Manual (use google translate)
https://setsumei.cloudfree.jp/famicom/finalfantasy2/finalfantasy2.html

MP is the only thing you really need to grind as it only goes up if you end a fight with less than 50% (or maybe it was 60? same as HP); so you need to grind for it near an inn otherwise it will never go up

As for enemies hitting like a truck, just keep at it, the game is designed so that when there is a huge discrepency between enemies and you your stats go up faster; but stats don't go as fast if enemies are below your strength. So after a few fights you'll catch up.

My only recommendation is make sure everyone has a shield

>>11986979
Thanks anon, already read that exact website
>spoiler
Yeah already doing that, I've read that shields are very important. I bought mithril shields for everyone.
Okay I'll try to grind for MP

>>11986979
>>11986986
Wait, one more question: do I have to be casting for MP to go up or can I just end fights with less than 50% MP and it'll still be going up?

>>11986992
iirc you have to cast more than 50% of your MP for it to go up in a single fight hence why this particular stat kinda suck to increase

Don't forget that you can also use spell books for free spells when you find some

>>11986994
Ah that fucking sucks
>Don't forget that you can also use spell books for free spells when you find some
Free spells as in using them as items during battles?

>I can't get hit!
Then hit yourself you fool. Have your mages smack each other around and heal each other while fighting the weakest enemies you can find for about half an hour, then kill the enemies. Enjoy massive HP gains.

>>11986946
I don't mean this to sound shitty, but you are literally playing the game wrong. FF2 can be very esoteric mechanically, so I highly recommend looking into how everything works in your specific version (since all of them have shit not work right in some way or another) but understanding how some of the background shit works helps the experience quite a bit. Stuff like the MP growth system above is all over the place in the game, with some having caps on their chance to improve, some having chances to go down when others go up, etc.
The best BLIND advice I can give is to put characters into archetypes. Diversify between the 3 main characters, but give them roles to stick to. Magic for example can be absurdly possible, and even simple ailments can last for up to your spell level in turns, assuming they're not outright permanent. Buffs can make the whole party unhittable without any defensive training, but requires spells like Blink to be used consistently so they grow. If you try to make it a party of red mages, you are going to end up with shitty magic and absurdly strong punchers anyway. Likewise, if you abuse mechanics to power level anything (especially evasion,) the game becomes piss easy.

Don't play it like a final fantasy, play it like a role playing game.

>>11987189
That's the stupid way of playing the game. OP is trying to play the game as the developers intended it, and they did not intend for you to hit yourself for massive HP gains.

>>11988453
I like to compare it to Morrowind.
Pretend you're playing Morrowind with 4 characters, except instead of everything being viable, your builds need to make sense.

>>11986946
You probably won't see this documented fucking anywhere but your character order in your party in famicom era Final Fantasy games matters. You see, in FF1 instead of rows you determine who is "in the front" of your party in order of top to bottom. The guy on top will get hit 50% of the time, second guy 25% of the time, and 3rd and 4th are the "back row" and only get hit 1/8th of the time. FF2 implements the row mechanic from later games, but also didn't remove this order mechanic. To make things even worse, if you're playing the original famicom release this mechanic is bugged. On Famicom, instead of the top slot being high priority, the middle two slots are, and they have some weird bugged probability like 37.5. Thanks to this bug, if you put your tank in the 2nd slot and move your 3rd slot guy to the back, 75% of all attacks will hit your 2nd slot guy and no one will ever target your 3rd slot guy.

Nasir famously had no fucking idea what he was doing, and it shows when you play 2. There's a pretty high chance Kawazu and Sakaguchi never actually intended those two mechanics to overlap, but Nasir literally got fucking deported midway through production, so a few things might have slipped through the cracks.

Thanks for the tips guys, I copied everything to the notepad. I've just blown up the empire's ship and holy shit that dungeon was hard, I got lost 2 times and had to restart because I was low on resources so I used a map from the internet. It will only get harder, huh... Genuinely not sure if I'm even able to beat this game because the thought of me playing like a complete retard doesn't leave my brain. Also should I be leveling up Warp as my black mage? Can it OHKO enemies when it's upgraded enough? So far my Warp 3 doesn't do anything even against the weakest enemies but maybe it's one of those spells that become useful during the endgame or some shit

>>11989376
Having one OHKO (or similar like Frog) spell level'd up is very useful yeah

>>11989380
I see, thanks. You know it's just that leveling up spells is so fucking slow

>>11989376
Make sure you level up evasion. If your evasion is high enough, most enemies can barely hurt you in the second half of the game.

Also make sure to get the MP Drain spell for your mage(s). I forget the name of the spell because it's different for each translation, so look it up. With MP Drain you essentially can have infinite MP and your spellcasters can cast whatever they want with impunity.

>>11989380
OHKO's are good in all the famicom entries. Just make sure the one you're using actually works. Some are bugged.

>>11986979
>(use google translate)
Final Fantasy is one of the most popular video game franchises ever. Has no one bothered to do a proper translation of the manual?

>>11989457
People would rather play blind or rely on erronous outdated gamefaq knowledge and then claim the game is "jank"

>>11989457
Its a massive pet peeve of mine when people make a fan translation of a game but don't translate the manual. Translating the manual doesn't require any hacking work. You'd think it would be the easy part everyone does first. I guess not though.

>>11989482
Thankfully that had become standard a few years ago for Famicom game translations at least, I've seen quite a few.

That is, when we were still getting Famicom translations.

>>11987189
I was gonna say, isn't that something this game is known for?
>>11989172
Fuck developer's intent. If the base game allows it, it's fair game.

>>11989482
The most prolific FFIIj translation was made in 1998. No pdfs of the manual were available online at the time, and importing a complete boxed copy of a Famicom game wasn't as trivially done as it is today.

>>11989401
>Also make sure to get the MP Drain spell for your mage(s)
Googled it, not sure what the name is in the Neo Demiforce translation but officially it's called Osmose. Apparently you can't buy it and I have to find it later on in some dungeon
>In the NES version, Osmose (called ASPL) does not work as intended. It will restore the caster's MP even if the target does not have MP.
Thanks, Nasir