All I had time for in Disgaea 3 tonight was making it through another 30 floors of the Testament’s item world. It’s a lot slower going than item world was up to this point because I have to hang around on each floor for at least one turn now to see if pirates show up, so some time gets wasted on a round or two of combat.

The pirates did finally show up though, and I have three Illegal Tickets from beating them so far. Still need 21 more… I created the new pirate-related clubs, which should make getting them easier though, and created a bunch of new characters of classes I hadn’t done yet to fill the clubs.

I think I’m only missing two or three classes now, though I’m starting to run out of classroom space again, it’s already at its maximum size, and there’s still more characters to recruit. There’s apparently a DLC package in Japan that adds a second classroom, but who knows when it’ll be available here.

The Disgaea 3 powerlevelling continues apace, as I got Mao all the way up to over 3000 tonight. I’ve done HoO4 over 600 times now, but it’s a really quick map to do, as each run probably only takes 15 or 20 seconds. Unfortunately I discovered that my ninja can’t actually use the Big Bang skill, even though she knows it via reincarnation, so I won’t be powerlevelling her for now (edit: oh wait, you actually have to select which abilities are usable in combat, once you’ve collected more than 16 total…).

Still, with two higher-level characters it’s now actually practical for me to pass bills by force, so I used that to pass some difficult ones like getting the biggest classroom. I also unlocked more of the extra maps and did them to recruit Prism Red and Asagi.

Now I need some pirates and higher-rank items in order to start unlocking the really high-end maps, so I delved into the item world within a legendary Testament. I haven’t seen any pirates yet, but I’m only down to level 30 of 100 inside it, so there’s a long way to go…

In tonight’s Disgaea 3 session, I decided to narrow my levelling focus onto my female ninja and Mao for now, so I reincarnated her and got her the healing and Big Bang skills, and took Mao through Class World twice to get them for him.

I also leveled up the fist weapon I’d been using via Item World so that it does some extra damage, and finally collected the full 100 professionals, and started farming HoO4 with Mao instead. By the end of the evening I’d gotten him up to around level 1800 (my main is around 3300 now), and the female ninja into her sixth and final class tier.

I delved again into the item world in Disgaea 3 to pick up a few more professionals, but it gets tedious rather quickly, since you only find them in small amounts. I’ve only collected 60 levels total of them so far, and ideally you want 100 for a 100% critical rate.

So, to break up the tedium, I’ve also started working on raising up some other characters, since if there’s one thing better than having an ultra-powerful character, it’s having an army of ultra-powerful characters… The Big Bang skill is the best for powerlevelling due to the layout of the farming levels, so I’m working on fist users first, including Adell (one of the Disgaea 2 DLC characters), my druid, and my female ninja. I’ll have to use the Class World to transfer it to some of them though, since they can’t learn it on their own. I also put Adell through the standard five reincarnations for story characters, just to get it out of the way.

(Edit: Actually, reincarnating them into martial artists would probably be cheaper and quicker, for the non-story characters, especially since I have to do it anyway since they haven’t reached their maximum tiers yet. I could do it again for cleric skills too, like I did for my own character. The reincarnation costs go up, but mana is pretty easy to generate right now. I’ll still have to use Class World for Adell and Mao though.)

(Edit edit: And I still had some time to kill, so I went back and finished unlocking the rest of the DLC characters. The fights were no problem, though they reused the basic classroom map a bit too much. Looks like they all have unique skills and evilities that might come in useful, though. Kogure’s fight was a bit different in that it went into a completely different style for a little while, too.)

Continuing on in the Disgaea 3 post-game, I delved into the item world, where I collected a bunch of professionals (increases critical hit chance) and managers (increases mana gained per kill). I transferred them into my main’s weapon, and continued leveling up, eventually getting to the point where I could clear HoO4 by myself in one hit.

I continued farming that level for a while, occasionally increasing the enemy strength, but eventually got bored and started checking out the other available maps. I went through the Diez Gentlemen fights, just barely scraping by due to the ‘stronger enemies’ bills still in effect, but I eventually succeeded and got the Puppy Paw Stick, which will come in useful later on. I also unlocked and did the areas that let me recruit Master Big StarBigster and Salvatore, and there are still more maps to go in that series.

I continued farming HoO4 for a while longer, and now I’m around level 2500 and have more money than I know what to do with (over 10 billion HL), since there isn’t really anything stronger available in the shops anymore.

There’s still more to do, though…

As expected, I finished off Disgaea 3’s story today, wherein the big enemy was defeated and Mao was reconciled with his dad and all that garbage. That’s not really all that important, because now the “real” game has started…

I can unlock the DLC characters now, and did so for Adell and Rozalin from Disgaea 2, and Priere from La Pucelle, but I’ll need a bigger classroom before I can unlock too many more. There’s not really too much to them — there’s a short scene to introduce them, you fight them, and they then join you at level 100 after you defeat them. I’ll have to look more closely and see if there’s anything interesting like unique skills.

I can also unlock some extra maps, and did so for something involving Master Big Star , though I haven’t started it yet. Instead I started powerleveling via the 7-3 map, as described in the Gamefaqs guide. The details of powerleveling get tedious, but in the end I’d used the honor student and robber clubs to put characters through enough reincarnations to unlock at least their third or fourth class tier, put the story characters through their five reincarnations to get maximum stat growth, and got Mao and my personal character up to around level 400-500, with most others around 60-100. (Mao was up over 700 at one point before I had to reincarnate him.)

I also got the rest of the healing spells for my character and then reincarnated him into a martial artist. With his ultra-high SPD stat, he should be able to survive fairly well, which has always been the problem I’ve had with healers, and he can dish out some pretty good AE damage, too.

I then unlocked the House of Ordeals maps, which took a *lot* of bribing in Homeroom, and made it through a bunch of them with just Mao and myself. HoO3 was particularly annoying because it’s extremely long, and I had to abandon my first attempt because I accidentally destroyed a geoblock I absolutely needed to keep around, so I had to do it all over again.

HoO4 is where the next stretch of powerleveling will take place, but I’ll need to prepare for it a bit. It’s about time to start delving into Item World and collecting specialists.

I did all of chapter 7 in Disgaea 3 tonight, though there wasn’t really much notable about it. The story has devolved into some touchy-feely garbage about Mao’s true feelings, and character progression has been fairly straightforward.

There’s only something like four fights left to go, so I should be able to finish it off early tomorrow. Then I can start focusing on the real powerlevelling…

I don’t want to let my time in EQ lead to neglecting other games again, so tonight it was back to Disgaea 3 for a while, and I managed to finish off Chapter 6. Nothing too notable along the way though, aside from a slight plot twist at the end involving the butler… This chapter also really ramped up the “you’ve got to rely on your friends to help you along” theme so common to JRPGS. Mao, of course, isn’t having any of that. Yet.

Once the chapter was done though, I checked the newly spawned chests in the ‘town’ area and one of them had an extremely kickass axe. It was 8 ranks ahead of the one my fighter already had, and was Legendary to boot, and in the end it over doubled his ATK. He’s going to be a force to reckon with from here on…

I also unlocked a couple more school clubs, including one that lets me choose which teacher is used in homeroom, and one that adds belts to the store. I created a new gunslinger character, but her only real purpose right now was so I could put her in the club (you need at least one person in it for the belts to show up) rather than one of my main characters.