Combining intersecting polygons into one polygon using QGIS?

Question

I'm working in QGIS and I am a little bit of a newbie.

I have created a buffer from a points shapefile. I would like to combine intersecting polygons into one polygon to create a kind of "cluster" polygon. I have highlighted below the polygons I would like merged into one.

I understand there is a manual way of merging selected polygons into one but I have a rather large file and this method is not ideal in terms of time (See second photo for what I am trying to achieve).

I am not concerned about preserving all attributes, I solely want to have my "clusters" as one polygon, that being said I cannot use the dissolve tool because this combines ALL my polygons into a single object.

My points and polygons are located in Canda, therefore I am working in Canada_Albers_Equal_Area_Conic to ensure polygon sizes are accurate.

Answer 1

Run the the dissolve tool. This, as you say, makes a single multi-polygon. Then run the multi-part to single-part tool. This will give you single polygons as required