Bravely Default

  • When you're first starting out don't stress leveling your jobs beyond level 9 unless you have a goal. Past level 9, Job levels become very expensive.
  • Spells require you to buy them before you can use them.
  • Freelancers are great in general for navigating dungeons and for the Job Point Up skill (level 10).
  • Knights get a Two-Handed skill (level 2) which will greatly boost your melee attacks.
  • Thieves learn Rob Blind (level 11) which allows for you to steal two items at once. It's a great skill to abuse for boss fights.
  • Merchants seem weak but are great for killing defensive targets and can ignore buffs with Take Over (level 6), and gain the More Money +50% more gil skill (level 9).
  • Do an update data and a friend search once a day to unlock bots for your town and new player summons.
  • Be careful using player summons as they are one-time use until you update data and will be used up even if you die.
  • You can sort of cheese the game by linking with other players allowing you to have skills earlier than you would normally.
  • Daggers require you to use items for their Limit Breaks. Keep a mental note of this whenever you need to use items in battle so they can benefit. Or just use Bows because they are so much better.
  • Regarding Limit Breaks, the default bonus damage to Beasts is your best bet as they are the most common monster in the game next to Humans. There's no bonus damage to Humans for Limit Breaks, though.
  • Don't buy SP drinks, you'll unlock them as you're restoring your town/playing the game.
  • There are no hidden benefits for playing between the three difficulty modes. The only thing that changes is the base stats for monsters. Playing on Hard Mode will give your character a "Hard" under their name when you summon them, it does nothing else and is for bragging/epeen.
  • You can adjust the encounter rate to zero encounters if you want to explore or need to heal up/save.
  • Dual-wielding is mostly used for weapon proccing or for certain builds (such as two magic daggers for a non-magic class).
  • If you're having trouble at a boss consider grinding the region. Experience and Job Point rate is very steady throughout the game allowing you to grind in previous locations without a major dip.
  • Want to turn off your brain while grinding? Change the battle settings to easy mode, maximum battle encounter rate, 4x braving all characters, toggling Auto-Mode, and maxing out the combat speed.
  • The first piece of gear you should aim for from helping your town is the Bless Shield. Bless Shield allows you to use it which will cast Cura. Buy it ASAP and equip it on someone who uses Staves for the Limit Break.
  • Gear rewards for your town are more gimmicky and are more useful in the first few chapters, for when you're filthy rich (+xp/jp rings) or for specific circumstances (taunt ring). I found that maxing the other sections to be more useful with the periodic gifts, passive Special Attack buffs, and Limit Breaks.