Welcome to EoFF. We do have mods, in the forms of Cid's Knights. Glad to see you like FF as much as us...(otherwise you wouldn't be here)

www.gamefaqs.com

They'll help you out with everything!

And level 30-40 is enough to finish FFIX, let alone level 65 to get into Esto Gaza.

edit: The tags for spoilers are [ spoiler ] and [ /spoiler ], without the spaces.