Hey all I have been trying out the free alpha version of this game and I have pretty much decided to buy the new one. I have beaten the Normal dungeon with all 4 original classes and their 2 expansions, so 12 in total. I have also beaten the Libaray and Factory at least ounce. Monk rules in the factory vs those inanimate armors.

The question I had was have they kept the kind of odd crappy exp mechanic in the newer version? Is it as tough to make sure you hit level 10 before having to fight the main boss?

Like at the start of a map when your level 1, if you kill a level 1 guy you only get 1 xp BUT if you kill a level 2 guy you get 4xp. I am not sure of the exact nature of the bonus percentage but I know in most maps I don't make it to level 10 until I kill the final boss. In the factory I found an exception to this when fighting those magically animated armors that have only 1 health but death saves = to their level, these don't regenerate so you can just fireball them away.

I took out a Lvl 7 or 8 Animated Armor when I was a puny level 1 guy with 0 exp. Instantly I was level 5 with 14/25 exp to next level!!! Needless to say I steamrolled that level so well that I didn't need HP or MP potions, got 100 piety and finished with it all along with killing all the guys without petrification.

The XP system has been tweaked, but is fundamentally the same as the alpha. The bonus XP table is less generous than it was, but there are now more ways to get bonus XP. The Animated Armors now work differently, so you can't kill them at 1st level with fireballs anymore. There are still ways to defeat significantly-higher level opponents, but it's significantly harder now.

Early dungeons so far that i've played have bosses at 5th level. I know what you mean about high leveled bosses from the free version. As for later in the game, i don't know, haven't gotten that far.

The beginner area has smaller dungeons with 5th level bosses. Once you've cleared these, you'll move on to the full-sized dungeons with 10th level bosses, and monsters of all the intervening levels.

http://www.qcfdesign.com/wiki/DesktopDungeons/index.php?title=Level#Gaining_Levels_and_Bonus_Experience

Bonus experience is kind of weird, but it does make the player make some tough decisions. Ideally you want to take on a higher-level monster without spending potions. When is it worth it to use a potion, though? Since there are only so many monsters in the level, you often will only be level 8, 7, or even 6 if you farm at or below your level all of the time - saving all of those potions won't help enough if you're level 6 when you get to the boss.

The bonus XP as well as the level-up heal are maybe a bit gimmicky, but the overall effect is puzzle-style rogue-like gameplay. Setting up a big kill for a level-up heal and a path to level 9 can make a big difference. Sometimes you even will want to almost fill up your XP bar, spend most of your health and mana on the boss, and then kill a low-level leftover enemy for the level-up HP and MP restoration.

It's somewhat goofy and I usually dislike these mechanics, but the overall theme IS goofy, and the short-play nature of the game is balanced around goofy, puzzle-like mechanics. It's when games try to be serious but include level-up heals that I find it out of place (your wounds spontaneously heal because you just learned how to do a spin attack, really)?

There's no one right answer to that question. It's completely valid to spend your potions early to gain momentum, and equally valid to hoard them for the boss fight. You can also use items like the Alchemist's Scroll to leverage early potion use even better. You can certainly get bonus experience without using potions. It's a little tricky on vicious difficulty dungeons, but in hard difficulty and below there are a lot of tricks you can pull. Even something as simple as building up resistances with ENDISWAL before attacking a monster can give you the edge. If you do it right, you can set up for multiple consecutive level-ups.