I have 7 wins and well over 100 parties taken at least as far as Arnika. One of those wins was in ironman and one was on "hard" difficulty. Yeah, I've tried it.

The slave drivers here (looking at you, Corwin) were trying to harass me into doing a solo faerie ninja in ironman, but I didn't get far. Half the fun of Wiz8 is the interaction of the skills among a party, so a solo run is a little too much like work for me.