Folks who grind the item world - how do you do it?

[Daliena]

It's not difficult, don't get me wrong. What it is is immensely tedious. I tried to level up my new weapon sets to 10 for the final chapter, then again for post-game, but it is mind-numbingly boring because outside of mystery rooms, the item world enemies just aren't a challenge. Most maps end up cleared in one turn, two if they're too big/enemies too spread out for me to reach them all.

So how do you do it and not want to beat yourself over the head with the keyboard?

[Pickleton]

For fans of the series, the grind IS the fun part.
Once you have a good setup, you can clear item world levels in 1 attack and just fly through it.

[Zefar]

It's satisfying when you see your item level up 200 levels and have it's stats skyrocket from the old levels.

It also gives me a reason to have random music turned on in the item world.

Also Item world is a good place to level when you've been able to get your first carnage item. You just max out difficulty in cheat menu, go in with the lowest level Carnage item and fight super weak 9999 enemies. I maxed out my main way to quickly when I noticed their stats where awful. Then I had the rest of the people in my EXP squad get 9999 as well.

If you use a higher level carnage item you'll get monsters strong enough that just has to look at you to kill you.

[Fluffal Kyurem]

Just kill everything with LD. Steal the higher rank items from Item God 2 until you got the best stuff. After like 50+ hours in the Item World you should have characters looking like this:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1677029405
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1677029315

Optimize them and take on Carnage Baal.

[ShinkuTear]

I just avoid doing it, largely. Disgaea 5 made the Item World feel, to me, like it was the worst version the series has had yet for any sort of post game grinding. It has the largest amount of stuff to do to actually make some sort of truly super equip, and I feel like it doesn't actually start paying off for a while.

If I am going to do it at all, I do it in small chunks that I can stand. Forcing myself to grind through it when I don't want to is just going to make me angry. If that means only going a few hundred floors(using Divers for dupe chance) in my Hercules Armor before I go back to grinding shards or class mastery, so be it. Whatever pace I feel like going at.

If you want to try and make a super equip, I would absolutely suggest that, above all else, you go at whatever pace *you* enjoy. If you are bored within a few minutes of burning Divers for dupe chance, then stop Diving and do something else. Go level/reincarnate, or farm shards, or level skills...

[Fluffal Kyurem]

Eventually you do get exponential growth on your characters as they become stronger. It only took me 5 hours to get Fuka where she is. The Item World was just duping my maxed Trap 3 times. Equipping them to Fuka instantly gave her 40m stats. She was strong enough to one-shot 20* Carnage Luckyboards in Martial Training 5, so each battle maxed out each sub-class. I had all of them maxed in 25 minutes. Farming shards was also quick. I just captured 20* Carnage Bears in MT 4, and I had Fuka capped on shards in about an hour. Doing Chara World to get all her evillities, specials, and equipment aptitude took about 2 hours since I had Action Boosters stacked up.

[Daliena]

Originally posted by Zefar:

It also gives me a reason to have random music turned on in the item world.

Where do you change the music?

Also, yeah, I see the suggestion to use Land Destroyer. Guess I should get off my butt and level up a Sage.

[laiyi_11]

From your post, I guess you are not really into heavily grinding for stats in item world.
My suggestion is quite simply, do not force yourself into any bit of item world diving before you've got high rank carnage equipment.
It is way easier to gaining stats from leveling in martial challenge stages than leveling up your gear.
Land decimator is useless without max skill level, several million stats, and max power level if not also highly focused evibility. Do not bother with it before you enjoy using a sage.

If you feel something boring, the best idea is not to do it if you are not forced to do it. Gaming for fun not for punishment.

[Zefar]

Originally posted by Daliena:

Originally posted by Zefar:

It also gives me a reason to have random music turned on in the item world.

Where do you change the music?

Also, yeah, I see the suggestion to use Land Destroyer. Guess I should get off my butt and level up a Sage.

With the NPC on default location it's the NPC near the one where you can hire characters at.
The NPC is named Data collection or something and there is a part about music and you can turn it random.

[Fluffal Kyurem]

LD eventually does become useless when you level the item really high and the enemies are at max stats. At that point I just gained levels by spamming Filler Up EX and jumped on the skip gate until I found an Item God or Proto Dark Death to kill.

[Binary]

IW enemies have a cap so they will never really reach 99M stats other than bosses

[ShinkuTear]

IW enemies can cap their stats extremely easily, actually, since if you want to make a super equip you need to turn up the Stronger Enemies stars. Enemies in a Trap or Herc can be stat capped before item level 100 with enough stars, and you would at least wanna push to item level 500.

[Fluffal Kyurem]

You can encounter max stats enemies even with 0 stars.

[Zefar]

Originally posted by ShinkuTear:

IW enemies can cap their stats extremely easily, actually, since if you want to make a super equip you need to turn up the Stronger Enemies stars. Enemies in a Trap or Herc can be stat capped before item level 100 with enough stars, and you would at least wanna push to item level 500.

Using a Carnage Thimble will make all enemies in the Item world have a level 9999 but very weak stats. This is also using max difficulty in cheat menu.

Now if you where to pick a much better carnage weapon or item you will start to encounter a lot of high stat enemies.

So the level of the enemies isn't always going to reflect how powerful they are.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Daliena:

but it is mind-numbingly boring because outside of mystery rooms, the item world enemies just aren't a challenge.

This, except it extends to all enemies in this game. I see this game as squandered potential due to a neglected AI component. There are no tactics, no strategy, just brute force damage and healing. Unfortunately, it's an SRPG without strategy.

It could be so much, yet it isn't. They should put some serious emphasis on AI and make a real tactics Disgaea entry in the series. Yes, leave the grinding intact as an integral aspect—as there can't be a Disgaea without that, and it has its own appeal—but also make the game challenging in addition to that.

[Pickleton]

Originally posted by Multihog:

Originally posted by Daliena:

but it is mind-numbingly boring because outside of mystery rooms, the item world enemies just aren't a challenge.

This, except it extends to all enemies in this game. I see this game as squandered potential due to a neglected AI component. There are no tactics, no strategy, just brute force damage and healing. Unfortunately, it's an SRPG without strategy.

It could be so much, yet it isn't. They should put some serious emphasis on AI and make a real tactics Disgaea entry in the series. Yes, leave the grinding intact as an integral aspect—as there can't be a Disgaea without that, and it has its own appeal—but also make the game challenging in addition to that.

Most Disgaea games are like that. I will agree that this one streamlined things a bit too much. There are way too many mechanics you have access to that the enemies don't that lets you mop the floor with enemies even if they have double your stats.