Desolate Dunes - It seems impossible.

Hello,
Been stuck on 11 stars on the Desolate Dunes levels for over 9 months now and can't seem to get an additional star. Got two stars on every level except 652 where I'm 4th on the leaderboard with a score of 477,050. This implies that only three people in the entire world have two or more stars which seems ridiculous. The leader (Paul) has a score of 945,000 which is more than double my best score and seems impossible to achieve during normal gameplay - he's also top of the leaderboard on all other levels with incredibly high scores. What score do I need to get two stars on this level ?
Also why do so few people seem to be able to get 2 or 3 stars - if it's that hard how do people progress beyond this level ?

Did you try getting two stars on some easy level with one star?
Whenever I couldn't progress to the next area because of the low star count, I normally play easy levels, especially dig levels to get more stars. Hope this helped and I hope to see you in Hidden Hermitage!