I can confirm what the good Colonel is saying. I just started like you, Lutra, and in just over 24 hours I was able to get to defeat boss level 30 and get the 9 parts of the collection quest. I'm just over 15k/15k, but I went from level 3 to level 21. With so little time left and not a lot of gold, I'm not going to press the boss anymore and just try to camp until the next boss event to stay under level 25.
We'll see if I am actually that patient or not....
