
The #1 trick here is to prep Dracul, since the Blood Curse gives you a level but doesn't award any bonus XP. You also need a little luck finding a subdungeon that provides something of your level to kill to get enough XP to ding 10, so the boss doesn't give you any bonus XP. In my case, on my second try I got probably the best one: Hitball. I saved it until late to get the most XP from it. I also prepped a Transmutation Scroll which ended up being very nice because I had no other way to break into the bonus subdungeon, which was the "8 level-1 monsters" one.