Reincarnation

[Commander Paincakes]

I've been starting to grind, having just gotten to Stage 9-2, and after reading a couple of guides from GameFAQs, I'm a little confused on reincarnation. I have a Skull with enough Mana to reincarnate into another Genius-level Skull, but is only around level 60. Am I going to being losing any sort of potential like yellow bars if I reincarnate at lower levels?

[neemoos]

You lose a bit of weapon and skill mastery (even at genius you lose 5% IIRC). It's usually not that big of a deal, unless you're doing it over and over again (e.g. farming stored levels), so it's your call whether to reincarnate or not.

[Commander Paincakes]

Ah, so as long as I keep my skills at a high enough level to not lose them, the only downside to reincarnating at low levels would be that my inherited stats (the yellow bars) won't be as high that reincarnation, with no long-term effects?

[neemoos]

Yup, pretty much. Like I mentioned, it's only troublesome if you do it lots of times with the same character (or if you don't reincarnate at genius, for whatever reason). Since you're somewhat early in the game, the detriments of reincarnating are even more negligible (since it takes more and more points as you raise your weapon/skill mastery) and the advantages are more noticeable (since you'll be unlocking new tiers/classes, which naturally have higher yellow bars and stat/weapon aptitudes). The other most obvious downside, is that it takes longer to level your units back to where they were before, since you don't have op equipment, better farming maps and/or access to the Land of Carnage, (possibly) magichange, etc.

[lPaladinl]

If you reincarnate too quickly many times in Disgaea games then you can easily reach a point where the cost of reincarnating is too high and you barely got any stats for the effort, meaning it'd be better to start new characters for a while until your mana gains are high enough to compensate. Eventually reincarnation costs do cap.

So you might have awkward moments where your character feels weak and it's hard for you to reincarnate it into a different class that is stronger or gain more stats that way.

That's the only worry I personally have with reincarnating. Eventually, keyword: Eventually, you can just make enough mana that every character is fine to reincarnate whenever you want. But for long periods of time mana always feels precious because of how slowly it is gained, and how much incentive there is to use features that boost your mana gains.

You also can compensate for character stats with item stats generally, but it slows down your progress.

You also should try to always reincarnate with the best form available to you or else you lose a chunk of stats. You still will keep gaining more stats, but you might as well save up to get more stats carried over and maybe gain some more levels to pass on.

Unless I am wrong and D2 is somehow different from the series, your stat gains are based on your base stats, and the bonus points you distribute each time you reincarnate are counted as base stats, so the more bonus points you have each reincarnation, the more stats you gain each level and thus more gains per cycle.

Ultimately by reincarnating too fast AND with lower tiers you are losing time, as you will spend more time grinding.

So while that might sound all complicated... I wouldn't stress over it. Just got for the best option that's reasonable to reach and have fun unless you want to min-max.