The most important thing to know and note is that: the characters job level affects the stats gained through the characters actual level.

There are two different leveling systems and they both play into each other.

Primary leveling system
The character level system which is driven by Experience Points (EXP) gain and continually alters each characters base stats

Secondary leveling system
The job level system which is driven by Action Points (AP) gain, which are accumulated when action are taken in battle and they the leveling of jobs which alter and affect character stats.
Using Guard in battle counts as an action therefore the best approach to farm AP is to set the entire party to Guard, hit A for Auto-Battle, then hit A again 4-5 turns later to: heal, debuff, or end the battle.

This means that a strategic approach should be taken when planning parties in order to maximize stat gains for the end game phase. Due to this mechanic it is fully possible to "lock" oneself out of being able to complete the game and beat the final boss, I know because I've done it to myself many times. What this means is that I was not able to complete the game or advance sections without extreme level grinding because a boss would one-hit K.O. the entire party.

Luneth starts the game at lvl 1 and figuratively, it is possible to move through the entirety of the first cave area by running away from every fight, however the turtle boss will level up Luneth at least once, meaning that the lowest possible level to start the game at is lvl 2.

Arc starts at the same level as Luneth once he's picked up in Ur

Refia also starts at the same level as Luneth once she is picked up off the airship.

Ingus starts out at +1 level above whatever level Luneth is at, I was at lvl 3 when I picked up Ingus so he was at level 4.

At this point, check the parties HP and you should notice that Ingus and Refia have the most HP in that order. Ingus should be at 61 and Refia should be at 48 (if she's at lvl 3), Arc and Luneth should have 47.

This means that Ingus and Refia come predisposed to fill the role of Tank and Damage Dealer (DD) respectively, while Arc and Luneth are predisposed for mage classes since they have the lowest HP. Other than this difference, their overall stats should all be identical and will begin to diverge after jobs have been selected and character levels advanced.

Many people confuse strategy with tactics and vice versa.

A strategy is an overall intrinsic value more closely defined as a goal or end vision made up of a set of goals in which tactical approaches are taken in order accomplish the end goal.

Therefore, the overall strategy defined through this guide is to accomplish the goal of being able to defeat the final story boss through characters whose stat gains have been maximized.

The tactics used to achieve this strategy will be to:

1. Maximize job level gains
To maximize job level gains, increase the number of turns taken in each and every battle starting from the very first one, to the last battle necessary to get the last job to lvl 99. It's going to be a lot of battles and a lot of turns.

An average of 5 turns per battle should yield an average of +1 job level per battle, however some jobs require upwards of 10+ turns per battle especially as the gap between the current level and lvl 99 closes.

For example the mage classes typically require a far greater number of turns per battle (TPB) to level up as compared to the combat classes which typically require fewer TPB.

The same thing can be said of the more advanced jobs, each wave of newly gained classes requires much more TPB to level up compared to the original starting classes.

There is an additional guide on steam whom I'd like to link later which describes a late game tactic for farming quick job levels.

2. Minimize stat level gains
Instead of farming for experience, farm for AP.

Avoid traveling into new areas with higher XP yield opponents until you've AP farmed into boredom.

The best place to farm for AP is in the initial starting area because it is the place that yields the lowest possible XP gain conversely yielding the highest possible AP gain.

Attempt to level up your characters on your terms and not the games, meaning farm a job to a satisfactory level before farming for level ups in the job, this way the stat gains such as maximum HP will be boosted and the HP gain will be more than something like +1 or +10.

In the beginning you have no option but to gather your characters and fight through the Djinn boss as a Freelancer, but it's not so bad.

Starting with Luneth, raid the chests in the starting area, run away from every single fight except for the first goblin ambush and the turtle boss, come back later when the XP gain is insignificant to fill out the bestiary.

Beat the boss, talk to the crystal, exit the cave, promptly turn back around and re-enter the cave to open all the remaining chests for the equipment. Remember to keep running away from enemies, if the only battles fought were the starting ambush and the turtle boss, then theoretically Luneth should be at lvl 2

At this point there should be two shields in the inventory that you can equip to dual wield in battle during the Guard phases which will further reduce the damage. If so inclined, having one shield equipped yields 1 whole point of damage, so its not entirely necessary.

Go pick up Arc and make sure to examine the area where he was standing when he leaves with you for what should be a Potion. Raid the remaining treasure spots and make sure to examine the ground on the other side of the pond, there is a Potion on the ground near the hut in the back of the town.

If so inclined, get Arc some shields to do the Guard for 2-3 turns then switch to weapons and end the battle.

Go pick up Refia and make sure to examine the town thoroughly. There should be a potion in the Inn behind the counter, one inside Takka's smithy next to the forge, and a Staff and Mythril Helm near the pond next to the town sanctuary. Take the hidden path going to the left.

Get Refia some shields and continue on to pick up Ingus.

Get Ingus some shields and raid the nearby treasure hordes to and continue Guarding in every battle for 2-3+ turns to ensure the jobs are being leveled. Avoid going into the monster infested tower until you're satisfied with Ingus' / the entire parties job level to minimize the XP gain.

At this point you have a party and should continue job leveling around Ur where you first started until the Freelancer job has been leveled up to a satisfactory level, even 99 (takes approximately 3.5 hours) if you feel so inclined, but it would be semi-redundant since you'd want the job to reach 99 during the Djinn fight so you could swap classes immediately after.

If you do nothing but farm the goblins around Ur until the job levels reach 99, you should level up at least once. Going into the Djinn cave, monsters yield an average of 50 XP per battle, so be careful about fighting these battles unless you want to see some small level gains as a Freelancer. The Djinn should be fightable at level 3, just Guard for a turn or two then throw the damaging ice items and cast Blizzard.

This will be relatively time consuming, but the pay-off will be well worth the reward since the Freelancer job is now either completely leveled up or almost entirely. Therefore it can be left behind almost immediately, compared to much later in the game.

Whenever you're ready, go beat the Djinn and unlock the first wave of job classes being:

Tank

Monk (Listed as Tank class due to Retaliate ability)
Job Level Speed - Moderate
High Agility / Evasion
Fast Attack Speed = Higher Dual wield damage
Moderate Willpower stats, but not great by any means
Should yield the second highest hp gain of the starting classes, if it doesn't outpace the warrior. (Normally I play with a monk/black belt, but I've been trying to diversify to learn more about the other jobs.)

Damage Dealer (DD)

Warrior
Job Level Speed - Moderate
Ok Offense / Defense
Advance battle skill increases damage dealt but also increases damage received. (Place Warrior in back line of formation and then Advance deals normal front line damage).
Gives the highest HP gain out of the starting classes
Low Magic / Willpower based stats, if not entirely weak to magic

Utility

Thief
Job Level Speed - Fast
High Agility / Evasion
Moderate damage capacity (Can wield Boomerangs after descending to the Underworld.)
Steal generates item gains and is used in place of Guard for automatic item farming during AP farming.
Can unlock doors when placed at head of party formation.
Moderate Willpower stats, but not great.
Lowest HP gain of the starting classes

Mage

White Mage
Job Level Speed - Slow
High willpower, moderate Magic damage stats
Heals / Debuffs / Buffs party
Utilize Magic Staffs / Rods to cast offensive magic
Use Attack command to speed up job level farming once continuing to generate low damage output in fights while the rest of the party guards. Conversely used thereafter to heal and debuff the party while they guard and fight battles.
Low defense, at high character levels the HP gain begins to keep pace with the Warrior and Knight jobs

Red Mage
Job Level Speed - Moderate
Moderate Willpower, Low Magic Damage
Heals / Debuffs / Buffs party - Damages / Debuffs enemies
"Upgraded Freelancer"
Wide range of equipment availability, recommended Sword and Shield for Tank role or back-line formation with a Bow for ranged support damage, switch to Rod for faster and stronger magic casting.
Moderate all around stat gains at higher job levels. The job which gains the 2nd/3rd highest hp of the starting classes, more or less ties with the white mage and monk.

Black Mage
Job Level Speed - Slow
High Magic Damage, Moderate Magic Defense
Damages / Debuffs Enemies
Wields Rods and Bows, recommended Bow for physical damage and Rod wielding for magic casting.
Low defense and second lowest hp of the starting classes.

Pick which ever party that you'd prefer, but there are some things to keep in mind.

1. The next portions of the story require the usages of Mini and then Toad. While shrunken in Mini form, only magic can be used to deal damage.

2. Magic damage in all stages of the game completely annihilates the player due to either low defense, or not enough HP to absorb the damage and recover without being one-shot or getting stuck in a constant healing cycle.

3. After descending to the Underworld, the second boss you encounter is Garuda who deals incredibly high magic damage, enough to one shot the entire party, unless you built mage classes in the Over-World. Garuda's physical damage is enough to halve the hp of a strong mage, but that's small beans compared to trying to heal 2 or more dead characters while attempting to stay healthy and defend and try to do damage.

4. There are a lot of jobs to play as, but only a finite number of character levels to be gained, which means you should be very careful of over leveling you characters with any particular job equipped, without being certain that's how you want the game to go.

For example, my previous play through has a Refia who gained 40 levels before reaching White Mage level 99 at which point I questioned my decision. This means that Refia is very resilient as a character when taking magic damage and that she is more adept at casting magic, with moderate HP gains but an overall low defensive and offensive capacity. This can be corrected by leveling her as a Tank class, preferably the Knight for the next 40 levels, but that means I'd have a level 80 Refia with only 20 more levels of stat gains to devote to the rest of the classes.

Whereas I could have been more aware of how I chose to level my characters and spent 5 levels as a high level white mage, 5 levels as a high level red mage, 5 levels as a high level black mage, 5 levels as a high level monk, and 5 levels as a high level warrior. Which is only 25 levels, and would have more than likely given me a similar if not better end build result. If I'd spent 5 levels as a Freelancer then I'd only be at level 32 (+2 for the initial starting level if only the turtle boss is killed before acquiring her). Which is 10 levels saved to spend playing as other classes, such as the high level Knight, Viking or even both.

1st Position
Monk (Set to Retaliate, but beware that this can end battles quickly) / Red Mage (Dual Shield / Sword & Shield), Set to Front line

2nd Position
Warrior (Sword & Shield) / Thief (Knife & Shield), Front line or Back Line U-pick

3rd Position
Black Mage (Switch between Bow for Attacking, Rod for Casting) / White Mage (Can cast offensive magic after appropriate Staffs are found) , Set to Back line

4th Position
White Mage / Black Mage

Any other particular order or personal preferences work, but this to me is the optimal distribution of jobs and utilization of their particular talents. Level all of these up to a high job level before leveling the characters. The reason is that I don't see any particular reason to level all 4 characters evenly across the job board, and this arrangement maximizes the distribution of job levels across the character, so that the master equipment can be gained and used in accordance with leveling the rest of the jobs across the rest of the characters.

Creating a variety in party jobs also helps gear the different characters for certain end game roles, while still allowing yourself some versatility between roles, so that the different characters can be switched around the party order.

Also if you chose not to level Freelancer to 99 before unlocking the rest of the classes, one character can remain a Freelancer and take the place in the party as the tank or the DD while also being able to cast magic and gain job levels.

So the alternate formation would look like:

Freelancer / Red Mage

Red Mage / Freelancer

Black Mage / White Mage

White Mage / Black Mage

In either case, both of these party formations are meant to capitalize on the ability to use magic (more so the second one) while the party is in miniature form, and to be able to later withstand the brunt of magic damage that is dealt by the future bosses. The first party capitalizes on a more well rounded HP and physical offensive gain, which will leave at least one character susceptible to magic damage if not two due to the three mage classes not being taken.

After writing this guide and deciding to follow my own advice to see how good it is, I wrote over my previous save on accident and have no other choice but to start over. Currently my party formation looks like:

Ingus - Warrior

Refia - Red Mage

Arc - Black Mage

Luneth - White Mage

However, if Refia continues to gain more HP than Ingus as the Red Mage, she's going to take the Tank slot and Ingus is going to be relegated to the role of DD.

I started the game with this job formation and leveled each job to 99 through the following sequence (Except the doubled down jobs, i.e. I made Refia a lvl 99 Red Mage before switching to Warrior and then switching to Knight while the Warrior job was at lvl 23, since Ingus already maximized the job when he was the Warrior), while trying to keep it all under level 25 and while still on the Floating Continent.

Luneth: Freelancer -> Ingus: Warrior -> Refia: Onion Knight -> Warrior -> Knight

Arc: Freelancer -> Refia: Red Mage -> Luneth: Red Mage

Refia: Freelancer -> Arc: Black Mage -> Arc: Red Mage

Ingus: Freelancer -> Luneth: White Mage -> Ingus: Thief

What I found moving through this evolutionary pattern, is that transitioning from the dedicated mage classes, into the Red Mage and Warrior classes, made my mages incredibly weak as melee characters. However, this result should have been entirely expected because they spent a solid 10-15 levels in the second evolutionary path, before the jobs needed to be switched to allow for more growth without wasting AP on maxed out classes.

If my going theory is correct, this should in the long term yield melee classes which are slightly more resilient to magic damage.

Overall what I learned was this:

Freelancer synergizes into any other job for obvious reasons.

Warrior synergizes into the Thief job, however, it leaves the character desperately weak against magic. (Hein, the skeleton boss was doing 650+ plus magic damage to Ingus, dealing solid one shot kills, while the rest of the party better absorbed the hits)

Black Mage synergizes into Red Mage, while the magic stock is cut and so is damage, the Red Mage appears to either retain, or earlier build Black Magic Potency over White Magic Potency (what I believe to be a hidden set of passives assigned to magic users to increase the overall potency of their magic pools). Meaning that the Black Mages aptitude for dealing magic based damage is more or less retained in the transition to Red Mage.

Red Mage to Warrior, Does Not Synergize Well. While it does and it doesn't, the attack speed, damage output and magic resistance of the Red Mage doesn't appear to actively transition over to the Warrior job. Going from Red Mage to Warrior yielded a character with exceedingly low attack speed and significantly reduced physical damage. While Refia was able to absorb some damage in the aforementioned Hein fight, a focused magic attack was still enough to effectively one shot the character as a Warrior.

White Mage to Red Mage, Does Not Synergize Well. One would think that it does, but it does not. A high level White Mage was effectively keeping the party completely healed using Cure set to target the full party, the transition to Red Mage drastically weakening the characters ability to keep the party healed. Meaning that a previous full party cast of Cure was recovering 230+ HP, the Red Mage full party Cure cast, was initially only recovering 50+ HP. After about 3-4 character levels and at Red Mage job level 35 the full party cure is just now approaching over 100+ HP.

DO NOT EQUIP THE ONION KNIGHT JOB BEFORE CHARACTER LEVEL 92. Doing this will stunt your character, more about this issue is listed below.

After beating Nepto's Temple, it should be fully possible to have unlocked all the mail necessary to trigger the Onion Knight side quest. If the mail doesn't show up while cycling characters, try advancing the story a little bit further, fight more battles, and gain more money, then keep trying. However it should be unlockable before completing Deschs' Tower.

If you do unlock it, DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT, use the job class until the very end of the game when you have reached character level 92.

This class should only be played at this point, if the player wants to farm for job levels around Ur, in which case it's incredibly important to mention that the player should not advance any character levels while using the Onion Knight job before level 92.

Otherwise your characters will stunt in their development, due to the fact that the Onion Knight job locks the player stats at a grand total of 8, meaning that the stat gains from character leveling will be minimal at best.

At level 92, the job "unlocks" and for the next 8 levels the character gains +12 stats in each category, which effectively makes them as strong as physically possible while they have the job equipped, and the level gained stats not the job based stat buffs, (when a stat is listed in green text on the status screen it is being buffed) should transition across the classes.

While the Onion Knight job may be the strongest job class after having reached character level 92, it is the weakest job class before then, which is the point of this guide. Otherwise the player can just not care, grind to 92 and equip Onion Knight then G.G.

Decide on what you want your party to look like

You're conveniently placed just outside Ur, so take the time to rinse and repeat the AP auto farming tactic of guarding for 4-5 turns, healing / debuffing and attacking to end the battle.

Farm job levels until you're bored and continue the story, cleanse the ring you retrieved from the Djinn, talk to the King, go talk to Cid then Takka, then go ride the airship and smash it into the rock. Remember to raid the back of the Mythril mines by examining the switch at the back left corner of the mine

It's more or less probably best to do all of these steps "slowly" and farm for job levels in between so that when you do level up, you're at least getting the most out of whichever jobs are equipped.

Continue the story through the town, heal Cid's wife, go to the mountain and run away from Bahamut, now you meet Desch and get Mini. Make sure to hit the hidden springs next to where you land when you return to the open map. In the springs is a Gnome that will give you another scroll of Mini, so now there should be 2 Mini scrolls in the inventory.

This is where you thank me for recommending a party based on magic users, because it allows you a larger stock pile to cast magic from, while being able to do damage while the party is miniaturized. It's a small portion but if you've been continuing the AP farming tactic of extending battles by Guarding, healing and debuffing, then finally killing the enemy it allows you to move through the game at a normal pace while maximizing the job levels gained and hopefully slowly leveling the party.

Go through Tozus and head to the Viking Cave, talk to the Chieftain, head to the Temple of of Nepto or whomever and examine the statue. Become miniature once again and provide more thanks for recommending a party based on dealing magic damage.

Beat the boss and go back to the Viking Cave to receive ownership of the Enterprise.

Take a minute to cycle through the mail and the side quest necessary to unlock the Onion Knight should be available, if not it will be shortly.

The next phase is up to you, I like to take the Enterprise over to the desert, park it, raid hidden items in the empty town, go to Castle Argus and use the thief to gain access to those items then head to the town on the edge of the world, raid those hidden items the circumnavigate the edge of the world, turning back when I need to heal until I can successfully walk all the way around the edge without having to turn back. At this point I go to the Tower that Desch is destined to maintain and beat that boss.

The Onion Knight quest should now be do-able at this point.

Go to the cave with the Dwarves and beat those levels until you cleanse the next crystal in the lava Caves.

At this point you've unlocked your next set of job options and if you took the time between all these events and unlocking the first set of job classes, should be at or very near to level 99 if you AP grinding tactic has been followed through all the random encounters. It took me about an additional 4-5 hours, but I was able to get all of my initial job levels up to 99 before taking on the Dwarven levels.

Tank

Knight
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
Moderate HP Gain
Moderate Strength and High Defense Stats
Passive Ability: Cover - Rush in to defend allies in Critical health state
Passive Ability: Healing Receptivity - Something I noticed in my most recent play-through is that my Knight was receiving a consistent and slightly better heal than the rest of the party, thus I've dubbed this trait Healing Receptivity. (I'm sure it has another name, or that it could be better.)
Can Cast Tier 1 White Magic (Cure, Poisona, Sight)
Moderate Attack Speed
Low Magic Defense, higher than the Warrior or the Thief

DD
Ranger
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Fast
Long Ranged
Barrage Command - Fire a Barrage of arrows at all enemies
High Attack Speed
Moderate Agility / Evasion
Low Physical and Magic Defense

Utility
Scholar
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
Low level Mage Class
Scan Command - Scan enemies for weaknesses without needing to cast Libra
Item Potency Passive Ability - Item Potency Doubled i.e. Potion Heals +100 Hp, Hi-Potion Heals +1000 HP, Phoenix Down revives for 2x HP
Low Magic Damage, Moderate Magic Defense
Low Defense and Offense

Mage
Geomancer
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
Non-Elemental / True Elemental Mage
Uses Terrain to cast Geomancy "magic" for damage
Moderate Magic Damage & Defense
Low Defense & Offense

Formation

1st Position Tank - Transition from Warrior/ Freelancer/Red Mage
Knight in Front Position (Dual wielding shields for defense / S&S for offense)

2nd Position - Transition from Monk, Thief, Warrior, Freelancer, Red Mage
Select Class of choice, this one is really up to the player. I'd suggest the Red Mage to prepare for the Garuda battle, but almost literally any of the options works.

3rd Position - Transition from White Mage / Black Mage
Scholar or Ranger in rear positions

4th Position - Transition from White Mage / Black Mage
Scholar, or any opposing mage class (Black Mage -> Red Mage -> White Mage)

I strongly suggest keeping at least one White Mage in the party at all times, because they are the only dedicated healing class outside of the Devout. The Red mage and Scholar and to a lesser extent the Knight can be used to heal, but they are not dedicated healers and therefore should only be used as supports.

Overall, I still recommend a party meant to shrug off magic damage that way the magic defense can build on your way to fighting Garuda and give the party a better chance at surviving the one shot damage while still being able to make a quick recovery.

A note on Synergy

Thief to Scholar is actually an unlikely, yet highly synergistic combination. The synergy coming from the Thieves ability to steal damaging items from enemies, then after the transition the Scholar can use the stored pool of items to deal double damage, effectively doubling the size of the stored pool. I find this mechanic to be the most helpful against Hein, and Garuda. By the time I completed the Floating Continent and was ready to beat Hein, I had 40 Antarctic Winds that I used to blow Hein away with.

Go investigate the ghost town after beating the Lava level and this will result in your capture and being hauled into the funky tree floating over the desert. There you meet King Argus and enter your first truly miss-able zone, so make sure to open all the treasure and defeat all the available monsters in order to fill out your bestiary and treasure completion rate, otherwise you'll have to start this whole ordeal over again.

Go to Castle Argus and get the Wheel of Time then go visit Cid to gain the airship. Promptly fly it over the edge of the continent to enter the Underworld and thus entering the next game area. Make sure to stop by the town on the Eastern edge of the continent and check your bestiary and treasure finds in the hidden room at the inn.

There are other completion guides that detail those parts of the game which I will later try to link to.

Watch out because this is the more or less mid-game/beginning of the end game phases, EXP gain begins to exponentially increase meaning that it's very easy to over-level, where you should have an incredibly difficult time getting past level 20 in the Over-World. So, just make sure to watch your level gain and be sure that your characters are developing as you want them to and that they aren't becoming over-developed.

Head to the Northeastern most island raid the chests and heal the sick girl with a potion, then head due south and park at the only spot of land available, enter the temple, talk to the crystal fragment, go to the cave, continue through it and do your adventuring thing. Afterwards you're promptly rewarded with your next set of jobs.

If you've been following through with this guide and tactically farming AP by Guarding for a minimum of 5 turns before finishing off the enemy and repeating this in each area until you're bored enough to advance the story, your jobs should all be highly leveled if you haven't already reached lvl 99 in any particular one.

However, even though you've been given more jobs, don't necessarily feel pressured to change the party orientation at this point if you don't want to. My strong recommendation is to do this after the Garuda fight. (Do change jobs after reaching job level 99 in any particular one, but make sure to change your party back to the order you want to it to be in for boss fights.)

Tank
Viking
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
High HP gain
Low Attack Speed, but high Strength
Moderate Physical Defense, Low Magic Defense
Command Ability: Provoke - Draws enemy attack focus


DD
Dark Knight
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
Moderate HP
High Attack Speed, Moderate Attack Damage, Moderate Defense
Ok Magic Defense - Slightly better than Warrior or Viking, but less than Knight and Paladin
Soul Eater Command - Deal damage to all enemies based on proportion of health sacrificed
Synergistic with healing classes

Dragoon - (The class meant to defeat Garuda, but not entirely suited due to low Magic Defense)
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
Moderate HP
Moderate Attack Speed, High Attack Damage, Moderate Defense
Low Magic Defense
Jump Command - Jump into the air and land on enemies with your spear

Utility
Bard
Job Level Speed - Ultra Fast
Moderate Stats all around, low defense
Wields Knives or Lutes
Sing Command - Unleash the inner power of the currently equipped Lute, each Lute has an individual power. Lamia Lute is used for farming AP and dealing damage to all enemies based on their current HP. Loki Lute buffs party with Protect.

Mage
Evoker
Job Level Speed - Moderate to Slow
High Magic Damage, Moderate Magic Defense
Low Physical stats
Uses Summon magic, and maybe other low level magics but I don't think so

(Disregard most of this as I think it's bad information as of my most recent play-through).

I don't recommend immediately changing the party configuration until after Garuda has been beaten.

My strategy for beating Garuda is to start the game and continue through until I encounter him with a magic based party, in order to survive his one shot lightning blasts. So ideally, I'd move through a game with a party configuration that looks like this.

1st Position
Warrior / Red Mage -> Knight

2nd Position
Freelancer / Monk / Thief -> Red Mage -> Dragoon

3rd Position
Black Mage -> Scholar -> Bard / Evoker / White Mage

4th Position
White Mage -> Red Mage

Doing this should give the party ideally enough magic defense and HP to survive Garuda's Lightning Attack and then be able to recover efficiently enough to keep doing damage while preparing for the next lightning blast.

After Garuda has been beaten I would recommend this party setting

1st Position - Maintain Current Tank Job
Viking / Knight

2nd Position Transition from Knight / or previous DD
Dark Knight

3rd Position
Pick any of the utility classes, Bard works particularly well at this point for farming AP since the party can guard while the Bard has the Lamia harp equipped and uses Sing to further automate the AP farming process.

4th Position
White Mage or Red Mage at the very least.

At this point the party should be pretty overwhelmingly strong and able to shrug off most damage, but it's incredibly unwise to not have a White Mage in the party at all times, especially since they have access to Raise at this point.

After you've unlocked the third wave of jobs you wake up and your ship is chained to a post. Take the opportunity to walk around and tough up a little outside the town then talk to the lady standing near the entrance. This triggers the cut scene and then you have to talk to the mayor who will unlock the sewers that you need to explore in order to get the Levigrass shoes you need to get into the Golden Manor. Head south through the desert, across the swamp and into the manor, raid the manor and beat Goldor.

At this point your ship is unlocked and you're "free" to explore the rest of the world. Eat some gnomish bread and head for the points of interest, mainly Duster and the town to the Northwest of Saronia. Make sure not to fly over Saronia. Explore the towns, find the hidden items, buy the equipment and spells you want then when you're ready head to Saronia.

Now you have to go find Arc's buddy in Southwest Saronia, talk to the weird dudes in orange robes and they'll direct you to the tavern where you intercept the princeling. After adding him to the party go back and talk to the dudes in orange robes for items. Raid the tower in Southeastern Saronia and prepare to fight Garuda. When you're ready head to the castle and talk to the guards at the entrance.

Hopefully this guide does it's job and helps you survive one of the more challenging boss fights in the game, and you're ready to move on, if not keep training in the dragon tower and after you pass lvl 30 you should be able to survive with enough HP to beat the boss. If it's still challenging remember to throw out the damaging items you found in the chests and maybe picked up off enemies.

After you've beaten Garuda is the time to equip the Dark Knight job to begin preparing for the areas that house dividing enemies and are Dark Knight specific opponents.

Talk to the now young kingling and then leave, raid the castles treasures and then head outside. In the building on the right there are four blonde guys that give ownership of the Nautilus the nearly sub-aquatic airship. Head to the southern most middle island and fly through the windy gates to Doga's manor, he'll join you and make you Miniaturize yourself to go through a hole in a wall where you'll progress through a level and he'll bless the airship so the Nautilus can go underwater. Also make sure to check the Mog net and transition the different characters when talking to the moogle. By this point you should have unlocked the first portion of the Legendary Smith sidequest where Princess Sara asks Ingus to fix her amulet.

At this point 3/4's of the map is opened up for the player to explore since they've gained the ability to go underwater. There is a bonus treasure area in the Southeastern corner of the map, a bonus level immediately under Saronia, and the Temple of Time is located at the Southern end of the continent that Saronia is located on.

All of these areas have high level treasure, but also yield an increasingly large amount of experience, thus make sure you're party development is going along as you'd like it to be and that you aren't over leveling characters on classes that you don't want them to level up on.

If you've been leveling a character as a mage, think about switching them to a tank class position so that they can develop better offensive stats and gain some defense. Switch the tanks to the mage roles so they can develop some magic defense.

Explore the bonus areas when you're ready to level up and equip the treasure, head to the temple of time and advance the story, there you'll play Noah's lute and wake up Uni in the cave in the mountains south of Saronia. Go pick up Uni and then head to the cave located in the middle of the mountains to the west of Saronia, follow the river, turn right then left and ta da. Take Uni into the cave where she will move the rocks blocking the path. Raid the cave and unlock the Invincible. Make sure to talk to the Mognet Moogle and cycle through the different characters, by this point you should have gotten the message from Cid that there's a monster in the basement, use Refia to get a reply from Takka then the message from Cid should appear after. If not, head to Falgabard and then try checking again.

Raid the cave in Falgabard then, either head back up to the Over-World to explore the area with the shadow in the lake and Bahumuts Lair, or head West to the Eastern Continent in the underworld and then fly over the mountains into the cave which is what the Dark Knight has been training for. In either case, make sure to keep watching those level gains and to make sure that each character is developing as you'd prefer them to.

I forget what to do after this point, but I think you just fly North into the statues that previously blocked your way and towards the final main story area, where the final crystal is held.

It is currently a work in progress, but I hope that I shed some light on some of the subjects and that other players found it helpful.

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