My field is small databases with huge amount of simple data where joins are not mentioned.
You can always get the speed up even with smaller subsets if the DB is coded right, in this case its not needed the way i'm doing it, but I always like to think ahead of possible expansions out
For example,
MobCharacteristics, with MobId (unique)
MobInfo, with MobId and MobName (unique)
MobLocations, with MobId (non-unique)
MobQuestTable, MobId
Basically on quest checkup we see what mob we are looking for, we use their name from the MobInfo table to get their ID, we get the location based of the MobId, its just a cleaner way of Indexing without puting in shit loads of data into one table.
Atm im only dealing with mobs but just a half assed example of how questing could link in later so needs to be made now in such a way so the DB doesn't have to be wiped on new versions

So yea can be small dataset but needs to be designed properly.