Dungeons and their level brackets

It is recommended to do all dungeons for leveling as they give insane exp and nice rewards.

Realm of the Fae - 15~19
Iron Tombs - 19~24
Darkening Deeps - 22~27
Foul Cascade - 27~32
Kings Breach - 33~37
Runic Descent - 38-42
Fall of Lantern Hook - 42-46

With a solid well balanced and geared team you should be able to complete them at the lowest level, but I'd recommend being the mid-level range.

Which of these are located in Defiant areas?

Iron tombs and deepstrike mines are the only ones in defiant areas, then you get the contested areas and their dungeons

They really aren't terribly hard to get to though.

well but as Ary said you have to balance a bit with quests too coz u will be 40 with 1 plat only if u keep running instances only

for sure if u want best exp you have to go in those istances but if you want some gold too you have to do boring quests

Crafting -> AH. All the quester kids pay silly amounts for crapz0r.

Besides, who gives a fuck? No need for money in this game

Your minimum level for dungeons is a bit off there;

Fae - 15+
DD - 22+
Deepstrike mines - 24+
Lantern hook - 42+

Rest are good . 2 levels below the dungeon mobs is ok but, 3 and higher means tons of misses and its no good.

As for money, ye it seems that you won't have much by dungeon grinding but I believe bosses drop some gold + trash drops can be npc'ed and ull have enough for drinks/pots.

well skills and mount , for the rest you are right ^^ no need for money

Money from dungeoning isn't that bad. Quests are better no doubt but dungeons is not terrible. Around level 30 I think you get something like 20 gold / completed instance from the auto-accept quest, wich is repeatable. You won't be broke if you level only in dungeons

And as for level requirements, I wouldn't wait till you're the same level as the mobs in the dungeon. The best xp/hour you'll probabaly get when you're 1 level below or equal to the dungeon mobs.
At +3 levels the xp starts to go very slow and it's time to move on to the next dungeon imo.

This is what I've come up with:

15-20 RotF
20-24 Darkening Deeps
24-28 Deepstrike Mines
28-33 Foul Cascade
33-38 King's Breach
38-42 Runic Descent
42-47? The Fall of Lantern Hook

And I've missed Iron Tombs, cause I'm not sure if we're gonna bother with riding there.

Fair enough, updating main post