Already spent a good amount of time in the game. Got a Shield Sage up to 16? and am working on the Hunter class that is 12.
Crafting is done with your pawn and real world time. So basically you need to sit there and baby things if you want to keep up a continuous output of items. But it saves you slightly some cash when it comes to making your own stuff vs buying it from vendors. Also you most def will be downing potions a lot so it helps being able to make your own that saves you about 50 G per potion as its 100 to create + resources.
Getting a pawn and being able to craft does not open up till you progress more in the game itself.
Your HP bar will slowly be chipped away the more damage you & your allies take and the only way it seems to recover that is by heading back to town and paying to rest at the Inn. Inn prices vary depending on location. Ones outside of the main city are insanely expensive in comparison to the main towns 50G price. Also when you have "rented" pawns each time you enter such zones like Inns it will subtract a number from the amount of times they can adventure with you. So going in and out constantly is generally not a good idea or you just wind up wasting resources for that rental. If you do rent pawns plan on staying out for a long period of time. You can rent up to 3 (if you are not using your own pawn) or 2 + your own pawn. So max 4 in a party. Dont bother renting a Shield Sage as the AI is too stupid to use it correctly and not take damage, so you will be wasting a ton of potions to baby them.
Overall as cool as this is, am really let down that capcom just did not make a proper retail game as all the resources are there. Dont think they would be doing any sort of co-op game in the future either as it would eat into the userbase of this title. Its similar to how they are with MH vs. MHF on the consoles.
Since I somehow forgot that I actually purchased the LE version (which is not worth the price) was playing it for about 2 days before it went live for the rest of Japan. Apparently there was a delay with orders going out for some folks looking at posts on the net.
*Disclaimer
Am not interested in linking up with others so dont bother asking what my PSN is.