Bored, I wandered west from the Middlegate area (C2) to sector B2. My first encounter was 3 Griffins, worth 6500xp, and looted nunchakas +8. (Compare vs. Castle Guards at 2600xp for a group of 6.) Manageable fight, but ate most of my spell points. So from dusty memory, I think this stage of the game was where it became very attractive to start using the many temporary bonus fountains.

L9 happens to be when your Archer is able to use L2 spells, including Lloyd's Beacon. I had Sure Valla drop a Beacon marker in Atlantium, middle latitude on the east side of town - about equidistant from the town entrance and the portal to Middlegate. This cuts a lot of legwork (and spares some gold) from the Middlegate-to-Atlantium portal circuit, and will come in handy for returning for training and perhaps later Triple Crown grinds as well. In later MM games, every character had their own Beacon coordinates, but in MM2, it's set party-wide. Ah well, it will have to do until my Cleric gets the Town Portal spell.

Beacon set, the party stepped outside to hit the "sludge" fountain 3 steps west, to raise all stats temporarily to 100. Caveat: this lasts ONE fight. Still, handy before you can exploit the permanent stat boosts.

Next, the fountain in sector C1 at (1,5) which gives everyone 200sp. This makes it much easier to grind on Castle Woodhaven's guards and beat a ton of gold and equipment upgrades out of them. Also, I'd totally forgotten about the Heroism spell, durr. With that slapped on my Archer, she was one-shotting Castle Guards about half the time.

At A1(2,3) is a fountain that raises everyone to L25. The easiest way to get there is Fly to A1, walk south until you cross into A2, head west to (2,15) and then turn north again. This route avoids annoying random blizzard damage and teleportation.