ok many people have trouble with dragon ball hunting since the scouter update patch well alot people told many that you need a scouter with an effect on it then you could see mobs. now dragon ball mobs could be within 5 levels lower than you aswell as people say above well that is not true i was lvl 38 and began hunting while fighting 47-50 level mobs so they dont need to be 5 levels higer now from my experince they could be within 5 lower than you for them to still drop buti t may be less likely. i hutned with my level 6 and go to db's in one night hunting in kokara.
ok now a little tip about leveling in my honest opinion grinding is better than questing because ive learned that if you grind with a good enoguh exp scroll you will actualley level pretty quick and you would be staying in the same spot instead of moving all over the place. unfortunatly they added on them ap what places are good for leveling to wich levels but enouther tip. it would be faster to grind form 50-55it would actualley be quicker.
Grinding is indeed a chore for some single attack classes such as SM, but I do not fully disagree. You should rather instead get an AoE partner to help than grind alone.
nobody said that you couldn't hunt higher than 5 lvls up; you will still get db mobs and drops, even with 5 lvls down. the only thing that changes is the % for drops. if you got 5 lvls below or lower you get a very bad drop rate. every lvl up go up that increases. until you get to 5 lvls above you. Once that happens the % you get from the higher lvls stays the same, so yeah you could hunt 10-15 lvls higher than you so it wont do much difference