hi. like the title says, these are probably very basic, 'noob' if you will, questions. in my defence this is the first Disgaea title that I've played, if that counts as a defence?

anyhow, I looked through the FAQ on the site here, but found it to be a bit, not technical, but written for people 'in the know,' so to speak.

I'm on my 4th cycle right now, as I wanted to try getting some of the alternate endings, specifically the 2 Raspberyl endings. So now, as I prepare to start questing after Uber Baal, I need some direction:

Question 1 - when it's talking about 'illegal tickets' & the Land of Carnage, is this something you access during the story mode or in the post-game? As a part B to this question, what's the deal with playing through the story chapter maps in the post-game? I noticed they were there on one playthrough, but again wanted to unlock a bunch of endings before I got too crazy with things so I never actually started one up...

Question 2 - it seems the consensus is that the non-unique [ie, ones you can name] characters are considerably underpowered compared to the main characters? I really love the 'Battle of the Planets' look of the Masked Hero & the martial artists & ninjas I've had a lot of fun with so far...so is it a waste of resources to level a bunch of generics?

god, there's more but I'm feeling a bit awkward wasting so much time with this stuff, so I'm going to leave it at that for now. basically I'm just after any advice/help/tips for post-story quests & leveling. any help would be really appreciated! Thank you in advance.

Yes it counts as a defense, it's one of those games you can't just hop in and be expected to know how to do everything ^_~

Illegal tickets are obtained in two ways - Mystery gates (they're available in two sets, one around floors 1 to 49, and the other in floors 51 to 99). I'm not exactly sure WHICH floors it starts/ends at, but it is something like that. They are really expensive for people who don't have millions of HL to use as toilet paper. Naturally, the floors 49 to 99 are much more expensive (about up to 10x) than the other set. These special rooms don't appear often, so I hope you have the cash to burn when you find one.

The other way is to beat pirates and take their tickets that way. You need to at least beat the pirate captain (or steal the ticket from them, I think they're equipped, but I'm not sure). Keep in mind, you should take the time to beat all the pirates, have someone on the pirate ship, and get the ship that way (upon clearing the map or skipping the floor). The guidebook I had said the pirates appear can appear on every floor but one ending in 0, this is FALSE. I wasted many hours on that, it is actually I think, floors ending in 2 to 9. Refer to This Thread.

These illegal tickets open one dark world stage each. And you need 50% of them (around...24 or something, I think it was?) to unlock Land of Carnage.

The way I did it, is I bought all the tickets on the two separate stores, and then beat pirates to get enough to get to the Land of Carnage.

Well, any class can become uber. It really comes down to the skill power though. S and A skills are ideal, if a special character has one, they'll do loads more damage. Story/bonus characters have decent skills, and generic characters don't generally have unique skills. DLC characters are generally more powerful than those included in the game. Personally, I used a female ninja (for the 3x3 area of effect Big Bang fist skill), Mao (sword), and a much class-world boosted Majin (Fist), and a few other minor characters. The highest tier majin has a special evility which is unlocked at high levels, which boosts stats by 50%, at the expense of 50% EXP gains, which means nothing at level 9999.

Higher tier classes are a must in the game, if you want the best skills. There should be a guide that tells you what tier of what class you need to unlock what tier of weapon skill.