set.
(Special thanks to Tsey’Akan for inadvertently leading me to figure this out!)
3) 1 Sacrificial Lamb. In my case, Tink. Poor Tink. On second thought, maybe not. Nobody likes him anyway.
Last-Minute Preparation
A few additional things to make note of before we get into the general strategy.
1) Especially when you’re doing this your very first few times, keep an eye on the Zombie’s status AT ALL TIMES!!! While the game usually plays nice in making sure that status effects (which you will be using here, just like with Friday Mk. II) last three turns, sometimes they do wear off earlier depending on random Resistance values and the like, and on rare occasion they last a little bit later, as well. The game will, once you have them both activated, pop off purple bubbles to show Poison is active and yellow Z’s to show asleep. If either of these wear off early at any time, make sure you re-activate it in the appropriate place in the attack order.
2) Stronger Enemy Bills won’t work as a cheap way to gain experience further. We’re not technically killing the monster, so we don’t get boosted experience from them even if it’s 2000 levels above yours, nor do we gain any HL directly – we gain what’s off the bonus gauge instead. (If it did work, this would pretty much be instant overkill of the game.) It will still be good up until at least level 50-60 though, and the items you earn are good right through the end of the main story.
3) This isn’t going to get you Mana, and outside of any spells/skills you use, not much in the way of skill experience grinding, either. You can get a Level 60 mage, sure, and she’ll learn all the spells she could learn at Level 60, but they’ll be Skill Level 1 with pathetic range and areas of effect. Unless you’ve got the right Innocents on board, anyway, but if you’re that far into the game… why are you reading this guide?
Got all that? Good. Let’s get to what you need to do.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 1
1) Send out your sacrificial lamb exactly one square “north” from base. (Directly towards the zombie.)
2) End Turn.
Your sacrificial lamb will get poisoned by the Dark Sun, but the zombie will put them out of their misery not long afterward, before the poison even stings. The zombie should be right near your Base Panel.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 2
1) Send out both Thieves, line them up in a “L” shape immediately next to the zombie. (As if you were targeting 3 enemies with a level 5 spell’s cross-shaped area of effect.)
2) Send out all seven Beastmasters, and position them so that they can all hit the zombie.
3) Attack Order:
- Thief 1: Health the zombie.
- Beastmasters: Normal attack the zombie.
- Thief 2: Consciousness the zombie.
4) Execute/End Turn.
Why this order you ask? If you use Health -> Consciousness -> Attacks, Crits will wake the zombie up and you’re gonna have a bad time. To be 100% safe with this strategy, you will want to make sure that you are using Consciousness at the end of each and every set of attacks – doing it earlier could lead to the zombie waking up from a Crit and completely screwing you!
If all done successfuly, your Bonus Gauge should go up to roughly 3 1/4 – 3 1/2.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 3
1) Normal Attack with Thief 1 and all seven Beastmasters.
2) Thief 2: Consciousness, just for insurance.
3) End Turn.
Bonus Gauge should now be about level 6 1/3 – 6 1/2. You’ll all get poisoned by the Dark Sun, but it doesn’t really matter.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 4
Exactly the same as Turn 3 – attack with Thief 1 and Beastmasters, Thief 2 does Consciousness at the end of the chain.
Your bonus gauge is now maxed out.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 5
1) Return all Beastmasters to your Base Panel, and replace them with whoever you want to level and gain experience. No need to attack – just have them loaf and lollygag around the Base Panel. Thieves stay put for now.
2) Thief 1: Health.
3) Thief 2: Consciousness.
4) End Turn.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 6
1) If so desired, pull Thieves out and replace with two more units to level. Otherwise…
2) End turn.
Dark World 3-3, Turn 7
1) Win.
2) Collect rewards.
Closing Thoughts
To me this is a lot easier than having to throw the zombie onto the island and carefully positioning bow users and the like while limiting your number of attacks and requiring an Ally Kill to ensure success, as done in Xeetos’ guide. It should make it trivial to get smashmouth gear and lots of levels/HL very quickly.
If you’re having trouble leveling two Thieves to 10, even in normal maps, it doesn’t take too long – I used Normal 3-2, Dangerous Refuge, due to its generous HL/Mana/EXP bonuses and relative ease for bow shooters. As long as they’re about Level 6-ish they should be good there, I think, especially if you’re using two, since even if one fails to kill an enemy, the follow-up shot should, and before long they should be both good to go.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time out to look at this guide. I hope it’s helpful to you! Good luck with smashing through the rest of the game. 🙂