Go inside of "ITEM WORLD" when you get the chance and that will upgrade the abilities and stats of the weapons. I don't know what characters they start you off with on part 2. On part one I made sure I moved my characters RANK up (you have to do this by visiting teh council and fighting 3 or 4 monsters), and I made sure I didn't make a lot of new characters with low stats. In order to do that you should have a lot of mana, because the better teh stats the more mana its gonna cost. Also, the better teh class, the more skills that character can carry over when promoted, so again make sure you level up.