My FF1 Pixel Remaster run I basically had no encounters on the whole time.

There was plenty of chests filled with monsters so even at Regular XP I was keeping afloat to fight the bosses.

I looked it up online and it said level 25 was good so I went all the way down to the bottom of Chaos Shrine and got my ass beat by the final boss.

Turns out 25 was a good level for the original release but since then it's been doubled. People suggest level 60 to take on Chaos in pixel remaster, and I was 27!

So I guess I'm turning on 4x XP and doing some grinding for a bit, lol.

Update: I finished around level 43 at 7 1/2 hours.