Resuming Secret of Mana-thon

So for reasons I don't even know, I kind of stalled playing Secret of Mana.  So I fired it back up earlier and I'm resuming the grind.

Quite literally, in fact.  All I did during this most recent session was get weapons levelled up.  That was mostly due to having to reacquaint myself with where I was (Mandala), where I was supposed to go (the Palace of Darkness), and what needed to be done.  During that I took a look at the Levels screen and noticed that the boy had some progress on the axe.  It turned out that the axe needed to go to level 5 on everyone, as well as the javelin and gloves.  In addition, I discovered that the whip needed to go to level 6.

I got all of that done, and farmed for some rare drops in the Palace of Darkness while I was doing so.  The Fierce Heads have Unicorn Helms as a rare drop, which is a much better helm than the Circlet that's available for purchase in the area, and since it can be equipped by everyone, it meant I could upgrade the girl's headgear from the Tiger Cap.  Also available as a rare drop is the Gauntlet, from the Dark Knights.  It has a defense of 90, which is much higher than the mere 20 defense given by the Ivy Amulets available for purchase in the area.

I got two of three Unicorn Helms, and due to only having found one accessible Dark Knight so far, haven't gotten any Gauntlets.

And yeah, if you bring up all posts with the tag "Secret of Mana", you'll see that I could have just read my previous post on the subject to figure out where I was and what I was doing, but whatever.