Most of the damage in Disgaea D2 is headed in your general direction. That’s the price you pay for being the Overlord of the Netherworld; just about everyone you meet is interested in recreational regicide. Despite Laharl’s protests, you’re going to get pummeled.
Recovery & Death
In the field, you have two basic methods of recovering HP: items and Heal spells.
Items are easy to explain. You can buy candy and drinks from the Rosen Queen Trading Company that will restore small amounts of HP and SP. (It’s the Netherworld. Part of being a demon is not caring about diabetic shock.) This is very handy early in the game, but it becomes functionally obsolete in the Post-Game, as the best healing item that Rosen Queen ever sells is the Eclair at Product Rank 10, which only restores 2,800 HP. Rosen Queen also never gets access to consumables that restore both HP and SP, such as Yummy Kimchee.
Better healing items can be found as Bonus rewards and in treasure chests, but that means they’re random drops. The game is built around the assumption that after you reach level 30 or so, you’ll be doing most if not all of your battlefield healing with Heal spells and reserving your items for emergencies.
As for recovering from death ... well, you can’t, or at least you can’t on your own. A unit that is destroyed disappears completely, both from the battlefield and from your in-game roster. As far as you’re concerned, that unit no longer exists until it’s revived at the Netherworld Hospital.
At the same time, however, death is cheap in D2. The cost in HL of reviving a fallen character at the Netherworld Hospital increases with the dead character’s level but is generally trivial. Even if you lose ten units on a stage and get a game over, you’ll simply be returned to the Netherworld Hospital none the worse for wear. You even get to keep any items, EXP, Mana, and HL that you acquired before your untimely demise, and the first time you get a game over also unlocks a Trophy.
It’s actually possible to farm certain stages for items that would otherwise be rare—usually because a particular enemy unit that uses that item appears only on a certain stage on your first visit, such as a boss, and is gone if you return to the stage after clearing it—if you run in, steal the item in question, and then have your characters deliberately commit mass suicide. It’s morbid, yeah, but you can do it. The next time you visit the stage, the item’s owner will have replaced whatever you’ve stolen.
Status Ailments
There are five kinds of ailments in Disgaea D2, and if a unit is affected by any of them, a matching icon appears in a window above their portrait and on the field above their sprite’s head.
Unless there’s some other factor in play, such as an enemy’s Evility, a status ailment lasts two turns before going away on its own. If you’d like to cure it sooner, you can cast Espoir or use Fairy Dust on the afflicted unit.
Status ailments come up a lot in Disgaea D2. Many monsters inflict specific ailments as a side effect of their Special Skills, and there are a number of Innocents that, if they appear on enemies’ weapons or armor, add a chance for that enemy’s attacks to inflict an ailment. You’ll also run into a few stages in the main story campaign that use certain combinations of enemies’ Evilities to amplify the damage or duration of ailments.
Get into the habit of apprenticing your characters to Flonne for a few levels early in their careers so they can learn her Espoir spell, since Espoir is cheap and doesn’t depend upon its user’s stats to be effective. As an alternative, you can also buy Fairy Dust from Rosen Queen, which instantly cures any and all status ailments when used.
Poison
A Poisoned character takes up to 20% of his or her maximum health as damage at the beginning of his or her team’s next turn. Unlike some other CRPGs, Poison damage is capable of killing the character that’s so afflicted. Mothmen have several Evilities that specifically enhance the damage caused by Poison, which is used to complicate things in several early levels.
Sleep
When hit by Sleep, a character is unable to take any actions. An attack breaks the Sleep effect early, but is also an automatic critical hit.
Paralysis
When afflicted with a Paralysis debuff, a character cannot use the Move command. He or she can still use all abilities and Skills, but cannot move from his or her current position. You can use Skills that involve the character ending up in a different place than where he or she started, however, such as Impaler Drop or Point Blank Blaster. This is also referred to in some places in the game as a Stun effect.
Silence
The afflicted character cannot use Special Skills until the Silence effect is removed. Their INT is treated as if it’s 0 for the duration, which affects their attack power with Books or Staves. They can still attack, move, and use items, however. This is also referred to in places as Confusion.
Deprave
A Depraved character suffers a flat 30% reduction to ATK, DEF, INT, RES, HIT, and SPD. The character otherwise functions as normal but does not earn EXP or Mana during the effect’s duration.