a really helpful trick (but really tedious to use): items block enemies. Here's how to use this:
Find a "choke point," where your character is standing with only one of his four sides exposed. Let an enemy come up to him; defeat the enemy, and if the enemy leaves behind an item, don't pick it up. Then, minimize the window or whatever until your character is sufficiently healed, then collect the item and let the next enemy approach. Tedious, but fine if you're playing the game while doing something else (like, heaven forbid, real work).
Relatedly, a tip for grinding that's even better than using the above trick:
There are certain enemies that will not attack you unless you attack them first. Level up in these areas, as getting in the first attack allows you a lot of control, let you not get ganged up on by enemies, lets you chill out and regenerate if necessary, and, if you want to level a pet, allows you to leave the pet elsewhere on the screen without worrying about enemies approaching and killing it. These areas are:
(1) The beach, prior to the screen with the Sand Snakes.
(2) The grasslands have some areas within a given scene where you can stick to only grass beetles, and avoid the snakes and scorpions.
(3) The marsh, between the first screen (with three wild scorpions) and the female mutants on the fourth or fifth screen. That is, neither mutants nor the black beetles will attack you spontaneously, and there are two or three screens with just those enemies.
(4) The first two screens of the volcano; surprisingly, the skeletons will not attack you. Great place for relaxed grinding.
The rest of the game is really annoying in dealing with enemies attacking you as soon as you approach (I'd recommend getting through the entire jungle and the entire ice stage as quickly as possible, and leaving grinding to the stages without spontaneously attacking enemies).
Also, after a while I just gave up on using pets (switch to a weak pet, kill it off, then don't select another pet and you will remain sans pet), because they don't regenerate, and they die far too quickly (forcing you to either reload from the previous save, or loose all the leveling progress you've made with that pet).
On the glitch that rosedragon mentions: I ran into it too, I found your stats are also corrected if you just go to another screen. So, as soon as you level up, go back to the previous screen in the same level, and then return, to continue on in your progress.
On the two "elemental" blades you can get from the Mage Guild:
The fire blade is useless. The same blade you can buy near that level is much better. I haven't save up 25 ice shards (they are rare!), but I assume the ice blade you can get at level 18 is going to be less powerful than the regular blade you can buy at level 21. So, don't bother wasting your shards (although you can always try out the blade and reload without saving if you don't like it).
Oh, and an incredibly useful tip about getting money:
Ice shards sell for 2500 G each. So any expensive items you want, wait until you get to the ice stage, and then grind for ice shards. They are rare, yes, but selling four or five should give you more money than you'll need for anything else. Actually, as mentioned above, all enemies on the ice stage attack you so grinding there is unpleasant, so you can also wait until the volcano stage. All enemies there, including the non-aggressive skeletons, also drop ice shards.
Important note about the four accessories: you can only equip one at a time.
If I understand rosedragon correctly about items, I disagree somewhat; I found that having the best available weapon, armor and shield makes a big difference (although to save cash early on, I skipped every other shield upgrade and that proved okay). But rosedragon is right when it comes to the four accessories, the choice of those didn't seem to matter (the cash one increases cash by quite a bit, but soon enough you'll have more cash than you need anyway, and I didn't find the speed boots that strategically useful. For the other two, +5% damage is neither here nor there).
