Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance - 10 tips for beginners

The latest entry in NIS’ popular SRPG series, Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance, is now out on the PS4 and in the hands of gamers. While fans will know there way around the game’s Netherworlds, we’ve got a beginner’s guide for those who’re new to the series.

Below are 10 basic tips that should get newcomers up to speed with Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance’s gameplay.

1. Gaining experience and leveling up is accomplished by landing the killing blow on enemies. Your characters will not gain any experience for inflicting damage. If you’re trying to strengthen a particular character, have another higher leveled character from your party deal out a majority of the damage to the enemy. Then finish it off using the character you intend to level up.
2. Your equipment will give you a stat bonus for matching rarity for items. Items having identical rarity value, such as pieces of armor ranked as Rare, Legendary or Epic, will give a bonus for the equipment stat effect when equipped. This doesn’t, however, apply to items ranked as Common, as they don’t provide a matching stat bonus.
3. Keep at least one healer in your party at all times. When the going gets tough, it’s the healers that can offer support with their heal spells. In addition, they can also cast Espoir, a spell that clears out status ailments inflicted upon your characters.
4. Use the isometric grid-based board to your advantage by positioning your characters to the side or rear of enemies prior to attacking them. Doing so will not only inflict more damage upon them, but it will also increase the chances of your attack successfully landing. Using this strategy will allow you to succeed in attacking enemies that have a high resistance against certain weapon types or enemy Armor Knights that are well-guarded against attacks from the front.
5. A good way to get some good bonuses early on is by healing players at the Hospital using HP or SP increasing accessories. Rewards are given depending on how much HP/SP is replenished and many revives were performed. Once a certain milestone is reached, players are rewarded with its respective bonus. Have a low HP class, such as Mage, equipped with your best possible Muscle accessory. Doing so will increase its max obtainable HP. Have the Mage healed at the Hospital and then un-equip the Muscle accessory. The Mage will go back its original HP value, allowing you to re-equip the Muscle accessory and repeat the process once again. Repeat this until you’ve unlocked some HP recovery milestones and their accompanied rewards.
6. Use Tower attacks whenever you can, as they’re a useful way to boost the strength of lower leveled characters without putting them at risk against tougher foes. As an added bonus, all characters in a tower get to share experience equally. Just make sure to arrange your Tower so that your strongest character is at the bottom and your lower level characters are on top. Once you form a Tower of 10 characters, you’ll have access to Tower Laser, a very powerful attack with an S-Class ranking. Individual character levels don’t matter in this case, so characters with levels as low as 10 to 15 can do over 1000 HP worth of damage. It especially comes in handy against bosses.
7. It’s possible to use a monster ally as springboards to allow other characters to move greater distances without wasting the monster’s turn. Throw n human ally at an ally monster, and the former will bounce off the latter’s head in its direction. The monster’s own throw stat determines how many spaces you’ll bounce ahead. It will still have its turn, so be sure to take advantage of it.
8. Grab as many Evilities as you can from the Skill shop in the Pocket Netherworld for each of your characters. In particular, the Poison Vaccine Evility comes in handy, and getting it early will benefit you later on.
9. Don’t shy away from taking up quests. These are essentially side objectives that are given out to you by a quest giver located in the central square of the game’s hub world. It’s possibly to take up as many as 10 quests at a given time. Some of them will get completed on their own while you play out the story missions, therefore it’s always a good idea to keep a maximum number of quests active.
10. Make sure to advance all your available characters in battle, even if you don’t intend on using some of them. You never know when they might come in handy. Similarly, send out surplus character on expeditions in order to keep them productive.

We hope this guide was of use to all those who’re playing a Disgaea game for the very first time. On the other hand, if you’re a series veteran, let us know if you feel there’s something we missed out which could prove useful to beginners in the comments below.