And for in the Colosseum, I suggest you choose Umaro for the battles. 😉 Then Cactuar shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Island.
sexpot
It’s a forest right in the north-west above The Veldt. It’s filled with Tyrano, which give a lot of exp. and magic points. =) They’re not so hard, only their Bite Attack is a bitch.
But a day in dinosaur forest with Shadow equipped Illumina, Offering and Exp. Egg = 😀
There’s one other dinosaur there, called Bracosaur, and, well, it’s one of those random creatures you just can’t beat easily, due to very high HP and the casting of Ultima. ^_- So watch out for that one, though.
Oh, yeah, I just defeated one of the tougher dino’s, that Bracosaur: that creature will automatically do Ultima. If it doesn’t do Sneeze before that, there’s always the handy Life3 magic. =)
And I do that simply ’cause Meteor is much more an effective spell to use than Quick. 😉
As for Meteor — you can also learn it from the Crusader esper you get for beating the eight dragons. The main reason you might want to keep Odin around is that it’s the only esper that gives a bonus to your characters’ speed stat at level up. Gain some levels on a character with Odin equipped and you can really speed them up. But I would definitely recommend getting Raiden eventually — Quick actually is unique to that esper and I rather like that spell.
Though, all in all, it’s actually not all that much hassle to go back. It only takes like around 20 minutes following the straight path and back. Maybe 5-10 if you use Mog / Moogle Charm.
Somebody mentioned Bracoasurs — Bracosaurs are great because they sometimes drop Economizer, which is really useful because it reduces the MP cost for any spell or esper cast by that particular character to 1. And they go down to Vanish / instant death-type spell just as easily as the Tyranos.
FYI-There’s a big bird monster in the Phoenix Cave where Locke can steal Economizers from.