stepping into RFC with a bunch on level 9's was a mistake; the first Earthborer is level 14, and my poorly-geared group was wiped out...
I actually couldn't seem to find anywhere in the code that referenced the levelMin column I had altered above, which lead me to believe the instance's minimum level requirement was saved somewhere outside of the database.
This is as close as I had gotten to finding it in "Player.cpp", where AREA_LOCKSTATUS_LEVEL_TOO_LOW is returned:
if (at->condition) //condition validity is checked at startup
{
ConditionEntry fault;
if (!sObjectMgr.IsPlayerMeetToCondition(at->condition, this, GetMap(),NULL, CONDITION_AREA_TRIGGER, &fault))
{
switch (fault.type)
{
case CONDITION_LEVEL:
{
if (sWorld.getConfig(CONFIG_BOOL_INSTANCE_IGNORE_LEVEL))
break;
else
{
miscRequirement = fault.param1;
switch (fault.param2)
{
case 0: { return AREA_LOCKSTATUS_LEVEL_NOT_EQUAL; }
case 1: { return AREA_LOCKSTATUS_LEVEL_TOO_LOW; }
case 2: { return AREA_LOCKSTATUS_LEVEL_TOO_HIGH; }
}
}
I ended up using "Instance.IgnoreLevel" in the mangosd.conf to bypass the level requirement, but should probably withdraw the bug for now since it appears to be working as intended.