I thought you were some sort of underail expert? How hard is the game (even on dom) when you can be lvl 20 before going to core city? Played a shotgun on hard/classic and was lvl 20 after doing hathor/railcrossing/foundry. On Dom you'd be even higher.
Game got so easy I had to restart.
I overlevel a lot before Depot A - usually I hit it at level 12, to be higher means to actually grind and I don't grind - just explore and use all opportunities for combat. I gain a level or two there and shortly afterwards: this means lvls 14-15, and this is not much higher than people around can scrounge with oddities.
Then it's the usual business. In my gun builds I do quests and kill people rushing for lvl 20 to finish speccing disassemble and live like a white man should. I'm reaching institute at levels 25-27, and go down with 29 or already at 30 (including Expedition).
I hit level cap not long before going down, actually, so often XP scale is still filling when I'm in DC. This makes perfect sense - DC is full of respawning mobs, if you're not lvl 30 on Classic you shortly will be anyway. Expedition usually gives several levels easily - indeed it does, with its hordes of natives and robots. Without it I will be going down at levels 25-26. XP slows down a lot at the last five or so levels.
Also, I don't play well optimized builds. PER based energy pistols (when people reccomend DEX+INT combo), makeshift post-nerf full PSI and now 6 DEX SMG build.
But yeah, I can try Oddity at least for once. I know where to look for them, lol.
For the reference, right now I'm lvl22: did everything in the South, Rail Crossing, Hathor and most of the Core city - didn't touch Foundry, Protectorate and Oligarch quests, and left two Oculus quests. This means - Institute at lvl 24-26, as usual.