Here's a hint about leveling which I hope is helpful.
It's best to level immediately: as soon as you've accumulated enough experience points to do so.
Reason is that there's no set quantity of experience points required to make it from one level to the next. What I mean is, it's not the case that 1000 points equals level 10 for everybody. Instead, the points required to reach the next level vary character by character, depending on a whole bunch of attributes, but generally involving a percentage of the character's total accumulated experience. So, when the quantity of points required to reach the next level is calculated, you want your total experience to be lower, not higher, because the higher the total, the more points will be required to reach the next level.
This is intended to make it more and more difficult to gain levels as your character becomes more and more experienced. We need to do this to achieve game balance. It forces higher-level characters to seek higher-level adventures, which are more difficult, but result in more experience points. If we didn't do this, over time higher level characters would dominate the easier experiences, making it more difficult for lower level characters to grow. We've seen this happen on other MUDs, that's our reason for taking this approach.
Moral: keep an eye on your experience, and when you're ready to gain that next level, do it.