
And yeah, I see where you're coming from with 18 levels to script, write and test - heck of a lot of work.
Concerning the level - I see your point, and the solution isn't (IMO) in putting more low lvl guys around the map - the fact that there are few and that they are clustered colsely togather is what makes it doable. What makes it undoable in any sane way is the fact that killing the lvl2 (and 3) takes randomly spawned boosters which are hard to locate. If stuff you found in the chests above lvl1 (and sometimes I didn't find the GETINDARE one at all) was more relevant the level would be much more consistently doable.
Especialy since finding the powerups and finding the low lvl enemies consists of doing two different things - you can aim for the low level guards by spamming LEMISI and working from the first guy you hit, but there is no reliable way to find enough powerups to kill the fukker.
My see-how-it-works solution would be to put a couple more low lvl chests with either att powerups, health powerups, conversion scroll / stones or whathave you, and put them close to the entrance (but not too close). That way you can link the tasks of finding something to kill and beefing up to kill it in a sensible time. If there were more usefull low level chests around the lvl9 which a player can port, a player could find them while porting out from the zone he ported into for the low level guards. It would also make a player work for the necessary powerups instead of pray (and give you a teency bit of something to do with resources that you're wasting anyway).
Any good?