I have only played solo so far; I hear it's tougher to get through the early stuff in this game in a group since the mobs get tougher and everything goes slower. Any truth to that? Was thinking of streaming some co-op this weekend maybe!

I played quite a bit a while back, mostly in groups. It can be a bit slower, but it is still good fun and can help when leveling gets a bit grindy since you have people to mess around with. This may have changed in the year or so it has been since I played though

I've only ever played solo and always burned out around the same place. I'd love to watch a group stream!

I've generally had the opposite experience: the enemies are scaled up, but, like most games in this genre, the ratio is something like (completely spitballing here) +50% increased enemy health with 2 players, +100% with 3, +150% with 4, etc., i.e. the enemies are harder to solo in a group, but the added player count more than makes up for it (especially in a game like Path of Exile, where party auras are incredibly powerful). I've played on and off since 2011 (nearing 1000 hours) and I can't ever recall a time I felt like playing solo would be more convenient than playing in a group.

(I'd recommend turning on Permanent Allocation for loot drops if you do decide to group up; by default (Short Allocation), higher-tier drops are allocated to a specific player for only five seconds before anybody else in the group can grab them)

@ajamafalous said:

Yeah, group play is really fun in PoE I think. Unlike most games, it's still possible to kill things pretty easily if you separate - the scaling isn't terrible.

Competent group will go faster than solo in general; also group gives way better loot than solo unless they balanced the quantity buff at some point.