I don't like it. My playstyle is solo play and grouping only when I have to. Dragonspire requires my level 43 Necro to ALWAYS group. My wifes Life spec character has the same problem.
It is possible to solo everything in Dragonsypre as a death wizard except for the Great Sypre, it just takes lots of patience. You also need to get maximum possible damage on your drain spells too, to keep your health up. I was able to solo everything up to Great Sypre, since the Great Sypre requires at least 3 people due to the crystals.
I don't really like having to group, either, but I have been having fun playing with my son and his fire wizard (my wizard in DS is ice). Opposing schools work well in DS, since you don't have to worry about resists so much.
I realize that you could solo, but the battles last SO long that way. It gets tedious very quickly. So for me to have fun, I have to group in DS.
I suppose the benefit of having to group is that the game story will last a bit longer, since my son is not always available to play. I can't zip through DS.
I must say, though, that the jump in difficulty between Mooshu and DS was a bit surprising, and that overall, Dragonspyre is my least favorite world.
I now find it's worse than forced grouping. There are quests that force solo play.....and mandate one fight after another with no healing. FUN is the last word that comes to my mind.
You can do the Great Spiral with only 2 wizards. We did it last night, there is nothing in there that you MUST fight that will cause you problems. As far as the three Crytals go - easily solved with a MARK LOCATION and quick computer. The 2 beasts you fight top open the door barely have over 1,000 HPs. very easily defeated one on one. The end batlle - 4 on 2 - you have done harder battles before this. Any other creatures are very easily avoided by skimming the sidelines just like anywhere else.
Well I just finished all of DS and killed malistar. I did all of it solo except for two parts in the last instance where you need to click three crystals at the same time and the other gate required that both mobs die at the same/similar enough time so that you could go into malistars room. Interestingly enough I actually solo'd it all. The person I had helping didn't join me until after I had already killed three of the named, and he went link dead just after we got the two guards killed. Every fight in there I assumed I was going to die, and yet I managed to somehow pull a rabbit out of my hat and live or atleast worse case kill one of them so that I could have better odds next time. I wouldn't say it was fun, fun would be the last word to describe it, but I will say I do feel like it was a huge acomplishment in that I did what I did. I will say I will never do that again solo Oh my what a pain and a HUGE time sink.
I had my own 'this is not a game anymore' moments in DragonSpyre. I just finished a fire grandmaster (actually, hit grandmaster before being a drake rider, since I did all the side quests -- an issue in itself that I no longer got XP at that point, but I'll move on). I have several comments about the latter portions of DragonSpyre:
1) TOO MANY SPIDERS, after doing the crystal grove I was sick of them. Really. 2) There are 'collect 8 items' quests in the Forum that have a REALLY low drop percentage, AND the only ones that drop are caught up with another kind of monster. It is very likely, even in a group of friends, that you will end up with one of four slots of the necessary creature, three of the unwanted one, and STILL end up not getting anything for your trouble after. This is when I started thinking, this is a game? 3) As mentioned above, there are severe tower issues. Ones far harder than those in MarleyBone, which at least let you port out and walk back up to where you were, or even drop a mark and port back to that. There is one late tower in DS (Drake Father) that is nothing but six to eight levels of fire creatures, which is absolute torture for a fire wizard. I know of no others like that in the game, for any other school.
I should point out, I am an adult. The issues above were making me frustrated, I can only imagine what they would do for a younger player.
