I´ve only played DKS, but I know that one major change from Ego Draconis was that all but one anti-dragon zones were removed from these. Probably in relation to this, it´s very straightforward to get to the boss quarters - just find the teleporter and drop into it and I´d advise everyone to approach these areas in this manner (plus maybe dragon drop on chests), otherwise (judging by me almost clearing just one of these) it would very likely severely hurt the overall pacing and cause disconnection from the rest of the game. Basically go through them as quickly as possible, experience farming in these is meaningless anyway due to how the experience system works.
As I´ve probably already written elsewhere, BV plus just one, more detailed fortress would be enough imo.