The GRIND

Overview

So you wanna go from level 1 to 9999 in one swing do ya kid?

First Things First

This is not a guide on how to play the game just how to level in a quick and efficient manner.
You may be having issues with gamespeed as is everyone else. A good thing to look at is V-Sync in the options menu which is defaulted to On, switch that to Off immedatley. This should help with some of you out there.
I will be updating this guide as I go through the game again with pictures as an aside. Let me know if I miss anything or if something needs to be changed as this is my first guide and I am a longtime fan of the series, I hope to help out as many of you as I can.

Step 1: How to Grind in the Early Game

So you want to make the story mode a joke and bash through the game guns blazing? Well theres a bit of a problem with that. When you first start off you’re going to have almost nothing so you’re going to have to just play the game normally until you hit at least 5-3 so you can get some easy levels out of it.
Basically every panel has invincibility on this map except for one. Now, normally you’d be trying to make it so none of the pannels have this, as the developers intended, but thats stupid. Just pick up the enemies and throw them at one another and watch as they eat each others levels. Generally you want to pick up the succubi to throw at the nekomatas since succubi have health stealing skills, meaning they can heal off you even while invincible untill they run out of SP.

Important note about this: Do not toss them all into one enemy at first. If you push their level too high you could end up making it impossible to kill them at all because of how low your stats are in comparison to theirs. After you’ve made your giant catgirl/succubus that you want to murder for massive profits, throw it onto the one panel near the other end of the level and surround them so they can’t get out. Then proceed to whail away.
After your first inital run or two you should be high enough level to kill off high enough enemies, heres where that buffer really comes into play. What your going to want to do now is go to the senate and if you’ve gone through enough promotion exams you should be able to pass the bill “Stronger Enemies” what this does is quite obvious it just level’s up all enemies by a set percentage. Now what you want to do is pass it 4 times, a good way to make this easier is to save before going into the senate trying to pass the bill then if it fails just reload the save and voila no mana spent for a failure, repeat it as nessacary. Now what you can do once you have that done is pass another bill, Triple Exp this causes the first enemy you kill to give you triple the normal amount of exp you are receiving. What this all accomplishes is it makes every enemy in 5-3 to be exactly level 33 meaning when you toss 3 of them togeather you get a 99 for that massive bonus exp.

This is a good quick and easy way to level up at the start, but it’s lacking the most important thing, Statisticians from the item world. For every single one of these that you have on an item, you get anywhere between 1% to 300% more exp (based on the Statistician’s level) per stack of them. And in later entry’s into the series all the way up to a whopping 9600% maximum bonus exp you can get out of stacking as many as possible on one character. If you are looking to kill the hardest boss in the game it is necessary to get as many as you can to make min/maxing through reincarnations easier and faster. You can get them through the item world simply by going to the shop and looking at what items have Statisticians in them. You’ll want to do this as soon as possible but item world can get risky so I suggest grinding in 5-3 a bit first just as a safety net.

Also always carry a Mr. Gency’s just in case while in item world. Since all the maps are randomly generated, you can get maps that are impossible to complete, such as an exit 14 units away on a floating island with no way over there.

Also, if possible always kill level 99 enemies specifically when your below level 350 as they grant exp as if they were almost level 350 making the early game much easier to have a jump start in. After that it’s time to start frying bigger fish, if you went crazy with this and made your character this insanely high you are preety much set for the rest of the story mode almost nothing can stop you other than poision.

Another good spot to level up Early on is 9-1 Stellar Graveyard / Valgipus Vi

The enemies here are a perfect 3×3 pattern as to allow anyone with a large attack to hit them perfectly.

If your stats arent high enough use a mage like I have here to cast Braveheart to increase your ATK stat. The general idea here is that you want to one hit them afterwards just set your unit up behind them for a damage boost from attacking from behind.

Then simply unleash your ability and win the level quick and dirty how it should be.

Step 2 Mid Game / Going into Late Game

So you’ve passed through story mode for the most part (Or went to item world like crazy and started grinding out Specalists like a mad man) but your wondering where to go next.

There is a few good spots / ideas but for mid game your going to want to hit up Cave of Ordeals 3 or CoO3 it’s easily the best grinding spot in the game and makes everything a breeze because of how the map is designed itself. Now if you cant take on CoO3 yet there is a couple earlier spots to help you out a bit. 10-1, and 12-3 are two stages that are similar in the invinciblity trick although if you can handle it jump to the last chapter stage 1.

This map gives you a nice chuck of exp untill you hit around level 150+ and as always use the congress to make them stronger as needed. Now then onto CoO3 where these guys give the most exp out of every enemy in the game and are set up perfectly for a 3×3 attack. This is easily the best place to level your characters up to level 2000-2500 at that point you’ll be heading into late game where you begin to tackle the item world head on. There is no real trick to the item world just head into high level items and smash them down although there is one last trick that can really really make leveling a joke.

Around Level’s 2000 – 2500 you should really begin to think about your first Reincarnation pumping your damage stat is always nice and should not be ignored ever if given the chance. But it comes with a problem your character now sucks for a little bit. So try to make some decent Equipment first before you end up screwing yourself over and slowing your progress down considerably because if you make something that can kill not just the Argus on CoO3 but can kill them while you are Level 1 and they are Boosted up makes leveling even FASTER. So try to keep this in mind while you are moving forward. As a tip using a sword on CoO3 with normal enemies it will take around 13K ATK to kill them in one hit generally, so getting enough ATK to hit half of that can still one hit them if you bring 5 people along with Braveheart to cast it all on that character in the first turn doubling your damage.

Step 3 Late Game

So you’re at this point and you have some level 9999’s but things are just taking too long to push yourself that much further and faster. Well here’s a weird little trick, what your going to want to do is make an Argus one of the enemies from CoO3 because they give the most exp. Now level that little guy all the way up to 9999 and try to not give him any abilities because that could cause problems down the line.

Once you have him made and ready to go it’s time to finally do it hit that magical 9999 in one map maybe even one swing if you line it up correctly. Using a scout and any map of your choice keep going through using Geo Change till you get the Clone pannel, and just plop that Argus ontop of it and watch as the giant exp monsters come running at you. Slash them down and watch the massive piles of exp drop ontop of your characters. This makes leveling stupidly fast although the setup is quite long and hard.

Tips and Tricks

Diagonal Tossing: Now wait a minute you cant toss diagonally…can you? I welcome you to what I call Trick Tossing. This isn’t exactly hard to do, simply grab a character and go to toss them, then change direction and while the cursor is moving between positions, hit confirm and bam you just tossed diagonally. This can be a bit harder if your trying to land on a specific square, but with enough practice you can land it mostly every time.

Note: Thanks to Rivet for clearing up that in this version you cannot obtain legendaries from the hospital bug as such ive removed it from the guide.
In the original PS2 release it was possible, but not anymore.

Gearing up: Leveling up only helps out so much A big part of where your stat’s will come from is gear, Early on you will be looking in the store constantly to get better gear. I Highly suggest getting a broker to 300 before you go on your 3×3 grinding maps, because every time you make them stronger to keep leveling up fast you will make how much HL they drop increase as well.

This isint the only way to gear up but it’s the fastest way to get rank 38 weapons that allows you to go into them to get rank 39 weapons along with better gear. While writing this guide I moved from having simple store items to having 2 hyper drives and a Cosmic Blade along side a Legendary Exodus. This bring a big boost to your stats just make sure you are able to run to at least floor 30 in the store bought items to maximize your time. Another thing to note is to check every enemy for their items and to check the bonus gauge for items as well. Ive seen other guides saying to ignore this but honestly you are wasting your time if you arent doing this constantly.

Aside from just general gearing up Legendary and Rare equipment have a boost to their stat’s that they give to your characters but if for some reason that wasnt enough theres a very powerful boost through item Rarity. Lets say you have a Legendary with Rarity 0 like I do here.
The benefit isint clear alone but having 2 will make it clear since it will give the items that are the same rarity a 10% bonus. If you have 3 of the same 20% and 4 is 30% This can help a long way in making yourself incredibly broken but it all comes down to luck with your Legendaries it’s just something to keep in mind.

Store Restock: While not something massively important this is something I’ve seen a few people overlook. Basically, every time you enter a store the stock changes. Didn’t find a weapon you want? No problem just leave and come back. You can do this as many times as you want and the results will always be different. This helps in trying to find specific Residents such as Statisticians

The One Man Rush: While not really a trick or anything special, getting one character such as Laharal all the exp is a very common practice because, well, it works. Having one character in the early game be the main focus of all your time and money can lead to quick and easy results. You can do this with mostly anyone you want to, but I’d suggest Laharal if you’re new to the series since he starts off with some very good stats and gains some incredibly useful moves i.e. Blazing Knuckle, and Overlords Wrath.

Another good character to do this with is with a mage of any kind. Fire/wind/ice whatever you decide to do is up to you just note that enemies have different elemental weaknesses/resistances, and some levels can be quite hard because of that. But having a 3×3 nuke to insta kill most maps is very satisfying and quick.

Item Completion: If you’re going into this wanting to get literally every single item you’re going to need a Thief. Also, a few items only appear once each play through, such as the Horse Weiner so pull up an item list if you want to find those out.

Bugs

Just a section for the bugs I came across while trying to make this guide.
I found that the lift and attack functions would sometimes freakout rarely ranging from, unable to move my cursor at all to lifting literally nothing since my cursor was off the list and refused to go anywhere else and my game crashing when I accepted to lift nothing as shown here:

Note to fellow players: don’t actually lift nothing as this causes the Netherworld to break.

Edit: The sound bug has been found out and apparently is all the noises that the monsters are meant to be making. Thank you for helping clear this up and showing it’s more of a widespread issue than I originally thought.