Town of Ruin

Looks nice like all the other towns

Once you travel past the canal the first town you will come to is the town of Melmond, surrounded by marshes. Go inside and you will see that Melmond isn't fairing all that well as there huge patches of ruined land, a bunch of tombstones and even the church where you revive your dead is ruined. You are also told that this is the town that is nearest to the earth crystal and as the light warriors, your job is to defeat the fiend of the earth and set things back to normal.

Yet up close things are different

There are plenty of things to get at the town of Melmond. Most notably this is the town where you can get level 5 spells, including the spell of life which is sort of the replacement for the church.  However you might need to level up a bit to use level 5 spells, especially if there is a red mage in your party. There is also the knight armor (steel armor in the NES version) which is great protection for the warrior but is also very expensive, costing 36000g.

Even more money, still no pants

If you want to level up fast one place that you can go to is the first level of the Earth cave. You go to the west and there is a corridor where you can find hill gigas (giants in the NES version). They are pretty strong opponents but on the up side they give out a lot of xp and over 800g for each one you defeat. Hopefully this will allow you to level up pretty fast.