Hi, if can be of any help, I'm doing a run with a SOLO Paladin and I complete WM1 at level 10.
So I think, if you know internal mechanics of the game and you compose the right party, level 7 full party can do the WM1 (not Cragholdt, obviously, but the Durgan Battery quests).
You can take also all the items of Act 2, aside Aila Braccia also Tidefall can help, but maybe stunning or proning item are best, i.e. Cladaliath in Act 2 (if you side with The Dozen) or unblocking Act 3 and buying We Toki.
Another trick for "first" encounter of WM1: you can backtrack after every "single" kill and rest (in Caed Nua or other place) and return back iun Stalwart (not very plausibile and realistic, but the game allows it).
After that, WM1 history can be done not so hard, using accurate tattics especially with spirits and vessels inside the Battery and the Lagufaeth, maybe avoiding some non mandatory encounters.
Avoid side quests and other optional encontuers, unless you need or wish some special and unique item.

Have fun

Edited March 21, 20232 yr by Chaospread

Ah yes. It is one of the few fights where the individual encounters are apart far enough from each other that you can save and reload or just retreat and come back later or simply rest.

Something that bother me with this kind of game is you need to play with a guide because depending how you handle quests, the rewards/incomes vary, you absolutely can't just...just play the game, you have to do it with a god damn guide unless you want to savescum or make 10 different playthroughs and test everything to see what you need, that's just not possible.

I've just tried to run a quest without checking any guide, just to see how it will go and it's ended as i was expecting, i've got a reward which i don't need but if i did handled the quest the other way i'd get what my character would need.

I already noticed that in several games, i think it's a major game design issue imho, The Witcher 3 had the same problem for example.

 

That's funny because those kind of games promote immersion/role playing, but their game design just break everything.

 

And it goes the same for quests orders which can block you from doing some other quests.

 

Right now i'm a bit tired of POE1 because i have to check every god damned quests to see their rewards and how to get them, i just can't just play the game and use ingame information to know what i'm going to get.

Yeah, PoE and other games BG-like are designed in that way. Usually I play the game without no guide once or twice, then if I like the game, I play it more times with the guide to achieve the results I want. No many things to do about that, and if the in-game clues give you too many ideas about quest-regards, guides will be useless and the game would be bory from the first run, on the other side I admit sometimes (perhaps often) you can say almost nothing about what you can get... Usually I choose what to do based on RPG and amen, also beacause I am never able to get the best rewards from quests when I try 😄