Also there's things like monogrinder, digrinder & trigrinder, you find all 3 on the planet and mono also shows up in the shop every now & then, they are to grind your equipped weapon, giving it + 1,2, or 3 damage per grinder you use on it, every weapon has a different limit, theresthoqe that only grind up to +10, but other things can be grinded up to +90 and higher, making it a lot more effective.
Also upon finding new weapons check the % tab ,highlight it in items or look at it when equipped and got to the 3rd tab (press R1 a few times).
This will show you a tab looking something like:
Native 0%
Altered Beast 35%
Machine 5%
Dark 15%
Hit 50% (not all weapons have this)
This also gives extra damage: native = damage to forest monsters, altered beast = damage to cave monsters and so on...
It is often better to equip a weaker weapon with a highter % as this can do more damage on monsters in a certain area. Eg: if you have a weapon that has a 45% Native and you grind it, it will do enormous damage on the forest creatures, so you need to look for different weapons to play different levels, just store em in the bank and switch when you unlock a new area. Same goes for armor, it is often better to have a weaker armor with 3 or 4 slots (you can add items that boost your stats to the slots), than an stronger armor with 0 slots...
And then there's loot, which you will need to sell, to get money to buy food for your mag: weapons, armor and shields fetch the highest price in the shop, all rest is just rubbish...
Here's the stuff you can slot to your armor http://www.shinforce.com/dreamcast/stra ... rUnits.htm