Beat Disgaea in under 30 hours.

So here in Mind The Grind, I plan on covering ways to avoid all the grinding in modern gaming. I’m not saying you shouldn’t burn dozens of hours on a game you love. I’m just saying that if you don’t want to, I’m here to help.

The depths of the grind

So I figured I’d start with Disgaea, because if there’s any series seen as a grind-fest, it’s the game where characters can reach level 9,999, can reincarnate to lv. 1, and have entire dungeons in every one of their items.

Let me tell you in advance, the average Disgaea game takes 40-60 hours to beat… once. Like, the first ever time you play a game in the franchise. Seriously. You won’t burn that much time if it’s not your first rodeo.  Case in point: Disgaea 2 took me about 25 hours, and I cleared Disgaea 3 in a hair under 20. I’m not a speed-runner (or, you know, I’d be done in like 5 hours somehow). I also wasn’t in a hurry; I’ve sunk like 135 hours into Disgaea 3. But the story stuff doesn’t have to take you standard RPG times; it goes by faster than you’d think.

So if you love RPGs but kinda wanna keep your job, and wanna play a Disgaea game in less time than it took you to beat the last Zelda entry, let me show you how.

Disclaimer: This isn’t some GameFAQs shit. I’m not here to show you how to hit lv.9999 in 3 fights or reverse pirate or any such nonsense. If you know what a statistician is, you’re already past the level covered in this guide.

Wadsworth Constant 

So to get this game done in a reasonable time frame, you only need to follow three simple tips (created by a *mom!):

Build mages. Build early, build often.

This is seriously your bread and butter. Like in most RPGs, mages scale better than any other character class for a beginner. Is Digaea, this is doubly-true. Having a beast of a mage ends fights faster, and if you have one, you can make more.

Generally speaking, you only need to worry about two stats: INT(intelligence) and HIT(accuracy). First one does the damage, second one keeps you from missing. As you level your mage, additional mage types will become available. Build an army (or at least one for each element).

Reincarnation is also awesome for mages; save before you try it (resets levels to 1), but often you can keep nearly everything. So you can go from an ice mage to a fire mage that can still freeze half the battlefield. Sounds pretty versatile? It sure is.

How much do you want to focus on defence? Not one bit. You’re here to build glass cannons. Part of being done at a decent pace is not burning turns when you could be incinerating bosses. Your team’s not here to tank hit points ‘n enjoy the scenery. They’re here to do work.

Don’t waste time on named characters

Named characters in Disgaea are your muscle. Like in any strategy RPG, they start out great and are going to take the edge off in the early stages.

Buuuuut, they don’t scale well. Most depend on weapon strikes, their ability to teach their special skills to other classes is limited, and chances are, the time’s better spent getting your ice mage to cast her way into a 3×3 blast.

Use Laharl to get through Mid-Boss, but by the last couple chapters, he’s probably gonna serve you better running interference to give your mages a clean shot and as standing cannon fodder to give ’em an extra turn.

Items aren’t important

This is a hard one for RPG veterans who’ve never played Diablo: Items aren’t important. They’re randomly generated. Don’t waste minutes trying to figure out if this sword’s better than your old one in one way and worse in another, or if has special features that– nope, it’s all vendor trash. Sell ’em all, buy better stuff that does exactly what you want (e.g. more HIT/INT for your mages).

Fact of the matter is, you’re probably gonna be doing a bit of grinding to wrap the game up, and depending on the stages you go through (Cave of Ordeals comes to mind), you run the risk of amassing a lot of items. Some come with higher rarity points, or nicer bonus features, or blah blah blah move on. By the time the differences matter in any way, you won’t be using this guide.

Again, focus on the spellcasters. Get the nicest wands, and give them the snazziest glasses (they boost accuracy). Armor’s not important, damage is. If you can’t take out an enemy in one or two blasts, chances are the armor isn’t gonna do you any good.

Good luck

And that’s about it! Take your team of squeaky-voiced maidens (or lads; there’s male mages, too!), and smash through stages like they’re a waste of your time!

* Okay so not really.