Recommended Level For Maps?

[I Am A Giant Cookie]

What level should my characters be for story maps? I just finished chapter 4, and I feel like my troops are getting killed out there, especially by bosses. Should I be grinding so that I'm at or above the enemy's level, or am I supposed to under their level and win through superior positioning/tactics? Some enemies, and especially bosses, tend to tear through my characters, and I only tend to win by sacrificing a lot of troops to tank attacks and relying *very* heavily on my named characters.

Or is this sort of thing typical and I shouldn't worry about taking heavy casualties as long as I win in the end?

[TheDiaz]

You can try both. I don't remember the exact map, but there are some with exp panels. Those are good fo grinding. You other option is to learn how to get the best out of the item world to make good items. Maybe just upgrading some should be enough to make you progress further.

[Bomb Bloke]

It helps if you don't try to rely on "a lot of troops" - let just a few characters do as much killing as possible, or if you can, concentrate all your XP income into just one character. You'll find things get much easier.

Tactics will help up to a point (though all you really need to do there is try to kill all nearby enemies each turn so that they never get a chance to retaliate), but there's only so much that can be done against a sizable level gap.

[Z3n]

There is usually a map giving exp more easily once per chapter. The upcoming stage 5-3 is crazy good in that regard (try tossing an enemy in another and see what happens).

[I Am A Giant Cookie]

I had been trying to spread out the exp so none of my characters fell too far behind. Should I just be ignoring my generic characters and just use them to and build combo on enemies so my named characters can do the real damage?

Right now, the levels of characters/enemies are more or less:
My generic characters: ~lvl 9
My named characters: ~lvl 13
Generic enemies: ~lvl 12
Boss enemies: ~lvl 15

I don't really notice a huge level discrepancy except when my generic characters try to fight a boss, which is when they start doing only 1 damage. Aside from that, my characters can generally hold their own, as long as they don't get hit multiple times or by skills. But as long as I can hold formation and limit the enemy to only hit each of my front row characters once, then I'm usually okay. Or at least until my healers run out of SP. Then everything goes south really fast.

I've done a couple of item worlds, but they tend to take a long time for not too much of an increase in power, so I stopped. I figure that in the time it takes me to clear 10 floors of an item world, I could just clear 10 regular maps, which would advance me a lot further along.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by I Am A Giant Cookie:

I had been trying to spread out the exp so none of my characters fell too far behind. Should I just be ignoring my generic characters and just use them to and build combo on enemies so my named characters can do the real damage?

Don't ignore them entirely - at least take the time to let them learn spells from their pupils. You certainly want all of your characters to at least be able to give themselves emergency first aid through a healing spell.

(If you're not aware: placing a pupil next to a mentor gives the mentor access to any of the pupil's spells. Having the mentor cast those spells enough times will "teach" the spell to the mentor.)

Once you've unlocked some of the better classes for your generics, they'll start to become much more powerful than your named characters, but during these beginning stages it's difficult to stop Laharl's level from outpacing everyone else's. Fortunately, that's not a bad thing, and they'll catch up easily later on.

Every now and then you'll come across a stage with enemies placed into obvious groups, allowing you to kill them with single attacks. Repeating these stages a few times is often a good idea. There are other ways to gain levels quickly - Disgaea is largely about spotting shortcuts to power.

Level gaps matter less as your overall levels get higher. While a regular lvl1 will struggle against a lvl2 (let alone anything stronger!), a lvl5000 will actually have a pretty good chance of defeating a lvl9999.

[I Am A Giant Cookie]

If my named characters will eventually become outdated, should I just focus on leveling my generics then? I mean, my named characters are good, and I like them in terms of their characters, but the biggest reason I use them is because they can tank good. As long as my generic melee characters are equally good tanks as named characters (Laharl is still far and away the best tank I have right now), then I don't have to use them. Most of my damage comes from building combos anyway, and by the 5th or 6th hit, anyone can do big damage.

I taught Flonne healing and offensive spells. I taught my healers offensive magic too, but they spend almost every turn healing, so they don't have much of an opportunity to use it.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by I Am A Giant Cookie:

If my named characters will eventually become outdated, should I just focus on leveling my generics then?

Once you get access to stages with decent levelling opportunities, you'll find that you can have your lower-levelled characters easily catch up to and then overtake your higher-levelled characters, if you want them to. So for now, it's more efficient to concentrate on using the characters who have access to the strongest classes, as they'll slingshot you ahead to the stages where you can quickly train your generics later.

[I Am A Giant Cookie]

Okay, thank you. I'll continue to use my named characters then. I suppose my main problem was just being underleveled, but now I've reached 5-3, so I guess I'll be grinding there for a bit.

...Not that this is really related, but is there a way to slow down Etna's next chapter previews? She talks a little too fast for me to keep up, and I usually have to end up having to watch it on youtube so I can pause and read

[Bomb Bloke]

I don't believe there's any way to slow the previews down, no. For what it's worth, if you're intending to 100% the game, then you'll have your team fighting through the chapters a few times anyway - and the previews tend not to have much to do with what actually happens in each chapter.

[Newgeta]

Dont worry about bosses, some will kill you, you get a special ending and restart as a new game plus with all your gear and levels, by the time you get back to the bosses you can beat them.