Question time: how the hell do i improve my HP/MP? I just passed te east bridge for the first time and instantly got leveled by some djinn or whatever. if i proceed further east, every single enemy is wiping the floor with me, and i have a feeling that improving my defense is not going to do the job
HP and MP stay the same through the entire game. The best you can do is improve your attack and defense.
There's 4 stats you want to improve with AP under the "Passive" category:
"Power" - Increases the damage of "Tickle Wave"
"Mind" - Increases the damage of attacks that use MP (i.e. "Water Massage")
"Resistance" - Decreases damage recieved by physical attacks
"Will" - Decreases damage recieved by magic attacks
Starting out, your best bet is to take down the sprites/faries just outside the starting city across the bridge and then to the south a bit, and run from everything else. Stay close to the road so you can use it to run back and forth to regenerate your HP/MP between fights without any encounters.
Once you have a healthy amount of AP built up, dump it into the passive abilities that increase the 4 stats above in whatever fashion suits you most. I did mine one stat at a time, up to tier 4, instead of spreading the AP around. You'll be absolutely surprised by how much of a difference it'll make. At around 30 resistance points, you'll be getting null damage from pretty much everything in the northern most parts of the map (with the exception of the Land Sirens).
The most important thing about this game, as is with MANY other games, is to SAVE OFTEN. I'd go as far to say you should save after every single battle.