The random battles were actually stupid easy until the moon (where they are now kicking my ass). I was able to auto battle or mindlessly fight most things and was generally at full HP and MP the whole time.
Trick to making every before where I'm at pretty stupid easy:
- Have Rosa always use Pray
- Have Cecil heal or use Esuna if you absolutely need it, otherwise just attack.
- Have Rydia cast break if it's a single enemy, otherwise just summon a 30MP monster
- Have Kain attack, don't waste time with jump unless you have to
- If the enemy has an elemental weakness, let Edge use Ninjistu, otherwise just attack.
- After battles in the menu screen have Rosa heal your party if they need it.
Doing that will let you auto battle for most of the game and just about always keep you at full HP/MP. Most of the time Pray will keep you healthy and will constantly keep your MP full. Pray will almost always give Rydia more than 30MP so she'll always be full.
For some reason Break works well on just about everything other than bosses (it even works on mini bosses). If there are one or two enemies just have Rydia Break one while everyone else focuses on the other. If there are three or more, just have her summon. Even on the moon I haven't had to waste time on Doom (takes forever to cast and cast 40MP), break still works on everything.
And there are of course exceptions to that above method, but for the most part you'll be able to walk through most places with little effort and you just do your grinding while getting 100% on all the maps.
