Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories/Specialists

On any item in Disgaea 2, you can check the item's stats to find faces that have a name and number like "Gladiator 13" next to them. Gladiator denotes the specialist type, and the 13 denotes its level. In the case of the Gladiator, it raises the ATK value of the item. Different specialists increase different attributes of an item, ranging from DEF to elemental resistance to increasing the EXP gain of the item wielder. Specialists may have a red, angry face - which means the specialist isn't subdued - or a yellow, happy face - which means the specialist is subdued. Except for Bailiffs, specialists on a new item will initially be unsubdued.

To subdue specialists, you must go into the Item World of the associated item. Unsubdued specialists have a chance of appearing on every stage, and if they appear, will be designated before the battle begins. Killing these specialists will make them subdued, and cause them to appear in Innocent Towns. Unsubdued specialists are treated as a third party in battle, meaning your main enemies will be attacking them as well. If you don't kill the specialist before your opponent, too bad, but they'll usually show up at a later stage. After a specialist has been subdued, its level doubles.

By talking to the Item World guide, subdued specialists can be moved to different items. An item's number of specialists cannot exceed its POP. Common items have an initial POP of 4, rare items have 5, and legendary items have 6. Each item can have its POP increased by a maximum of 2, either by defeating an Item King or by passing a bill in the Item World Assembly. The guide can also combine two specialists of the same type to combine their levels and save space. At least one of the specialists to be combined must be subdued. If the second specialist is subdued, the resulting specialist is subdued, but if the second specialist isn't subdued, the resulting specialist isn't either. Also, when combining a subdued and unsubdued specialist, the subdued specialist will lose half its levels. For example, combining a Lv.13 unsubdued Gladiator with a Lv.40 subdued Gladiator will result in a Lv.33 unsubdued Gladiator (13 + 40/2). The resulting unsubdued specialist needs to be subdued again, at which point its level will double again to 66.

Specialist Types

 * All Stat and Dual-Stat specialists max out at lvl 19998.
 * Dual Stat specialists are created by the Mediator Specialist, and cannot be randomly found on items like other specialists. Unlike regular stat boosters, these specialists do not enhance item stat gains during Item World level ups! So replace them with regular specialists when going into the Item World.
 * Broker and Mentor specialists do not affect bonus gauge gains or treasure chest box rewards, only kills.
 * As a general rule of thumb, it is a good idea to subdue and collect Bonus Specialists early and often. Armsmasters in particular prove to be very useful once you get to the point where you can create lots of new and fancy character classes.
 * Specialists always increase by 1 point or 1% per level, so a Lv56 Gladiator would increase ATK by 56, and a Lv30 Coffee Maker would give the character 30% less chance to fall asleep. Dual-Stat Specialists increase both stats by one per level, and the exact effect of Lovers varies.

Collectors
Collectors are interesting, if not so useful at first. The best use for collectors is to make several items of matching rarity value, so that your character gets the rarity bonus when equipping them. Matching two items of the same rarity gives you an extra 10% bonus to the stats of both matching items. Matching three gives a 20% bonus and matching four gives a 30% bonus. Note that these specialist actually increase the rarity value, which effectively decreases the actual rarity of the item. If an item has a rarity of 17 and you install a collector of value 1 on it, it's rarity value will become 18. However, the decrease in rarity will not affect the stats of the item. Since Collectors are very rare specialists, they are best reserved for Legendary items, which by nature differ less in rarity value.

Collectors are obtained via Mystery Rooms in the Item World. If you stumble upon one, he will ask you if he is welcome to join your item, and will be subdued if you say yes. Collectors will only jump onto an item if it has an empty slot.

A guaranteed source of Collectors, once per cycle, is the First Battle in Zenon's Coliseum chapter, where Undefeatedable's Supremacy, Almighty Armor and Maxi Sandals are guaranteed to be generated with a level 8-12 Collector in each.

Mediator
A Mediator works by appearing in the Innocent Town of an item that it's on, and marrying two regular specialists into one dual-stat specialist. The chance of this happening depends on the level of the Mediator. The resulting dual-stat specialist is usually, but not always, based on the original specialists -- A Marksman and a Gladiator will usually, but not always, be married into a Sniper. The level of the resulting dual-stat specialist will be based on the rank of the item and not the levels of the original specialists! So when using Mediators it is always best to use low-level specialists on high-level items, such that the resulting dual-stat specialist will actually be much more powerful than the specialists used to create it.

For the marriage to work, the item in question must have an open specialist slot available, and the newly-created dual-stat specialist will have to be re-subdued.

It seems like a lot of work and, well, it is. Early on you can collect these guys (if you run into any at all), and store them on a few unused items in your warehouse for use later on down the road. Still, items in Disgaea 2 have only half the number of specialist slots of it's predecessor Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (3 or 4 normally, and 9 max), so slots space can become a premium especially later in the game.

Mediators are pretty rare. They can apparently be found more commonly on items bought from the Merchant encountered randomly in Mysterious Rooms. They can also be found on Subpoenas on rare occasion. Thus, if you want to go on a quest for mediators, a possible strategy is to cash in on as many Per-reincarnation Subpoenas as possible before every reincarnation of a character, and just sell off anything that doesn't have a Mediator on it.

Since neither the Mediator nor the "parent" specialists are deleted after a marriage, it's best to combine every Mediator you find so its level is as high as possible.

If you only have a Mediator under Lv100, there is never a 100% chance of the marriage occurring. To prevent wasting time on a marriage, go into the Item World, get a throw-away item to Lv9, then use a Mr. Gency Exit on stage 10. Save, move the mediator and desired parent specialists onto the item, then go back into the Item World and clear the tenth stage. If you get into Innocent Town and see the marriage, great; if not, you can quit and start back from stage 10 without having to do another nine levels again.

Since you've (probably) already cleared the item out of excess specialists, and still need to subdue the child specialist, you might as well repeat the above strategy for the next ten levels. Remove the child before the next Innocent Town, if it has been subdued, otherwise it might be involved in the marriage instead of the specialists you want.

Teacher
Teachers work similarly to Mediators, in that they have a chance of appearing in the Innocent Town of the item they're on and, if present, will 'educate' another specialist for a 5% increase to its level. The level of the Teacher affects it's chance of appearing in the Innocent Town only, and does not affect the level increase (which is always and exactly 5%, rounded down [confirmation needed]).

Example: Dietician/50 getting a Teacher bonus of 5% will be upgraded to a Dietician/52.

So again, much like the Mediator, the usefulness of this specialist early on in the game is limited. You're only going to find yourself wanting to dabble in the affairs of Teachers if/when you get to the point of having specialists in the 500+ range, so that dancing through a half-dozen Item Worlds hoping for a Teacher's appearance doesn't feel like a big waste of time.

If you're using an item to level up Specialists, adding in a Lv100 Teacher to boost one of them by 5% on every Innocent Town can save time. But unless you're focused on boosting just two or three Specialists, that might not be worth it, considering the Teacher's taking up a slot which could be used leveling a more useful specialist.

Lovers
Lovers are a unique brand of specialist that auto-magically spawn on equipment - both weapons and armors - that a character has used for an extended period of time. These specialists give a 1% boost per level to all the character's stats along with a boost to the character's innate ability, to a maximum of 25%.

Lovers will be named after the character class that they spawned on, or in the case of Special Classes, after the characters themselves. For example, there are Adell Lovers and Rozalin Lovers whom only affect those specific characters, but a Healer or Rune Knight will spawn respectively-named Lovers that can be used on any other character from that class (of any tier).

The minimum amount of time for a Lover to spawn is 35 completed battles. Skipped stages in the Item World do not count, and only characters outside the BasePanel at the time of completion are affected. Removing items from your character for any reason resets the counter-- which includes removing items to shuffle specialists around. If you do much weapon switching for, say, a dual healer/archer, that character won't get any weapon Lovers; although they can still collect Lovers on their armor. Additionally, Lovers can only spawn on items with open specialist slots. Lovers can also spawn on items that have been leveled up to the max, if a specialist slot is left open, making it impossible to subdue and remove them.

An item must also be at least rank 6 or better in order for it to spawn a Lover. The level of the Lover spawned is directly based on the rarity of the item:

When in the Item World, the Lover Specialist for a story character will be a clone copy of the character that created the Lover, so be prepared for a real fight if the Lover belongs to one of your stronger story characters. They also have duplicate equipment of your character, but unfortunately, you can never successfully steal their items. Humanoid monster class lovers are not clones, but are still of the same class as their creator; they appear by the same rules as other specialists. Their level is based on the item/floor, and have no equipment, thus making them easy to subdue.

Some of the most useful Lovers are probably those for Thieves and Wood Golems, due to the general usefulness of their innate abilities and the substantial impact the Lover has on those abilities.