What should I do?

[xjokerz]

I'm torn on what I should do.

I can level up Squall a lot, get really powerful magic, and get really strong before I leave for the Dollet mission in the beginning.

OR

I can just proceed like normal and level up before I go in for Deling City, which is what I usually do.

What strategy pays off the best?

[thePSgamer]

Actually in my opinion;

If you want to train WHILE in dollet the best spot is on the bridge....just keep going back and forth between the bridge and you'll get a variation of 1 soldier, or 3. 3 of them giving you 300+ EXP a battle, easy levels.

[Iceglow]

Or, just run around the forests of Balamb kicking every T-rexaur you find. If you head in to Garden before doing the fire cavern Squall can solo run around the training area too. With 100 sleep spells and some skill he could solo kill T-rexaur there for a lot more than 300 exp per fight.

[Rantz]

Just remember that, since monsters level up with you, that levelling up in itself doesn't actually make the game that much easier. If you want to get stronger, play cards or make them from enemies and refine them to magic, and draw magic from enemies, and junction it properly.

[Levian]

yeah, the true way to get strong in this game is to play cards and mod them into items, and gain AP so you can get abilities to refine items into magic. Sure, you can draw magic instead, but I find it easier and less time consuming to just play cards. Most cards are available to you right from the start, so just hang around Balamb Garden for a while.

exp is not a good thing in this game.

[The Last Oath]

Dont start maxing out your levels until you have the Str+bonus, vit+bonus, mag+bonus, spr+bonus, hp+bonus etc.

Junction these to your abilities when you have em, (levelling up one character at a time so you can do all their stats and not split em amongst the other characters) then start maxing your levels. You'll find that once you reach level 100 your base stats will be huge depending on what level you begun the training, which is why you want to keep your levels as low as possible before getting these abilities from GF's such as Cactuar and Tonberry, a few of the other GF's like Ifrit, Carbuncle and others give some of these abilities too.

Once your level 100 and have high base stats, along with your junctioning magic to stats, try putting str+60% for example and see what happens to your str. It will reach 255. Even better, when done with vit and spr, any enemies attacks, even omega weapons, can hardly do any damage.