Peninsula of Power Leveling

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In video games with RPG Elements, not to mention RPGs themselves, there are often locations that are prime for quickly gathering experience (and, rarely, other resources). This can be due to a number of factors:

  • Enemies well beyond what you should be meeting, with commensurate awards, are available - particularly if near a source of healing (a Save Point, a Trauma Inn, or the like).
  • A Guest Star Party Member has joined you and gives you enough power to overwhelm what you ordinarily can't handle.
  • An area so overloaded with various types of Metal Slime that you're bound to take out a couple by attrition alone.
  • It's extraordinarily easy to take advantage of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors in this area.
  • An area where you can get incredibly useful items, either by Video Game Stealing, Randomly Drops, or findable in abundance while just walking around.

These areas quickly become popular, as players quickly stock up in these locales on experience (and usually money, although that's usually secondary to the main goal). Some of these areas are accessible via Sequence Breaking; they were supposed to be standard rewards when encountered, and players have found a shortcut to get to them earlier.

Some Peninsulas need not be a specific physical location in a game world—a Temporal Peninsula of Power Leveling is a specific timeframe during which it is vastly conductive to gaining experience—be it a specific part of the story where a Guest Star Party Member joins you (or the Required Party Member leaves) or perhaps during the area before a boss (often a Load-Bearing Boss) falls, or even a specific repeatable fight that is only available for a limited time (in the long term). These specific types of areas are very conductive to power leveling, but have one thing in common—after a certain story event, they become Lost Forever.

Due to how popular these become, many attract a Fan Nickname if not explicitly named in the game itself.

See also Infinite 1-Ups.

Examples of Peninsula of Power Leveling include:

Action Adventure

  • Even games that aren't exactly RPGs can do this. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a nearly unbeatable enemy located in the Royal Chapel called a Spiked Ball. Despite not being an enemy so much as a piece of weaponry perched on top of a Bone Pillar on top of a long set of stairs that just happens to be lying in one particular spot and which does massive amounts of Collision Damage, you can destroy it if you stand as close as possible to it, equip a fist weapon, and hold the attack button for a minute or two. It's a piece of cake to gain 10 levels in this room if you so desire.
    • Also, once you reach the inverted castle's Marble Corridor, you encounter the game's Boss in Mook Clothing the Guardians. While ridiculously powerful, their attacks can be easily telegraphed and avoided. Upon their defeat they fork over absurd amounts of experience, and a drop chance for a decent two-handed sword and the best (set-stat) armor in the game.
  • Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance has a room full of skeletons in tanks in Castle A's Skeleton Cavern. These enemies are called Skeleton Glass, and once they burst out of the tank they're not much more dangerous than regular skeletons, and go down as fast. But their experience drop, while not the best, is pretty high up there.

Card Battle Game

  • Metal Gear Acid 2 there is a short level atop a moving train with only a handful of robot opponents. Using Stinger/FIM type weapons, you can attack these opponents even at the far end of the level, taking the target and any of the robots on the immediate squares out in one shot. This means you can complete the level in about three moves with the robots not even getting a turn. This makes the level very good for grinding for new cards.
    • The Arena Mode also qualifies, since it rotates only a handful of bosses (Liquid Snake, Revolver Ocelot, Vamp, Fortune, The End, The Boss, Teliko and Venus), each of whom have very predicable AI and strategy even on Hard and Extreme mode (with Venus, you even know the contents of her hand at all times). Once you've learned these and built a deck to fit around them, you can beat even Extreme mode characters with minimal effort, way before your characters should be able to, and grind for cards while raking in the points. And there's no penalty for losing.

Fighting Game

  • Even Dissidia Final Fantasy has one of these; the Exdeath Trick. Equip a character with as many EXP boosting accessories as possible and the non-auto summoning Magic Pot summon and fight a level 100 Exdeath in Quick Battle. Due to his poor AI and the effects of the summon (lets you copy opponent's Brave), it's rather easy to beat him, netting you tons of experience.
    • It's even easier if you fight the Exdeath from the Omega friend card. He uses the Barbariccia summon, which swaps your bravery with his when you use any summon. It's essentially the same trick as with Magic Pot, but with the added benefit of being able to use almost any manual summon and not having to wait for Magic Pot to recharge.
    • And you can get even easier XP once you've unlocked Gabranth (The FFXII character). His special attacks don't do any damage, just make him stand still and charge up his EX gauge. If you set his AI to cautious, he won't attack you directly, so as long as you keep at him, stopping him from charging up his gauge, he won't do any damage to you, even at level 100, at which point you'll be getting up to 3 80+ levels with the proper bonuses per kill with a low-level character.
    • The ability to create custom rules in Duodecim adds to the fun. By setting the respawn and absorbtion rate of the EX Gauge and EX Cores and equipping "Force to Courage" (which converts all the absorbed EX Force to Bravery), Cores will instantly spawn and you can raise your Bravery to the maximum and possibly killing your opponent in one shot, without the need of Manual Magick Pot.
    • But wait! It gets even easier! You can set Bravery Bonus to -100 in Custom Rules, and the game will start awarding total bravery to the lower-leveled character in any fight. Thus if you use adjusted-to-level-1 character against lv 100 character, your bravery will start at 9999 or close to it! Combine this with impotent characters like Gabranth and "Minimal" A.I., and you'll get a honest-to-Cosmos max-level character roster in no time! And you can alter PSP system clock so that it's always your Bonus Day, making the progress even faster!

Hack and Slash

  • In Diablo 2, the first area of the 5th act in the expansion pack used to be a great place to level grind thanks to relatively easy monsters who gave exp like candy. Pretty sure it got fixed in a patch later on though.
    • The general peninsulas for Diablo 2 are something along the lines of:
      • Tristram for 1-15
      • Tomb runs for 15-20
      • Cow level for 20-25
      • Baal Runs on varying difficulty modes for 25 on.
    • Getting a Bug Rush to Act 4 in Hell Mode at level 24+ can get you to level 65+ in mere minutes.
    • There's also an Ascended Glitch that lets you equip items to gain stats, which lets you equip even better items. Given the proper (extremely hard to find, due to Rare Item drop rates/combinations, forging, and the other ways of getting gear in the game) you can equip just about any item in the game by using this feature.

MMORPG

  • If an EXP camp is described as a "insert-word-here-burn" in Final Fantasy XI, chances are you're going to get a lot of EXP. Because of the way the game's evolved, it's increasingly rare to find "standard" experience parties anymore, as everyone prefers to abuse the following types of EXP.
    • The most common type, melee burns (otherwise known as TP burns), do nothing but slaughter birds at a mind-boggling pace. They abuse the fact that colibri birds parrot spells cast on them... but are otherwise very weak and have laughable normal attacks, so melee characters can mow them down effortlessly.
    • Manaburns involve five Black Mages and one level synced leech frying crabs and fish on Qufim Island at a similar pace. Other locations that don't involve level sync include killing tigers in Vunkerl Inlet or ghosts in the past version of Xarcabard, but they all basically involve many mages liquefying a mob in a round or two.
      • Furthermore, many areas count for solo Black Mages, as beastmaster mobs won't attack you for attacking their pet if they don't see you doing so. A Black Mage can simply pull the pet away while the master's back is turned. Alternatively, killing the pet in one spell will never cause the master to attack you, even if he's looking right at his pet.
    • Finally, there are Astral burns (or "SMN burns") in Korroloka Tunnel, in which a max-level player draws/links half the tunnel into following and attacking him, at which point a party of Summoners use Astral Flow and kill every mob instantly while level synced to a low-level leech. It's a very blatant abuse of the level sync system (meant to allow friends of disparate levels to party together), but it's widely and routinely abused so much that Square can't reasonably ban anyone over it.
      • People will even pay (in-game) money to leech SMN burn exp. A fair number of players get rich by allowing others to leech their way to max level this way, and players who level this way are stereotyped as having, well, bribed their way to victory, and are looked down upon for it.
    • The zones from the Vision of Abyssea and Scars of Abyssea micro-expansions were built to be areas where players could acquire huge amounts of XP that make all of the above methods look slow in comparison. This was designed as part of a massive send-off as the playerbase, in theory, moved en mass to Final Fantasy XIV, but, well...
  • In Kingdom of Loathing, several of the areas in Spookyraven Manor work this way, with different areas tuned to different stats. This is especially useful with Clovers later on - a properly-equipped player (with a lot of funds) can reach level 15 easily through them, without a single combat.
    • The best spot is the Haunted Bedroom once you break the staircase and get the backup working. With the right choices, you can get leveled up real fast, though the stat requirement takes a while to reach.
  • These are common in the MMORPG genre as well, and tend to be places where low level characters can tag along with high level characters kicking tail. City of Heroes has Peregrine Island, while City of Villains has Grandville, both being the highest-level zones. Briefly, there was a lot of powerlevelling in the starter zones due to a bug. (which people massively complained about when it was fixed)
  • Due to how leveling is handled in Ace Online / Air Rivals, there are only several maps where each class goes to: A-Gears usually settle in Alioth, while higher level ones prefer Lumein Volcano. B-Gears prefer Dimension Corridor "wall", or when not available, Island Dream or again, Alioth. Defense M-Gears can also grind in Alioth or sharegrind with B-Gears in Dimension Corridor or Chaos. For I-Gears however, there's only one map: CMM (short for Chaos Mission Map). The catch? Due to the intense PVP-based gaming that Ace Online is, Alioth and CMM are perpetually open to both nations, meaning that while it is usually a no-fire zone, wars often break out to determine "ownership" of said maps. Island Dream and Dimension Corridor likewise has an "open" version as well.
    • The maps above primarily satisfy the "very weak and numerous" rule. Otherwise, these maps wouldn't be as popular; each map enemy's exp reward vs. toughness is inherently progressing lower and lower (that is, enemies get tougher while yielding dismally low exp in return) as players advance in maps, so these grindmaps make up for it by sheer numbers of mobs even though the exp reward becomes more and more useless as level progresses. For instance, a level 8x I-Gear would take 2-3 kills in Chaos Mission Map to bring his/her exp bar up by 0.01!
  • For about a day, there was a quest in Star Wars Galaxies which got you half a level for every completion. This quest was repeatable, but it was intended that the opposing faction (Rebel or Alliance) was supposed to stop you. Fortunately for the Rebels, the Alliance players didn't feel like it. This made it possible for the Rebel players to continuously complete the quest, allowing for very quick leveling. Many players were literally able to jump 70+ levels in that one day (a feat which should have taken weeks or months normally).
  • Lion Heart Castle/Lion King Castle (Usually abbreviated as LHC, regardless of region) in Maple Story. It is one of several Party-Play zones in the game that gives extra experience if more people are in your party. During 2X events (where the experience given by monsters is doubled) it's not uncommon to find almost every map with at least one party grinding. Killing one mob can give hundreds of thousands of experience, which you'll need at higher levels.

Platform Game

Role-Playing Game

  • The trope name comes from the Fan Nickname for a peninsula north of Pravoka in Final Fantasy I - originally a Good Bad Bug where a few squares accidentally held the data for the wrong area of monsters, but it quickly became popular due to its potential for massive experience early on. All rereleases have kept said bug.
    • Anyone interested in some simple Sequence Breaking can get to the Castle of Ordeals as soon as they reach Crescent Lake, and get some great experience (plus the first reuseable magic-casting items and a sword that's highly effective against nearly everything in the next major dungeon) and a class upgrade before fighting the Fiend of Fire.
    • There is also the Hall of Giants, an area on the first floor of the Earth Cave in which every step is populated by giants. Great for later on, when the Peninsula Of Power and the Castle of Ordeals no longer give great experience awards.
    • In early versions of the game the fight with The Eye in the Ice Cave was this, due to your ability to step one step away from where he spawns, step back, and fight him again ad nauseum. He had an instant death attack, but the chances of it succeeding were very low, he cast it infrequently, and after a certain point he died too fast for this to be an issue. Similar fights against elementals in the usually empty side rooms and in front of certain chests also provided similar gains.
  • Final Fantasy II has a quite literal Peninsula of Power below the very first town, retained in the GBA version. A few squares to the south of the first town have enemies far stronger than anything one will encounter for much of the game. Leveling off of them for a few hours makes the remainder of the game trivial at best.
    • The entire game works like that, though. And there's absolutely no indication of where the borders between one type of monster and another should be, unlike Dragon Quest and its "cross and you die" bridges. It doesn't help that the entire planet is a Pangaea, and that you could theoretically walk all the way to Palamecia without a boat or even a canoe.
  • Final Fantasy III has the Undersea Cave; a completely optional place which gives a lot of experience for comparatively little effort. Just one runthrough to get all the treasure inside will level your party up by at least 3-5 levels.
    • There's also Lake Dohr and Bahamut's Lair, at least in the DS remake. Even better than the Undersea Cave, though you can't reach them until you get the third airship, the Invincible. Unfortunately, Lake Dohr can't be accessed after you defeat Leviathan, however Bahamut's Lair remains open as long as you need it. You're going to need it.
  • Grinding on Mount Ordeals with a solo Paladin Cecil in Final Fantasy IV makes most of the next few dungeons (Magnetic Cave, Tower of Zot, Sealed Cave) far more bearable, thanks to the levels of your permanent companions being tied to Cecil's at that point in the game.
  • In Final Fantasy V, we have the castle with the sealed legendary weapons in world 2. When you first go there, you'll meet dragons who are much too tough for you. If you have a tamer in the party, however, those monsters can be controlled with the "Control" ability, and made to kill themselves for massive XP.
    • There's also the basement of Bal Castle, and only one kind of enemy: Objet d'Art. They come in groups of two and five, and are vulnerable to Level 5 Death. Groups of two give you 4 ABP, while groups of five give you 8. This makes it the ideal grinding spot for Jobs for a good portion of the game. AND the castle has its own Inn and save point.
      • It is also possible to kill these monsters instantly (one at a time) by using the 'soft' item on them. Soft is purchasable in the castle above, and costs less than the gold received for killing the monsters.
  • Final Fantasy VI has a few:
    • Triangle Island (Intangir Isle), found in the World of Balance, where you can quickly learn spells from fighting the two foes on the island, most notably the Intangir. The Intangir begins battle in the "Clear" state. Thanks to a Good Bad Bug in the original version, "Clear" status makes instant death spells hit with 100% accuracy. So you enter battle, use Rhodox rage, Intangir dies, and you get 10 AP, which means you need a maximum of 10 of these guys to gain even the hardest-to-gain spells.
    • Dinosaur Forest, in the northern part of the World of Ruin, which contains the strongest enemies in the game. They give great experience (and the possibility to obtain a Game Breaker relic), provided you're able to survive multiple Meteor spells.
      • And if you send one of your characters there alone with an Experience Egg, you can get over 17,000 XP (effectively gaining one level per enemy). However, this is only possible if you've got either the Offering or Gem Box relic (which allow you to attack/cast spells multiple times, respectively) equipped.
    • There's also the desert near Maranda in the World of Ruin, which is inhabited by Cactuars. Cactuars give you no EXP, but 10 AP, and are easy to kill with defense-piercing attacks. The other enemy in the region is somewhat tough for lower levels, but it's vulnerable to Doom/Death, and it gives good EXP and 5 AP. Plus, put lightning-absorbing armor on everyone and you're invincible against its major attack. It's an excellent place to learn spells in the World of Ruin, and incidentally make a lot of money while doing it.
    • The Veldt is a World of Balance POPL. It doesn't raise levels, but you probably don't want to grind too much before you get Espers that raise your stats at level-ups. You want magic points to learn spells. And you get magic points and gil in spades.
    • There is a section in an early part of the game where the party is on a raft which can move through a repeating loop of river without player interaction, and Banon, a Guest Star Party Member, has a no-MP heal command. The upshot of this was that rubber-banding down the controller on one button and leaving the SNES on overnight would let you come back to find your characters around level 60 with only a few hours of real playtime elapsed. This is useless outside of minimal step runs as only HP and MP raise on level up without Espers (acquired much later) equipped.
  • Final Fantasy VII has Junon Cannon Alarm. After the trip through the sea, you can return to Junon and go to the passageway under the lift (which Rufus rode earlier). There are bunch of Shinra Troops practising military parade and a red switch on the wall. Press the switch and you can fight enemies that'll get you level 60 or more.
    • There's also Gongaga Reactor where the enemy Heavy Tank dwells (an anthromorphic robot triceratops with treadmills for its legs, whose primary attack is a wheelie) which you can morph for Power Source item which raises your strength. Grinding there will eventually leave you with a party with max strength on disc 1.
      • Once you get the morph materia from the Temple of the Ancients, go back to several areas you've been to before. You can morph several known enemies into different kinds of Source, which will permanently increase a party member's stat by 1, and is normally a quite rare item (you get a smattering of "Sources" through the entire game). People normally don't get many sources since they are unaware that simply morphing an enemy (like the Heavy Tank, above) will get them a decent amount of a certain source, if you know where to look. Feel free to max out your stats, now.
    • And of course, there's also the Sunken Gelnika.
    • Don't forget the Swamp Room in the Northern Crater as this is the only location to fight Movers which appear in groups of three and grant 800 AP each! Magic Pots can also be found here to convert your extra elixirs into massive experience and ability points. As an added bonus Master Tonberry (as well as another pair of enemies) spawns here to steal elixirs from if you are too legit to duplicate with the W-item trick.
    • In a somewhat less extreme example, various innocuous enemies in the early game (from Midgar to the Mythril Mines) carry weapons that can't be bought until much later in the game, one for each character, which can be stolen at a low rate. Steal Aeris's Striking Staff from a chariot-riding enemy in the Train Graveyard, for instance, and give it to her, and she'll do more physical damage than Cloud will until his equipment catches up.
    • The northwestern room of the Mythril Mines are often used to level up limit breaks, which require a character to kill a certain number of enemies. This room is usefull becace the enemies always appear in groups of 4 or 5, and right after the opportunity to acquire the useful Matra Magic skill, which can defeat this whole group in one casting.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has the Island Closest To Heaven and the Island Closest To Hell: two islands filled with level 100 monsters that have great spells to steal, plus many draw points for powerful spells like Ultima and Full-Life. If you have a plan in mind, here is where you can build your characters up to take on Omega; if you don't, here is where you can squander the Low Level Advantage the game gives you and ratchet up the difficulty level for the rest of the game.
    • Cactuar Island and the desert near it have primarily Cactaur encounters which give off 20 AP (Ability Points) each, so abilities can be learned quickly. As a bonus, they also give you very little EXP, letting you preserve your Low Level Advantage.
    • Here's a fun game to play on the Islands Closest to Heaven and Hell: Have Quistis in critical condition and use Degenerator over and over again, since the monsters only attack you one at a time, and very few non-boss enemies are immune to it, none of which are present on either island.
  • Final Fantasy IX has Popos Heights, an area accessible only by a vine ladder in a dungeon, or by airship. The dungeon is very early in the game, so you'd be fighting level 60 monsters at level 20 or so, each of which give around 8800 EXP per battle. Combine with a character who has an instant death spell that always hits on that monster, and awa-ay we go!
  • Final Fantasy X's Omega Ruins. One or two battles there will yield enough AP to let your characters move several spaces on the Sphere Grid. Perfect for endgame Stat Grinding.
    • A dozen or so battles in the Omega Ruins will make the notoriously difficult final boss a cake-walk. A few dozen more and the ease with which you demolish him could be considered cruel and unusual.
    • There's also the Monster Arena, where repeatedly fighting certain monsters allows you to both optimize and retraverse the Sphere Grid to make your characters strong enough to stand a chance against the Bonus Bosses.
    • The Highbridge are before the battle against Seymour Natus is worth a mention. The enemies here award you large sums of AP, more than you get in Mt. Gagazet. Kimahri isn't available because he fending Seymour off before the party decide to turn back and all fight together.
  • Final Fantasy XII has one that's available almost at the beginning of the game. Because of the rather strange Beef Gate random encounters on the overworld map, it's possible to come across enemies dozens of levels beyond your current level, since enemies in this game do not scale to the party's levels. Near the Westersand is a respawning creature called a Dustia, which just happens to be undead. And because in this game Revive Kills Zombie, all Vaan needs to do is show up with an inventory full of Phoenix Downs and use them when Dustia spawns. As long as the player leaves the map before the XP count shows up on screen, the Dustia will continue to respawn while the XP and gold awards will still register. Over about three hours, you'll be around level 40 before the game's tutorial is technically over, and by selling the rare drops Dustia generates, you'll have more money than you know what to do with. What's more, because of the game's Leaked Experience system, every party member that joins from then on, which is every other party member, will have a similar level to Vaan's vastly inflated total.
    • An even better option, with no player input needed, is the famous Negalmuur method. The Negalmuur is a strong, difficult to find enemy, and one of the few creatures in the game to constantly spawn its own minions (the others are bosses or non-respawning enemies). With clever use of the gambit system, which allows for automatic party members actions, the party can be configured to keep themselves healed, target Negalmuur's minions, and leave Negalmuur himself alone. Leave the game on overnight, and by morning, all three party members will be at level 99, with full LPs, and an inventory full of valuable loot.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has a few: The behemoth/megistotherian battle near Mah'habara, using Vanille's summon and Limit Break on adamantoises, and grinding cactuars in Titan's trials. For pure CP, the group of 6 Cryohedrons in Mah'habara is pretty good, as they're easy to kill (especially with Firaga) give over 7,000 CP per fight (over 14,000 with the Growth Egg), and is pretty easy to get them to respawn.
    • Continuously saving and loading on the last part of the Tesseracts (located in Orphan's Cradle) in the last area (before the Tiamat Eliminator fight) can net about 70,000 CP every time, plus some valuable Vendor Thrash.
    • Perhaps the best grinding spot for Vendor Trash is the group of 4 Sacrifices in the first area of the last chapter, as both of their drops can be sold for a nice profit. It also doesn't take long to walk away and come back to make them respawn. Unfortunately, once you reach the final boss, the only way to respawn the Sacrifices then is to save and reload after every fight.
  • Because non-story enemies level with you in Final Fantasy Tactics and the way experience works in this game (the amount of experience you gain is based on your target's level relative to yours), the very first random encounter area can easily become this, as ability-wise it's got the easiest enemies in the game. Once you've leveled your jobs up enough you can whip out some class/ability combinations that allow you to level almost indefinitely with minimal effort. As such, grinding for a few hours on the Mandalia Plains effectively makes the rest of the game trivial at best.
  • Dragon Quest I: The Rimuldar Islands, particularly the south island, the Grave of Garin, the area around the town of Cantlin, and the lower levels of the Dragonlord's castle(although the enemies here are the rather tough Elite Mooks).
    • On the western most continent, at the very southern tip of the western side (due south of Hawkness, the ghost town where Loto/Erdrick's Armor is found) is a strip of hilly land that has a high rate of metal slime encounters, mixed in with other high exp monsters. But since you cross two bridges to get there, it can be dangerous. In the original Dragon Warrior/Quest, Random Encounters became exponentially more difficult with each bridge crossed.
    • There's also a strip at the edge of Rimuldar where you can encounter the enemy set from the Cantlin area.
    • DQ1 is full of these. Besides the famous coast of Rimuldar, there is the "Scorpion's Nest", a row of hills southwest of Tantegel with enemies from the Mountain Cave region, and a strip of land northeast of Hauksness with enemies from the Dragonlord's island. DQ1 even has reverse PoPs - areas with much weaker monsters than you should be fighting (the mouth of the Mountain Cave, a strip northwest of Hauksness, the entrance to the Dragonlord's island, and a huge area of hills southeast of Cantlin).
  • In Dragon Quest III, east of Kanave/Kazave, there is a small section where you can fight high experience enemies normally found across the river near the Dragon Queen's castle.
  • Dragon Quest VI has one applicable to improving jobs—while most areas have a Cap that, should your levels pass it, make it so you cannot improve your jobs in the areas in question, the Spiegelspire does not. As such, you can always return there and wail on mid-game enemies when your power well exceeds what you need to plow through them and improve jobs at your leisure, and the Zoom spell allows the party to travel there anytime when outdoors in the Dream World. Particularly useful as mastering jobs gives stat bonuses.
  • Dragon Quest VII has the Slime Forest. A forest area north of Krage. While there you fight nothing but slimes of all kinds, including Metal Slimes, Metal King Slimes, Metal Babbles, and Gold Slimes. Best place in the game for money and experienced. Even better is the fact every fight, even those against normal slimes give you Job Points no matter your level. No better place to max out everything you want in the game.
  • The Slime Plateau in Dragon Quest VIII - while not as filled with Metal Slimes as the aforementioned Metal Menagerie (but with no time limit), it has three different varieties that are all common encounters. You're pretty much guaranteed to take down a few sooner or later.
    • Another area, the Dragon Graveyard, has no purpose aside from a mid-game sidequest set inside. However, several battles will reveal that the elusive and highly prized Metal King Slime resides there. It gets better. Another indigenous monster, the Beelzebuzz, has the ability to cast the spell "Kerplunk", which revives all defeated allies at the cost of the user's life. Beelzebuzzes often appear in droves. So the formula becomes: find a battle with an MKS and several Beelzebuzzes, hope the MKS sticks around long enough to slay it once, charge up your attacks and wait for a Kerplunk spell, repeat until all Beelzebuzzes have cast it once. You can win over 120,000 EXP in the most rewarding (and lucky) encounters, along with several shots at the ultra-rare items MKS carry.
  • Dragon Quest IX has its own Slime Plateau near the starting town, with Metal Slimes, Metal Medleys, and Liquid Metal Slimes being fairly common encounters. The catch is that the player doesn't get the ability to fly up there until after the main story is completed, though with the large amount of post-game content this still ends up being quite useful. (Before beating the game, however, players commonly walk up and down a set of stairs in the Bowhole until a Liquid Metal Slime appears and keep defeating those; they're less common than on the plateau, but it's more or less the best way to grind closer to the end of the main story.)
  • The Metal Menagerie in Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. As you can guess by the Meaningful Name, it's populated solely by Metal Slimes. As a way to limit how much this can be abused, though, it can only be visited after performing a task, and then for only 150 seconds at a time.
  • Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 has a few—a part of the second to last dungeon has a guaranteed Liquid Metal Slime (the in between monster between Metal Slimes and Metal King slimes) and randomly spawns others nearby. Still better is the random Dark World Bonus Dungeon—each room has a random family of monsters that only appear, which changes upon entering and leaving. However, going into Tag mode and immediately exiting it causes the monsters to shuffle but not the family—meaning in a Slime room you can keep shuffling until you find Metal Kaizer Slimes—the next step up from Metal Kings. In addition, the Metal Menagerie makes a comeback (and much earlier in the game, too), and there is a bonus dungeon version of it—finishing a simple find the exit bonus game in the Dark World (trivial if you have a map) sends you to the Light World, a copy of the tutorial zone filled to the brim with Metal Kings that you can stay in for 30 minutes.
  • If it has a name with Lord in it, Dragon Quest Monsters 2 has it. ???-type monsters that you can't catch, but you can kill for experience.On the subject of twinking, if you have a friend and you breed monsters together a lot, you can breed two Goopi for a MudDoll each, breed two MudDoll for a Golem each, and breed two Golem for a StoneMan each. Similarly, you can breed two Metaly for a Metabble, breed two Metabble for a MetalKing, two MetalKing for a GoldSlime, and two GoldSlime for a GranSlime. And two DragonKid for a Dragon and two Dragons for a GreatDrak. Gross, yes, but Incest Is Relative.
  • You're pretty much actively encouraged to use each My Sanctuary in EarthBound once you beat its boss in this fashion - all the enemies visible on the map run away from you, regardless of their comparative strength to yours, making it very easy to get surprise attacks (and thus easier victories) on them all.
  • Mount Itoi in MOTHER 1—once you've found Eve, who can effortlessly wipe out all the ridiculously powerful monsters in the area.
    • What? No mention of the two eastmost reachable spaces of land around the south bridge that police officers are blocking? Even with Pippi, Ninten gets good EXP from the Mad Cars and whatnot, and Pippi manages to work out as a Crutch Character around there too.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, as soon as you get down from Hoohoo Mountain, you're supposed to go to Beanbean Castle Town and advance the plot from there, but nothing is stopping you from venturing north to fight Tanoombas or far east to fight Bomb-ombs. Due to the game's mechanics, a player who knows the attack patterns of these monsters can reap some massive rewards from them without being hit in return. A Tanoomba's attacks are ridiculously easy to dodge/counter, and they yield thirty experience points and the occasional Green Pepper (for comparison, a Dry Bones from Hoohoo Mountain gives six XP); Bomb-ombs are tougher to deal with, but they yield almost fifty XP apiece and sometimes drop Nuts.
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 has a cave on Korriban that can instantly spawn enemies that are easily defeated for pretty good EXP.
    • And in a game with Limited Experience where you're likely to stop 15 levels short of the cap by the endgame (even if you finish all the side quests), having a source of easy, unlimited XP falls hard on the Good side of Good Bad Bugs.
  • In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Platinum, there are several areas in which you'll be joined by an AI-controlled partner. While this partner is with you, you'll have all your health and power points restored after every battle, encouraging you to rack up tons of experience.
    • After playing for long enough, players who want to pump up their Pokémon before competing with other players tend to use the Pokémon League as a Peninsula of Power Leveling. In the first generation, at one point it also becomes the only possible way to get any money, though the third generation's remakes of those games allow rematches with run-of-the-mill Pokémon Trainers. (Note that although the fifth generation doesn't allow rematches, it has several Trainers appear daily in the stadiums in Nimbasa City, and Cheren can be battled daily after beating the Elite Four. Bianca can also be rematched similarly to Cheren on weekends.)
    • Rematches with Gym Leaders (such as the Battlegrounds in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) tend to yield lots of Exp and money, even more so when a 'mon holds the Amulet Coin/Luck Incense.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, there's a specific area of the Pride Lands—Pride Rock, specifically—with an incredibly thick swarm of Heartless in it. By using area-of-effect spells like Magnet Magnega, one can gain massive amounts of experience in a short time. Removed, alas, in the Final Mix version.
    • Not only experience, the heartless there are goldmines, you'll find yourself with more munny than you know what to do with after a while of leveling.
    • Disable Donald's Cure spell. Run out someplace and get whacked by a few Mooks till you've got critically low health (but not too low). Return to that spot in the Pride Lands with the swarm of Heartless. Now equip the Experience Boost ability and the Gullwing weapon, both of which increase the amount of exp you receive when you kill enemies on low HP, and you've got this trope Up to Eleven.
    • Port Royal can be this for leveling up the Drive Forms. If you let a Gambler transform you into a die or a card while you are in Drive Form, your HP, MP and Drive gauge will be restored when you turn back. This way you can level each form up nonstop without having to worry about the Drive gauge running out.
    • After a certain point, you can gain a truckload of XP just by going to the bottom of the Organization XIII tower, carving your way through them, then hopping into your ship and reappearing at the bottom again. Also works for grinding Final Form, since that only powers up when you kill Nobodies and guess what's all over the tower?
  • The Bequerel Mine copper gathering mission in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time - assuming the near-end boss Demetrio has been defeated - allows a small window of time to explore the dragon-infested Bequerel Mountain, with several save points and a free bed-for-healing, allowing the player to train indefinitely. The player, who is expected to be somewhere near lv 19 by this point can reach levels of 35 and higher with enough grinding.
  • In Phantasy Star IV, relatively early on, you have the opportunity to fight monsters called sand worms (there's a Sidequest where you can fight a severely de-powered one, but here we're talking about an infinite number of the real deal). Sand worms have a lot of HP, and their attacks will be lethal to one or all of your party members at low levels. However, if you can take one down, it gives a fairly massive amount of experience. Once your characters can survive at least one hit, it's one of the best monsters to farm until you can access the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
    • Also in Phantasy Star IV, after the battle with Zio, two of your party members leave the group. Since EXP rewards are split between characters, it means that any battles fought from the time Gryz and Demi leave to the point where Wren and Raja join are giving each character 33% of the total XP instead of 20%. Going back into Nurvus and hunting the Tarantellas (which Rune can wipe out in a single spell) are a great way to grind, since a full screen is worth well over 1000 EXP. If you're not shy about letting Rika and Chaz bite it, Rune can hoard that EXP for himself, and walk into the second half of the game with most of his Skill list filled out (and thus several of the game's best Combination Attacks).
    • Related to Rune's amazing potential, the first time he's acquired for a short span while leading the party to Tonoe. During this time, if you were to kill off the rest of the party except Chaz, you have a very easy time with Rune's Multi-hit spells to gain Chaz a great deal of levels very quickly.
  • Breath of Fire II has Monster Island far to the north, home to a pair of cameo appearances from the first Breath of Fire and Skull Island-issue giant versions of the game's cannon fodder monsters; needless to say, this is a great place to level grind before facing the final dungeon. Another common level grinding location is Nightrider Island to the south, named for a rare enemy encountered on the island (although this fan name may be affected by the upcoming fan retranslation project, which restores "N. Rider" to the original name of "Ragnarider").
    • Made even better that Monster Island is available as soon as you obtain the Grandpa Whale.
    • In the original Breath of Fire I, said island was to the north and was notable, on the map, for having a tower on it that was part of the endgame dungeon run prior to Obelisk. It had both Ryu's most powerful weapon, and the massive Gold Slimes which you could grind until you were absurdly leveled.
      • The Gold Slimes apparently underwent evolution between the first and second games, as they exist on Monster Island in 2, but shrunk down to the size of the E. Sludges you encounter in the Home Town area, and are now called K. Sludges. It's almost a MUST to have G.Drgn/Kaiser to drop on these suckers, because they come 3 in a group, 1000 HP per Sludge, hit hard, don't take much damage otherwise, AND can effectively cast Death.
    • Breath of Fire III has Mt. Zublo. The Lavamen there can be quickly upgraded to Boss in Mook Clothing status by repeatedly using fire attacks. A properly-prepared party can survive the battle, and earn an outrageous experience reward.
  • In Grandia, there's easy way to get your Water spell levels to 99; In Mt. Typhoon, run around on the poisonous puddles to lose your HP and then heal yourself afterwards to gain easy experience.
  • In Beyond the Beyond, about halfway through the game, you gain access to Leave Village. In the mountains to the west you can fight enemies you normally would fight near the end of the game.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne following the highway east of Ginza will lead to Shibaura, where enemies there are roughly level 28-33 when normal foes are in the teens. What makes it good for power leveling instead of getting youself killed is that the two enemies of any threat are both weak to Standard Status Effects that prevent all actions by them. These encounters net over 10 times the experience from a normal fight in the area. Given that the next boss is Matador you may need it.
    • In the first game, there is a shrine in the post-nuke world, where the enemies have levels in the 40s. All of these enemies are vulnerable to Standard Status Effects, most notably Marin-Karin, which causes them to attack themselves and their allies. As the experience gain for battles increases based on the level difference between your party and the enemy's, and you can first go to the shrine at about level 20, you can easily get multiple levels per battle.
  • Digital Devil Saga features the Titania Tunnels, located in the Manipura Waterways. There you'll encounter nothing but groups of Titanias, whose attacks can easily be reflected to inflict them with fear, making them easy to devour. Not only does this get you a ton of Atma Points quickly, but Titanias also drop extremely valuable Vendor Trash so you can keep buying more abilities. Making this slightly risky is Arahabaki, a Boss in Mook Clothing that makes the real bosses look like pansies. They have a chance of showing up as reinforcements in virtually any battle, sometimes in groups of two. But if you have Cocytus, you can take them out fairly easily.
  • Chrono Trigger:
    • You can visit 65,000,000 BC as soon as you access the End of Time, several dungeons before you actually need to go there. In 65,000,000 BC lies the Dactyl's Nest, an area you're not supposed to visit until the second time you come to 65,000,000 BC. The enemies there give three times the typical amount of experience that battles in the next storyline dungeon do, at only a mild increase in difficulty.
    • There's also the Nu in the Hunting Range. It can't kill you, but you can kill it for points that you need to learn your characters' powerful techniques.
    • While taken aboard the Blackbird you can encounter mooks which, despite posing a minimal threat, still give more experience than their challenging recolors from the Ocean Palace.
    • There's a respawning Rubble on an island near the Mountain of Woe. Rubble gives 1000 experience points and 100 tech points making grinding a breeze.
    • On the Black Omen there is a hall which puts you against three enemies every time you walk through it, two of which will give you massive amounts of skills points but distract you from the middle enemy which has a very strong attack and they leave if you beat it first. However, once you're strong enough to beat them all before they can attack the place becomes and easy area to gain all abilities.
    • Finally, Mother Brain's fortress starts with a conveyor belt which has five sets of enemies, which reward a total combined XP of roughly 10,000, far greater than any other location in the entire game. It also gives a decent amount of tech points. A garbage chute at the end of the belt allows you to travel back to the beginning and reset the enemies, making it the perfect location to grind up to level 99 once you reach the endgame.
      • Even better, by this point you should have at least one Golden Stud (even more if you've made a side-trip to the Black Omen and Charmed some more). This nifty accessory reduces MP costs by a whopping 75%. At this point, "grinding" more or less devolves into "Have <<Insert Character Here>> spam <<Insert All-Enemy Tech Here>> over and over again, stopping at an Enertron when your MP gets low." To be fair, though, the Golden Stud is such a Game Breaker in and of itself that with it, it's arguable that you'd even need to grind anyway.
  • Persona 3 has this on its second playthrough, in the Monad Block. This new area of Tartarus is accessible from the lobby, and has super-powerful monsters. Ordinarily this would be a problem, but (if you put enough time into the first playthrough), your New Game+-powered protagonist can probably kill these monsters by himself, adding 10 to 20 levels at a time to your party members - which allows you to rapidly out level even this grindy game, and speed on through to the interesting parts by only fighting bosses (and intimidating everything else to run away from your party).
    • The Monad Block is accessible in the first playthrough as well... but to reach it, you must defeat the Reaper. It's worth it simply to see how long the final boss lasts with an all-Level 99 party (answer: about fifteen minutes).
  • In Wild ARMs Alter Code F (the remake of the original), the area around Adelhyde Castle is a goldmine of both money and experience, if you know how to farm the monsters correctly.
  • Skies of Arcadia has a fairly large overworld area in the far upper-left corner of the map that has no affiliation with any of the other areas. This largely empty area has been dubbed "Looper Sea" by fans, due to the fact that every enemy encounter in this area contains nothing but experience filled Looper enemies and their palette swaps. This makes it a prime location for Power Leveling, since Loopers are typically rare and have a tendency to run away as soon as battles begin.
    • The pacing of Skies of Arcadia can cause you to accidentally power level if you take a long time to find the discoveries. Plus, there's an area in the arctic sections while flying on a ship that yield encounters with multiple purple loopers. (The strongest looper, which nets the best exp.) And if you're smart, you'll equip a "Black Map", which makes it impossible (Or at least very hard) to run away while attracting more random battles!
  • In Lufia and The Fortress of Doom, as soon as you get the ability to control a ship, all you need to do is go to the Island where you find the huge frogs and those turtles. Not only do these enemies give absurd experience, but there is a small town (Frederia) that sells equipment far beyond what you are normally supposed to have. Hint: Use Instant-Death items to kill the frogs, since they * will* smear you when you first arrive.
    • Once you get a ship in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, you can find a small island that seems to serve no purpose, but has an enemy population solely made up of all four varieties of the game's Metal Slime, Cubes. While you can't reach it until late in the game, it's perfect for buffing your characters for the last dungeons.
  • Thanks to a Good Bad Bug, the gate between Muse and Matilda in Suikoden II is pushable: as long as you don't talk to the guards around the normally closed gate, you can just walk straight through it. On the other side is a zone which you aren't supposed to reach until noticably later in the game, with appropriately leveled monsters and items in the shops. There's also a pair of recruitable party members who join you temporarily to complete a side-quest (and join permenantly at the end of the quest). All you have to do is make a mad dash from the gate to the town where these two are, and you can grind all your low-leveled members up in a matter of a few fights and use the money to buy them good armor.
  • Lost Odyssey has Numara Atoll, which will give you one of two random encounters - Silver Kelolon, or Hell Shaker. The latter gives huge EXP (guaranteed level up upon defeating until around 47 or so), but is nearly impossible to beat when you are first able to reach the island, while the former is a spineless wimp whose first action is almost always to run away. Swat the Silver Kelolon with Gamble and huge EXP and AP gains are yours. Numara Atoll is the grinding spot of choice through nearly three discs' worth of story progression.
    • Actually you can defeat the Hell Shakers quite easily at a low level if you use the following technique. Have everyone learn Gamble (Mack knows it naturally after a certain event, Jansen and Cooke can equip Spirit magic items, and the Immortals of course can learn it from Mack). Enter battle with a Hell Shaker, and have one character physically attack, and the rest use Gamble. For the majority of the time, the Hell Shaker's first move will be to use an All-Water spell, because by physically attacking, the attack will be pushed back one turn. Spam Gamble, and hopefully you'll take it out before the spell can hit.
    • By disc 4 though, there is the Temple of Enlightenment, which is basically the toughest dungeon in the game. Although all of the enemies in there give off loads of experience, Hellish Kelolons will instantly level you up until you hit level 97, making pretty much every enemy in the game a breeze.
  • Golden Sun: The Lost Age has the rear chamber of the Islet Cave, a short corridor that leads to a Bonus Boss (probably the easiest of the game's four Bonus Bosses, but still plenty challenging). Said corridor is home to the Wonder Bird, the most powerful member of the Phoenix family of monsters, which gives enormous EXP gains and seems to appear more frequently than its lesser relatives do at their designated locations. As an extra motivation, one of the other enemies in this area Randomly Drops the Tisiphone Edge, the strongest Light Blade and therefore Jenna's and Ivan's best weapon, and another drops the best circlet, the Berserker Band. Of course, you have to be about a third of the way through the final dungeon before you can access this area, so you're really only power-leveling to take on the Final Boss and the last Bonus Boss or two or for battling your friends, but it's still a fairly quick way to level up if your party is much below level 50.
    • Its sequel has perhaps an even more bizarre one, right before the Final Boss. After viewing the cutscene in which Arcanus/Alex appears to double-cross Blados and Chalis, the area surrounding the Apollo Lens becomes filled with Tuaparang warriors, appearing in groups of 2 or 3. They're notably easier than the shadow enemies you faced on the way up to Apollo Sanctum, yet give out a massive 13720 experience points apiece and a Water of Life. Yeah, that's right, easy levels and easy item farming at once. Sweet deal, huh?
      • Much earlier in the same game, there's an example that works the same way as the Trope Namer. Rat Warriors are normally found outside the city of Tonfon, but occasionally the random encounter system makes them appear much earlier in the game in a forest southeast of Kaocho, which is beneath a cliff west of where Tonfon is on the world map. By the time Tonfon is reached, these enemies aren't anything special (Especially since by that point the shadow creatures from the Grave Eclipse give better experience), but earlier in the game 900 experience points apiece is enough to power-level in few battles as long as the player characters' HP is kept high enough for them to survive.
    • Don't forget the Ooze enemies, which can divide. Just defend, let them multiply, kill all but one, rinse and repeat.
  • In Super Mario RPG, Star Hill is the best place to grind.
    • If you're willing to spam Mallow's Thunderbolt, the Dry Bones between the two sets of clues for the Sunken Ship puzzle offers an even better grinding opportunity: Put the Zoom Shoes and Work Pants on, and then every encounter with this respawning enemy will consist of Mallow blowing the enemies away with a Thunderbolt, 27 Exp. (54 Exp. for the character wearing Exp. Booster) for 2 FP; the money you get here will more than allow you to stock up on Maple Syrups at the nearby Shaman store to replenish the FP, and with concerted grinding, you can make it all the way to level 30 in about 300 encounters. Of course, you'll probably do better stopping after a little under 100 encounters, making best use of the Lucky Jewel and Exp. Booster at the Culex fight in Monstro Town (to get 288 Exp. for 4 characters and 576 Exp. for the Boosted one), and finally getting the rest of your experience at the Machine-Made Yaridovich (60 Exp., 120 Exp. Boosted) just before the factory gates.
  • The area (looks like a valley) between Redding and San Francisco in Fallout 2. The hardest enemies in the game would show up- floaters, aliens, centaurs, fire geckos, but, if you could handle them (if you had enough characters with combat armor/power armor and good guns), you could level after at most 4-5 encounters, even at extremely high levels.
  • In Paper Mario, the Flower Fields contain Amazy Dayzees, the enemy with by far the biggest EXP yield. It's the only enemy that can allow Mario to level up twice in one battle (though with Merluvlee's help). It might not sound like much, but in this game, Mario tops off at Level 27, so it's pretty significant. Amazy Dayzees continue to appear in subsequent Paper Mario games and continue the tradition of ridiculously high EXP yield, although they are much more difficult to encounter and defeat.
  • In Treasure of the Rudra, at the beginning of Surlent's scenario, you have access to Sakkara Desert, which has powerful monsters which give about 50 times as much EXP and money as the surrounding monsters, and also randomly drop a weapon which is much stronger than anything you could get for a while.
  • Rune Factory 3 has two:
    • An island within the Privera Forrest dungeon, accessible once you have the Lily Pad seed or the Water Shoes. It contains a random Bonus Boss every time you visit (and will respawn a new one if you hang around without destroying the monster portal) Tough, but will give you loads of XP and valuable boss drops.
    • The Bonus Dungeon in your basement: Accessible once you defeat the first boss. Will be FAR above your level at first (You'll probably be around level 5-7. The first level starts at 30) , but each monster will give that much more XP. Plus each dungeon has at least one room with one or two rare chests,[1] containing random weapons, accessories, magic spells, and/or skill seals. If you're lucky, you'll come away with gear you wouldn't be able to nab for months, in-game. Works even better if you're trying to level up a low-level NPC (In a high-enough level dungeon, they'll level up with each defeated enemy).
  • Xenoblade Chronicles gives us Bionis' Leg. Besides the regular mooks, the game lets Elite Mooks over 50 levels higher than the regular ones roam most areas. Generally you're just supposed to avoid them until you're much, MUCH later on the game, but on Bionis' Leg is possible to take down a few of these by having Melia put the Elite Mook to sleep with Hypnotize, then pushing it off a cliff with Spear Break. The end result: Loads of experience and lategame equipment.
  • Summon Night: Swordcraft Story has floors 24-28 of the main dungeon. While you can access them on day 7, you aren't required to go till day 10 (7, 8 and 9 take place in separate dungeons), and the enemies, which aren't that much tougher than before, give enough experience to easily gain ~15 levels before you stop gaining the bonus for being lower level than the enemies, the otherwise annoyingly rare but necessary Mystic Ore is relatively common and the boxes there give great materials for crafting.
  • There's a notorious one in Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal, in which you reach the ramparts of a city that's being attacked by giants. By equipping infinite-ammunition bows, setting those with them to attack automatically, and telling anyone without one not to attack, you can reach the level cap without even being at your computer.
  • Wizardry games due to their encounter system form tiered "patrol for desirable Random Encounters" areas, and before 8-th an encounter chance is triggered by as much as turning on one square, so you simply press "turn" and wait for animation.
    • Wizardry 7 has 5 distinct areas within New Town alone, which you are likely to find and use on low levels: beyond entrance - Gorn, Rattkin (fragile, consistent small drops, occasional poison darts, but it's close to the ruins with healing fountain); the slab garden between Umpani Detache and Bank - Gorn/Umpani/Rattkin (tougher, but easy to debuff, less poison, good and more varied drops); Inn/T'Rang house area - T'Rang/Rattkin/Gorn (consistent small drops, rare somewhat cool drop); south-western corner - Danes (Squishy Wizards, gold and scrolls, worth it even despite Savant Guards, once you can survive a run-in with rare Dane Canon); Abbey perimeter - Munks (potions and good XP, tough, but easy to debuff, once you can survive a run-in with rare Dark Forest Munk). Conversely, usually you slip fast through areas with beasts or Savant Guards (not worth even that little trouble). Of course, if your party can take out two squads of Savant Troopers and want this much XP without drops, you can just walk into their guard post (massacred earlier), cast persistent buffs and trip the alarm - but when you're this tough, there are better maps to visit anyway.
  • Monster Girl Quest Paradox
    • The cave leading to Rostrum is good early on, as it has an encounter with four Candle Girls, who can be killed quite easily with AoE fire spells.
    • The alternate Ilias Village is surrounded by high-ranking angels who don't give EXP when defeated, but give 25 Job EXP. With certain builds, it's possible to kill them relatively quickly.
    • Once the storyline for the first chapter is cleared, the ruins of the Administrator's Tower become this. The basement has infinitely-spawning Mimics and Honey Pots, which give 15 Job EXP each.
    • The second chapter has Mimic Island, which features all three types of mimics as random encounters.

Turn-Based Strategy

  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and its sequel have two examples, both using the same monster. In the first game, one level has all Geo Effects that make everyone on the stage but one square invincible. By throwing enemies on top of each other, you can create a level 100 enemy to whittle down for great EXP gain. The same chapter is also good for building weapon levels, as you can freely have your troops attack each other without concern.
    • In the 2nd game, one chapter has enemies that level endlessly if left alone (thanks to a Geo Effect), you can then capture them once they are twice the level of your highest leveled character (leave him in your base), then repeat, doubling the level you can capture each go until you have a level 9999 character, then use it in a combo to kill other level 9999 characters, giving massive level gains to the other people in the combo.
    • For higher-level grinding in Disgaea, Cave of Ordeals 3 has a 3x3 grid of enemies that can easily be attacked by a swordsman or mage without any risk of them taking any actions.
    • The DS release has an even better place. After clearing the Demonhall Mirror, you get a stage similar to Cave of Ordeals 3. Except the enemies are higher level, higher rank, and the EXP bonus is +100% instead of +50%. You'll spend a bit of time there.
    • More fun Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories Level Grinding: The Dark World version of a late stage has a bunch of geo effects that buff your party, the most important of which is an ATK+ 1 effect; the Dark Sun also respawns enemies every couple of turns, so as long as you're not bored you can just sit there and kill your enemies ad infinitum.
    • And there are plenty of areas with Exp X 3 effects.
  • Disgaea3 has a map in Chapter 7 that is just a ordinary battle when played for the first time, but once it's beaten, it changes into a field with 9 mushroom-like enemies sitting in panels that boost their experience and mana given. And by passing four Stronger Enemies bills, they will be at Lv. 99, wich oddly makes them award as much experience as a Lv. 320 enemy. roughly a half hour there will net the player millions of HL and boost their levels to 300 range, making the rest of the story a breeze.
    • Disgaea4 did the exact same thing: one of the Chapter 9 levels feature a normal battle when played once but by playing the map again will have the same mushroom enemies sitting in exp and mana boosting grounds. Passing the Stronger Enemies bill once will have their levels increased to 99, and the same experience glitch happens.
      • As early as Chapter 5 unveils a similar map, with one key difference—Desco, when turned giant via merging with another monster, is the only one who can hit the entire enemy team at the same time. It's incredibly easy to get Desco to around level 500 without any real work, making the rest of the game trivial.
  • In Phantom Brave similar to the Disgaea 2 example above, there is an early level where one enemy is under the effect of Level+ 1 - but its current Hit Points don't increase. If you are far enough away from it, you can let it level an enormous number of times before letting any character with a decent attack stat and item kill it for huge amounts of EXP.
    • For a more certain level-up, there's an ability that allows a newly confined spirit to damage everything around him immediately (called Big Bang). It's a simple matter to fuse a spirit who has this ability to any spirit you want to power level, give Marona a slowing piece of equipment, wait for the little guy to reach lvl. 9999, throw the equipment next to him, confine the spirit, and BANG! Instant Lvl. 100 (or more, once you increase the Cap).
    • The "Failure" title. Attach it to a high-leveled Random Dungeon, and then BOOM! All enemies in that dungeon are 80% weaker, yet all items in the dungeon still give out experience according to their level. Yes, destroying items gives you XP.
  • The Tower of Valni in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is a good place to train, but the chests and dropped items are also fairly valuable. Furthermore, you can exit and reenter at any time, and the boss of the first floor doesn't move, has no ranged weapon, and gives out a full 100 experience (one level-up) for landing the killing blow to any unpromoted character, possibly even to a level 1 promoted unit. Redoing the first level over and over again is a great way to level up weak characters.
  1. ↑ Or, if you're unlucky, those rare chests will be Mimics who will proceed to eat you
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