Draco - Reply sent. I mentioned this in the mail, but the stylus makes 'typing' the messages MUCH easier. RE: Salamander fight, I'm a couple bosses past him and he was the hardest so far. It took me 4-5 tries,but I found using those damage items (specifically Antarctic Wind) helped me push through.

VM - Added your friend code. Will send a message when the system will allow me.

My Friend Code is
489711343462

I wouldn't mind an email every now and again

I'm liking the DS RPGing... tis fun (specially on the john)

Violet:

I'm pretty into the game, having just obtained the 3rd level of classes. Here's my tips so far.

Try a balanced party of the:

Warrior
Thief
Black Mage
White Mage

If you can save up/find the gold, buy 2 Staves for both of your mages immediately. Yes, BOTH of them. The White Mage can use the offensive damage staves! Especially the "Light Staff," which is actually Lightining (not Holy Powers) and the "Ice Staff." Many of the enemies you encounter are vulnerable to lighting. I can think of several dungeons where enemys are vulnerable to lighting, plus, all the enemies you encounter on the sea in your ship. Also, the Ice staff will be very important for a very difficult, and hot!, dungeon coming up.

These staves let you cast the level one Lightining and Blizzard spells for FREE as many times as you want. However, the damage levels with your character. As your mages go up in JOB level, their damage will increase. At Job Level 40, my Level 22 Black Mage was doing 1000 points of damage with his Light Staff.

Before I could afford staves, I had my Black Mage using a Bow and Arrow, which was very powerful. The Holy Arrows kicked ass against undead, and the Iron arrows were great against all regular enemies. However, i dumped arrows after I got the staves.

Your Thief can wear the same strong armor as you Warrior, which gives him better protection than a monk. Have your Thief "stealing" on every round in the early part of the game. You'll often score potions, eye drops, Hi-Potions, Arrows, and those power "items," such as Bomb Fragment, Tear of Zeus and Antartic Wind. Save these for a difficult boss you'll fight in a very hot dungeon (trying not to give spoilers here!). Also, your Thief's high agility means that he will go first in a round 99% of the the time, and can be the first character to give Potions and Hi-Potions, Cure Poison potions, ect. in a given round if your Warrior or Mages are hurting.

After you get your first set of new Classes, upgrade your Warrior to Knight (you lose the ability to carry Wrightslayer, but you get better weapons soon enough) and change your White Mage to a Scholar. Keep the Thief and Black Mages in their same classes.

I found that the Geomancer's special power was to inconsistent and unreliable for the tough battles.

I kept my White Mage (the damage she was doing with the Lighting, Fire and Ice staves were too good to pass up). However, when I went up against bosses, I changed her job to the Scholar; a great White Mage replacement at this point in the game. You don't loose the only good Level 4 White magic spell, "Libra," because the Scholar has a superior, free abilty of the same kind called "study." You can use it as many times as you want on the enemies and learn their weaknesses! You also get the benefit of the black magic spells. The Scholar's BEST attribute though is the abilty to DOUBLE the damage/effect of the Power Items (like the Bomb Fragment). These power items are KEY in the boss fights and the scholar's ability to double their damage was great.

When going through dungeons, always use the white magic spell "teleport" to exit a dungeon after you've gone through the whole thing, but right before you fight the boss. It doesn't take very long to run through the dungeon again as you're skipping all the side paths for treasure chests, and you're also probably stronger than you were when you first entered the dungeon. This way, if you die while fighting the boss, you didn't lose all that time you spent gathering treasure and leveling up.
Also, I mentioned before that I would change my White Mage to a Scholar during boss battles. Remember that when you change jobs, you need to go through a few battles before the class is "fully activated," typically, that's 4 battles. So, I would clean out a dungeon, teleport out, go to a town to rest up, save, then go back to the dungeon and switch jobs then. By the time I got back to the Boss, I would have gone through the requisite "activiation" battles for the class.

Good luck! LMK if you get stuck!

I think the disparity in damage you see is related to their Job Level. I'm dissapointed that it affects the characters so much. The game encourages you (Even requires it in some cases) to change jobs often, but then penalizes you for doing so. I hate the job system so far. Now that my Knight is Job Level 35, he's really kicking ass. But he sucked for a long time. My mages were out classing him for a long time with their staves.

Hey now, I actually love the job system, Mr. Razor!

And Draco, if my characters' job levels were uneven I'd chalk it up to that, but these are characters at the same level & same job level (with a max difference of 1) on the first jobs I picked for them once jobs became available.

Like I said, hopefully it balances out and gets more challenging too.