First of all, you should be able to go back to the regular world, and obtain items you are missing. Replace Quistis. Squall and Zell are great choices. Irvin is a good addition if you have the ammo for him. If you have any cards, use your refine ability. If you have card mod, you can refine your cards into helpful items, then use your other abilities to refine magic, then junction your magic to your stats. Learning how to use Zell is a good ability, but be careful with the timer. What you want to do is repeat the same combos (punch rush & high kick).

The above is the advice of my son. Don’t ask me about it. I have no idea what any of that means.

Draw Regen from Rinoa and cast it on your party and Rinoa too to help when Adel steals life from her. Other than that it should be fairly straightforward if you are junctioned decently. I might be a bit overpowered compared to you at this point in the game though as I would find enemies that had magic that junctioned well and would just draw from them endlessly until I had maxed out that spell on every character. It was far too easy to exploit for me not to do so.

As for the weapon upgrades, I generally keep Squall as upgraded as possible and don’t bother with the other characters until I can get their best weapon. I’m not sure how significant the damage difference is on any weapon, but for Squall at least it greatly improves his Limit Break with certain upgrades. Being able to do Lion Heart makes a huge difference compared to the other Limit Break finishers.

@amujinx Oh, snap, right I can use Regen. I drew a bunch of those but completely forgot about it. I was thinking of using Reflect on Adel so that whenever she zaps life from Rinoa, it goes back to her, but that didn’t work.