I recently put down vinyl tile down on a cement floor using tile adhesive underneath. This was for a school we were renovating. A huge room. The old floor had tons of dip and bumps. After I was done, using a rubber mallet the whole way through, it looked awesome. Bumps and dips basically disappeared. I didn’t use a self leveler.

A contractor friend of ours who had seen it before couldn’t believe how good it looked and wondered how I did it, especially since this was the first time I done anything even remotely like this.

I think the adhesive really helped leveling it somewhat. I didn’t lay it on thick at all but it came out great.

So you may not need to use a self lever to get a good result.