Disgaea: Hour of Darkness/Episode V: Etna's Secret

5-1: Absolute Zero
This stage is affected by ATK -50%, Def +50%, and Ally Damage 20%. Your first priority is to destroy the Ally Damage 20% Geo Symbol. Throw a character to the Imp near it, then have that character throw the Imp on to the Geo Symbol. The other two Geo Symbols make all characters deal and take less damage, which can make the battle last a lot longer than it needs to. You can either destroy the symbols or practice up your weapon skills on the enemies.

5-2: Endless White
This can be a difficult battle. Laharl's stats are reduced to half. The only real tactic here is to avoid engaging multiple enemies. The ninjas will counterattack a lot, so attack them at range to avoid it.

5-3: Terrible Cold
All but two panels on this map are affected by Invincibility. One panel is the green one past all the enemies and the other is your Base Panel. With this in mind, there are a few tactics you can employ.


 * Throw enemies on to the base panel. Depending on the strength of your allies still within, they may subdue and capture it or it may defeat them. Once the base panel is destroyed, you can kill the enemies by throwing them on the panel where it used to be.
 * Advance past the enemies by lifting them and throwing them out of the way. You will still take damage from holding things at the end of a turn. Once you get to the green panel, either throw the Invincibility Geo Symbol on it to make everything vulnerable, or throw enemies on to it to make them vulnerable.

This stage is an excellent place to level up. By combining many enemies in to one, you can create a very high level enemy. Then, put it on one of the panels that is not affected by invulnerability and kill it. Combined with the 'Triple Exp' bonus, this can give a huge amount of experience to low level characters. Beware that you can create an enemy too high level to damage. Also, damaging but not killing the monsters before throwing them together will make the resulting monster have much less HP.

5-4: Ice Queen
You will be fighting in confined spaces, so use this to your advantage when fighting here. As usual, keep the Golem at a distance. If you have problems winning this stage, you can use the previous stage to level your characters.

If you have killed 100 allies at this point in the game, you have the option of accessing an alternate ending at the end of the stage.