Got up to Soul Canon before going to bed, and am just getting into Ronka now. This is basically the finale of act 1 of the game, and I get my last job on beating it.
Extremely good thing I got that Ninja because if I didn't have the option to go back and farm a few fire scrolls for Byblos I have no idea what I would have done. Thief was less rough to start with than I thought, and the utility feels great to have. Berserker probably the weak link here in the absence of good support. I was running around with two of them for a bit and it's not ideal. Healing is the worst thing. There's no reliable source of hi-potions until world 2.
But with Ninja, most of those problems melt away in a shower of scrolls. Samurai is only going to make things easier.