Okay, so I just need to consider crafting as a filler between finding of new gear. This is my firs playthrough, and my sister's first, so we are making mistakes in character building all over the place... so we are now finding gear that we can't equip due to lacking enough of a particular stat. We are also fighting things completely out of order (We already visited Lucelle before finding Braccus... level 9 when we took on Braccus and level 10 when we took on the Baron and his lady friend).

We thought that if we took on higher level fights that they would be worth more experience than if we waited until we matched them in level. Looks like the experience is the same... a level 8 opponent looks to be worth a set amount of experience, whether we are level 6 or level 10 when we defeat it. I haven't hard tested it (written down experience values), so I may be wrong.

I still have the question of how do I get more basic arrow heads for crafting my own arrows? Are they only available through purchase or is it supposed to be possible to craft your own?