The jump from normal to Shard 1 is pretty insane on some dungeons imho, but now that we retry the lvl 1s we wiped on before I notice this seems to be a matter of gear also.
Broken Halls: Didn’t see much of an issue once tactics are known. This is our gear-up dungeon, after running it 20+ times it gets boring though.
On an Airship lvl 1 we gave up 1-2 weeks ago because dmg dealers got oneshotted by trash, died in a second from poison, got oneshotted from shotgun, by really everything. Yesterday I saw people taking a shotgun on a lvl 4 even with not dying which must definitly be because most are fully +1 geared now with def and all. Yet this dungeon was no fun before.
Sewers: I don’t see yet how a level 1 is manageable in time. Major problems, even with a fully-geared group. We only use 2 levers to have less running. I am 2nd or 3rd in damage, mostly.
The problem is, I am the healer, dmg comes from my musky poison !! The boss seems to heal itself before dmg dealers can bring down health. This group, except one player, played all tradu content up to lvl 7 before so we are not completely new or something.
So, yes, the threshhold on this dungeon I found really tough, no clue how we are supposed to get this done in time with a shaman and mages, some are experienced with running and casting, but others are not, the shaman is slowly thinkin leveling another class just for this. This fight quickly becomes way too lengthy, specially if you wipe only once in between and need to start over.
Crypt: We did not get to try this one seriously yet, with the (nearly) immunity phases on both bosses, plus wider distances to run to take out trash it does seem longer than broken halls, but doable.
The next real jump in difficulty seems to be from 3 to 4, which is fine, but not every low level shard, not even level 1s are accessible to fresh or unexperienced groups imo, for the named reasons.