Disgaea RPG is a rather frustrating gacha game, simply because there are so many rules, guidelines, exceptions and details to keep in mind. As a free-to-play person, I found out repeatedly I made poor calls, didn’t invested poorly and just did things wrong. This lead me to believe that is why I was stuck with low rank gear, unable to progress and desperately wasting all my resources to gain a small handful of levels from the experience gates.
This experience is, surprisingly, common for players. Most games like this come down to players focusing on whomever they like the most and/or traditional RPG mechanics. Since then I’ve seen a lot of people offer advice, comment briefly on the importance of Rangers and talking about all the ways these things can be used to progress but very few gave any answers. While I never quite found a guide myself, I wanted to explain what I learned on my journey to gain more power so you can actually obtain these resources to progress faster and easier. Especially since this stuff is far more complicated than obtain rangers, add them to your team and win.
Basic Set Up for Disgaea RPG
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Disgaea RPG, I can’t explain the best team for any given person. This will be determined by when you started, what you got and a variety of other factors. That said, anyone confused can post and I’ll try to assist them for as long as I am active.
That said, the goal should be characters that build off of each other, along with characters that have a low cost area of effect (AoE) to quickly kill enemies. If your characters currently lack said ability, level nine bow mastery gives Doppleganger, a skill that is currently great but will supposedly fall off long term/in high level content, but right now it’s about making things easier long term.
While the following things are not required, they’re strongly reccomended to maximize efficiency:
- Eight Prism Blue (Easy 1-5 is the best place to grind)
- Customer Rank 19 (Clear Normal 4-5)
- Muscle Dream (Final defeated reward from Nether Hospital)
- Two Prism Indigo (Easy 6-5)
- Four Prism Orange (Easy 5-5)
The basic idea here is rather simple. Even though you can only use a total of five units, you want to Nether Enhance (N.E.) four units to N.E. 1 for the evility. This will give humanoid allies a four percent increase to speed. Not only is this helpful to have, the default evility, Ranger Assemble, increases stats by the the number of humanoid in party times 1 percent in all metrics besides speed. But, surprisingly, the real benefit to Prism Blue is Friend Power!, a skill that buffs everyone in the party’s attack by 25 to 40 percent. And, surprisingly, said perk stacks, meaning a strong team can quickly overpower and overwhelm a wide array of content.
However, simply having a good team isn’t enough, it also takes the right gear. What makes Customer Rank 19 so important is an item called Aero Sneakers. Unlike the rank 15 version, Falcon Shoes, these give four speed per item, which is the max default speed currently in Disgaea RPG. As I mentioned above, players can do this with lower level gear, it will just make things more difficult. For example, you need 74 or more speed to go before an experience gate fish, which is hard even with the four speed shoes and why Prism Orange is mentioned. For other content it will vary depending on the enemy and more. In addition to that, give each ranger a gun or fist for an additional two speed.
Please note: Going beyond N.E. 1, one star and level 100 is pointless for Prism Blue. The only, and I mean only, benefit would be bringing them up high enough to snake an extra speed point through weapon mastery, though it isn’t worth it in almost every case. That said, I still enhanced mine somewhat for Missions, I just don’t want anyone thinking they need to invest in these units beyond increasing Friend Power!’s level for bigger buffs.
Next, you’re going to want to obtain a Muscle Dream. Not only does it give a ton of health, it’s a free rank 27 item. This is very important, as it will allow you to skip having to bring an item from whatever your current max rank is to that point. If you haven’t obtained it, just bring an overpowered character into item world with a couple prinnies at level one with no armor. Ideally they will die and the AI will go through the item without requiring much attention.
Finally, some people like to have one Prism Indigo at N.E. one. He is worth having if you’re fast enough to go before the fishes without the blue, since he gives an additional attack buff to the next person to attack. The easiest way to do this is just get him to the same speed as Prism Blue and set him to the last spot. This will make him go last, without much thought or effort. As for Prism Orange, he is the fastest ranger, so if speed is the issue, use him.
How to Effectively Progress in Disgaea RPG
Surprisingly, getting all the items is the easy part, because it takes some clever planning and effective team building to make the most of all of this stuff. If you don’t use them correctly or understand what and why things need to be done, it’s extremely easy to fail or, worst yet, perform worse than before. And, unfortunately, some of this requires some building, be it increasing skill levels for less SP used or bigger buffs. That said, here is an idea of how to effectively use these units.
EXP Gates
For many, this method is extremely important for experience gates and, depending on your units, this may or may not be an easy time. This really comes down to two tactics. Either you want to bring your Prism Blue team or multiple Prism Blues and a Prism Indigo, provided they can get 74 speed. Next, make it so your damage dealer goes last by adjusting their speed accordingly. The idea is rather simple, cast Friend Power! four times and then hit with the AoE. If you have enough power, it should kill every fish. During the next turn you want to use basic attack with every ranger. The goal here is simple, any time your damage dealer joins in a team attack, each member gets that number in SP. At level 25, an AoE like Doppleganger or Final Boss Arises will decrease to 20 SP, making this tactic a lot easier. Since you start with 20, gain 10 per turn, your AoE has eight chances to pick up 10 or however much SP you need. In the event you fail to reach this amount, one of two things can be done, either hope for more luck during the second series of attacks or a second buff session and hope you survive.
Those with Attired Rozalin will have an easier time, as she normally gets Doppleganger and increases speed. What makes Attired Rozalin especially useful is, if you don’t have the power needed to win with four Prism Blue units, remove one from your party and pick up a N.E. 7 or better (for the experience boost) friend unit and use both to kill the fish. Any perfect clear, even using a friendly unit instead of five of your own, will allow you to easily skip it and actually level whomever you want. This also, obviously, applies to other gates.
Item World Grinding
The other big way to progress is obtaining higher quality gear. For most, this is using Muscle Dream, getting to level 10 and then targeting the boss to see if there is a drop. If there is, win the match and if not, forfeit. This will work up to a certain point, though luck will be a massive deciding factor.
While I used this tactic to get to rank 35, the current cap, I received only one monster weapon for Desco, my main damage dealer, along the way. This was a rank 21 item that honestly adds so little damage it’s near pointless. Things like this will determine how far and successful you are, though rangers make a great way to supplement any team.
What I personally did was replaced one weaker unit for a single Prism Blue and gave all my units various amounts of speed to, somewhat, control the turn order. At 61 speed I don’t recall any time I didn’t go first, so it’s about getting 61 speed and then getting other units above that. As for the other units, I made sure to have three AoEs and then another unit to build or for useful perks (Thief, Pirates and Black Santa Laharl increase chest drop rates).
The tactic is pretty simple. Get the pointless extra unit and Prism Blue to go before all your damage dealers. Prism Blue will use Friend Power!, the pointless unit will attack difficult units for SP and then you cycle between AoE units. Pay extremely close attention to which units you routinely can’t kill, along with the most effective way to attack. For me it was Attired Rozalin and Desco, Black Santa Laharl and Desco and then Attired Rozalin with Desco either doing a final AoE or picking off the most dangerous remaining unit. When this tactic starts to fall short, remove the pointless unit and add a second Prism Blue. Ideally this will give you enough power to steamroll content again, without being too powerful.
Being too powerful is an odd issue. Playing normally, it means certain units won’t have the SP required to make more difficult battles easier. In the case of this method, the goal is to never have any AoE character strong enough to kill most enemy arrangements. What makes this problematic, is killing the boss without getting a drop is a waste of high level gear and will eventually lead to you having to progress further in existing items or going down multiple ranks. The most ideal way to progress is to kill all but one of the non-boss characters and then finish them off after the item is secured. With a weak enough AoE, Attired Rozalin might do sizable damage to the boss and kill all but Hoggmeiser, leading to my team taking up to two attacks, instead of five. The remaining players can then focus on the boss, determine if it’s worthwhile to win and go from there.
After a while this tactic stopped working and I had to switch from the aforementioned method, to eliminating the second round of attacks. Instead, I would rebuff my team and that gave me the edge to easily defeat most stages.
With these tactics in mind, I strongly suggest just playing around with your team and finding out what works. The right number of Prism Rangers, used correctly, might be able to push higher enemy gates, seasonal content or stuff not yet in Disgaea RPG.
