noob advice?

[Quistis]

hello! i just started the game a few days ago. ive gotten to 36, primarily using a decent sword i found, and was curious where to go from here.



so, what does friendship do for my partners?
are there builds/classes in this game? (really liking sword and odachi)
is this musashi partner i got from nyankoropon ticket better or worse than yoshi or the princess?
where can i find putrid gastric juice? (random, i know)
is the population of this game big?
can you reset stats?

thanks for any advice or tips in advance.

[Penii]

So friendship will help your partners gain lvls, and therefore offer more things to you. With Shizuka it's more storage space, with Yoshitsune it will be various things you can do with your weapons in latter parts of the game. The list goes on with the other partners as well.

There are classes in this game, as you were introduced to at the start, there's 5 'main' classes, and most people (as higher lvls) dabble in more than one, but still use a primary weapon that's made for a certain class.
The 5 'classes' are pow, vit, wis, mnd, and dex. Pow is intended for sword, oodachi, and axe users; vit for spear users; wis for wand users; mnd for staff users; and dex for bow and twin sword users. Seeing that you like sword and oodachi, you would invest in pow (for the time being). You would eventually have to pick one or the other, unless you felt like making weps and mags for both.

Ohmygod you luckybutt. >_>
Yes. Musashit is in fact better (much) than Yoshitsune and Shizuka.

From Baby Mukade's. They are first introduced in Kumaso. In either Sakurajima or that other cave that's in the south area of Oosumi plains.

No, compared to several other games, we're puny.

Yes, you can reset stats. You can either buy a stat reset from the shopping plaza (for 149oc) or you can continue with the storyline and receive a free status change after completing the last Kyoto quest: 'Repairing Benkei'.