FF2 leveling for noobs

[Dragonfire]

leveling Minh's(sorry i'm old school) warp takes way too long imho. I follow the same techniques you said, except the shield one, but take it one step further. I usually go to semite falls and get the warp book there so I can cancel trick it to a decent lvl (dont say the cancel trick is cheating, if they didnt want it in there they would've gotten rid of it in newer versions)

another strategy i used to use was to go north of Phin and kill Sorcerers to get Beserk tomes and stuff like that. they're 5000 a piece. then try to get down to mysidia and get swaps and weapons and armor that are godly at that point of the game.