Experience

Experience is a statistic in the Disgaea series. The more experience points that a character has, the higher their Level. Experience is usually acquired from defeating units, however more methods have been introduced as the franchise progresses.

Experience Formula

The amount of experience it takes to reach a given level(except in Disgaea 6, which follows a different progression) is based on a formula called "Enext". The formula used seems to be an entirely different formula at different sets of levels, with levels beyond the first 100 using a much more flat progression than the first 98 levels. This formula can be seen here.

That table however only lists the base Enext, as each class has a multiplier that is applied to that formula to determine their actual required experience. Story characters, for example, have an Enext multiplier of 5, and because reaching level 2 has a base Enext value of 3, it takes 15 experience to gain their first level. Early-game generic classes like Magicians, Warriors, and Prinnies have an experience multiplier of 4 so they take 12 experience to reach level 2, meaning they need 80% as much experience to gain the same number of levels as a story character or mid-tier Generic character would.

Additionally, each class has a separate multiplier for how much of their Enext they reward when defeated. In general, defeated units grant Enext*YieldMultiplier + 6 experience points. Disgaea 5 slightly changed it to Enext*YieldMultiplier.

Level 1-99

For the first 98 levels, the rate of increase in experience points needed to go to the next level (as well as the experience granted) rises irregularly but roughly parabolically. This pre-99 formula seems to be roughly .04 * X^3 + .8 * X^2 + 2 * X, where X is the current level. The total amount of experience to reach any given level is roughly 0.01 * X^4 + 0.29 * X^3 + 1.05 * X^2 + X (-30 at level 11 to 38, +60 at level 39 to 64, +90 from 65 to 98. Why these levels involve strange shifts is unknown, but seem to be manual adjustments in the formula by the game designers).

Level 99 is a special level - it costs slightly over twice as many experience points to hit level 100 as a normal level, and a level 99 unit gives twice as much experience as the formula would normally allow (9,830 as opposed to level 98's 4,555 or level 100's 3705), roughly making them equivalent to level 323 units in terms of experience(but not Mana or HL). At least one grinding sweet spot per game takes advantage of this fact.

Level 100-9999

Beyond level 99, the formula transitions towards costing 305 more experience points per level than the level before it, forming a very regular and linear progression. This eventually comes to be nearly exactly 305 * X experience per level, where X is the level of the character, or 152.5 * ((X-1)^2 + (X-1)) for the total experience required to reach level X. The formula makes levels from 100 to roughly 650 have less experience per level than this formula indicates in order to make the overall formula wind up averaging the 152.5 (X^2 + X) without needing a constant to compensate for the oddness of the pre-level 100 experience formula.

Ultimately, the total amount of base experience required to reach level 9999 is roughly 15.25 billion exp times the character's experience multiplier. Most story characters, therefore, require roughly 76.25 billion exp to max out their levels, as they have an experience multiplier of 5.

Other Details

Because of the difference in the way that the experience formulas work at levels below 100 (cubic) and above 100 (linear), killing a level 20 units is worth roughly 5 times as much experience as a level 10 unit, whereas a level 2000 unit is worth only around twice as much experience as a level 1000 unit.

Practically speaking, this means that simply fighting higher level enemies is more important than multipliers to experience or killing a larger number of enemies at levels below 100, whereas beyond level 100, there is little practical difference between killing 3 level 3000 enemies and 9 level 1000 enemies. Likewise, above around level 200, you can roughly estimate the experience point value of an enemy as 30.5 times its class multiplier times any other multipliers that factor in.

Disgaea 6 Formula

This game uses a simple formula where the experience needed to reach the next level is 2*CurrentLevel + 1. This also means the total experience needed to reach a certain level from 1 is that level squared(i.e. you need 99.998.001 total experience to reach level 9999). Though just like in the other games, each class has its own growth rate multiplier that modifies these values.

Acquisition and Modifiers

Methods to gain experience:

• Defeating units. Note that defeating allies or clone units only grants a quarter of the usual experience.
  • Using Team Attacks or Tower Attacks will split the experience among participants.
  • Using Magichange grants all participants full experience for the defeat.
  • In Disgaea 6, experience is only earned by defeating enemies. Units don't gain the experience directly, as it's added to a total pool that is then granted to all units on the map at the end of the battle.
• (D2 onward) Using healing/support skills. Before Disgaea 5, this was capped at 100 experience per target.
  • This method was retroactively added to Disgaea 1 Complete.
• (D3 onward) Using an EXP Potion. This grants experience equal to the item's HP.
• (D4 onward) Taking attack damage while Defending. In Disgaea 4, this was capped at 100 experience per attack.
• (D5 onward) Using certain items.
  • D5: Healing items, Potions, Stat Boosters. Grants 12.5% of the user's Enext.
  • D7: Healing items, Hands. Grants 12.5% of the user's experience yield.
• (D6 onward) Spending stocked EXP from the Juice Bar.

Common modifiers to experience gain:

• Having a Statistician on an equipped item.
  • Disgaea 2 replaces them for Felonies, which have an experience bonus as one of their effects.
• Certain Geo Panels increase the experience granted by units standing on them.
• The Cheat Shop applies a multiplier to experience gains.
• Various Evilities modify experience gained.
• Boss units grant higher experience than usual.
• In Disgaea 6, some MVP rewards and one series of D-Merits apply each a multiplicative increase to the experience given to a character after the battle.

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Aptitude - Attack - Defense - Experience - Hit - Hit Points - Intelligence - Mana - Resistance - Special Points - Speed - Weapon Mastery