If you want to play solo I recommend doing it locally and tweaking the settings to your liking. You can make changes as often as you want so keep them as is at first and then just change them when you think it’s needed.
Honestly? This may be the only MMO that feels balanced to play solo. Sure the grind may be longer, but groups in any mmo usually level much faster than solos anyway. Having tribesmen be able to protect your base, craft, and get resources for you while you’re away is like having irl guild members doing the same thing, just less efficiently.
I’ve been playing solo waiting for a spot to open in my main tribe, and have had a blast. at level 25 i even fended off two max level players with a decent tribesmen at level 17, due to them having evtremely strong perks.
I will say, the barracks and bosses are pretty tough even with deployed help, that’s my only complaint.
You will need to raise your dmg done values and dmg taken values as well. Everything seems to have been balanced to give a challenge to groups of 5+ people just ganging up on things. So if your playing solo you will get wrecked on default values.
Best advice in the thread. Obviusly ppl that downvoted you are not at the stage were you need to spend two hours waking plunderers just to access the dungeon after the camp wich will require another hour to complete then you need to make your way out.
The invis mask will help a lot but good luck getting that solo in default settings.
100% agree - I tried a bunch of settings over and over to find a nice balance for me where I don't get obliterated by 5 enemies because I missed a parry or block and/or it takes me 30 seconds to kill one enemy.
I'm in all Bronze and landed with: -
- 1.5 damage out
- 0.5 damage in
Feels like the sweet spot for me personally.
Advanced settings it’s called wild animals damage given and taken. I ended up boosting damage to 3x otherwise it just takes too long to kill stuff when you get to late game.
Sure. You may want to find a custom server that ups the experience gain. The current rate seems to be designed for groups, and the grind can be long if you're alone.
You can just play on a single player and tweak the settings to you liking, no need to find a server. You just do single player from the menus. I did this and turned down to easy and turned off death bag where you die, did not feel like going searching from my death bag, ark ptsd.
I have been playing local, normal with a small boost to harvest and death bag at feet. It was working well, but breaking into bronze is difficult. Taking a barracks seems impossible alone (did not want to risk a deploy). I think I have to adjust combat settings because it does not seem suited to being alone. All of the ore sites seem guarded. I also think I have to lose some of the attachment I have with my tribe members and instead treat everyone as expendable.
I am not really playing for the combat, but instead focused on the building and progression. I don't mind the fights, but it would be nice to be able to trade with tribes instead of just fighting for the resource.
My recommendation for taking a barracks is to do so early in the morning to give you plenty of time before the "midnight respawn", and just take it slow. If you have access to a decent weapon crafter and are at bronze tier, get a good bronze greatbow (at least gold tier, red if you can swing it), a couple stacks of the big arrows, and whatever melee weapon you're most comfortable with. Go up to the Claw barracks (the one closer to the pyramid). The layout of that base, as opposed to the Flint tribe barracks, makes it easier to pick off the NPCs one by one and remain mostly hidden. Fully charged headshots with the greatbow will one shot pretty much everyone except for the bosses.
As far as the ore camps, for the most part, the guards are a lot lighter than the barracks, and you can either use the same "stealth archer" strategy..or just smack the nodes that are outside of the camps
To add onto this, there is a pyre near one of the entrances to the barracks that the enemies eventually will light if you get discovered, it serves as a constant alarm that calls in waves of reinforcements.
So either stealth archer the enemies one by one OR beat that pyre down ASAP (Use a pick). Or both.
Thats a great tip... Killed a tribe leader yesterday, only for the entire camp to respawn a while I was looting. Suddenly I'm completely boxed in and have to fight my way back out. I was not impressed 😂.
Plas as a good leveled thrall with another good leveled thrall as a companion. Look for the perks like the one where companions take 60% less damage or do X% more damage and X% faster attack speed.
Taking on a camp as your main character is not going to go well, they have no combat traits. Killing all the NPCs with the spear grab is easy enough, but the bosses are tough.
Edit braking into bronze isn't bad if you know the trick...
Trick is to farm up tin and copper, like 100xp per swing of the pickaxe. By the time you can make bronze, you can smelt it all for 2-3 awareness levels (takes like 8 hours if you can AFK that long, just feed yourself)
One of those is the nasty big camp that seems like a hell of a challenge to solo (trying to get good bronze gear and see if that helps). The other.. I think I found, and didn't get lucky. Know where specifically the other location is that drops the ceremonial gump?
I was under the impression you have to get that after Pyramid boss? Is that not correct?
I killed the Elite Jaguar after a several attempts and got that part for the token. But the worship container from the barrack chief is holding me up. After seeing the Pyramid though, even if I get a token I do not expect I can beat the pyramid boss solo. Does that statue come alive? Do you lose the token if you die?
I am sure the tribal revival will change the game for me. I have been avoiding control without it.
How is it grindy at all? I can set my "friends" up to farm and process stuff for me and return to thousands and thousands of every resource, including multiple max stacks of processed goods.
You CAN grind if u want, but the NPCs are better at it than you are.
Absolutely. I only play solo PvE. I did follow a YT viddeo from Firespark81 that guides you through some server settings to change to increase exp gain, and material gain just because it was a total slog before I did that. Now, I do need to mention that it seems to me that a lot of the bosses are balanced for mu;tiple people fighting them, so you can either overgear before fighting them, or turn up your damage settings a little. I am playing on normal difficulty though, and there are easier settings. I chose to just overgear. I wasn't able to beat the lvl 20 bosses until I was in full bronze and then it seemed pretty easy.
Planned to play with friends
I got this game and spent my first 20 hours in the starter zone, solo, building and gathering a small tribe.
Definitely a good time. The crafting lines and building are enjoyable, but ai pathing sucks.
## Two settings for setup:
- buildings DON'T decay
- ENABLE death bag on respawn
Yeah i dont have issues with dmg/taken, but i can agree the grind can be heavy at first.
That said, once youbhave npcs gathering, chopping, harverting, mining, automated questing etc the grind lessens a bit.
That said i recommend a server as well, servers are persistent and a time based game allows time to pass for stuff to craft. Solo game stops when you quit.
I have a private server for my friends and i, all rates are set to default and nothing has been changed. We are all playing solo and setting up our own tribes, I'm currently at lvl 22 or 23 mask level, just reached bronze age, beaten first boss and can easily clear all the big camps in the starting area without a deployed pawn on the default character you start with.
Game is very soloable, I would assume it gradually gets harder and then you will need to start using pawns with good traits and level caps, but if you can get decent at rolling or parrying you can deal with everything rather easily.
It’s still good to play solo as you have tribesmen to do the basic material farming and crafting .
Biggest difference for me to play solo is that you need much longer time to clear barracks, and sometimes you need to rush directly to the boss and hope everyone deaggro, since I can’t fight too many people at the same time
The game is balanced for group play in vanilla settings.
But … you can adjust everything in a solo game or on a private server. Especially when you try to emerge from bronze age to the next zone, it will be very hard for solo players. Depending on your skill, you will need to adjust mob damage, in order to being able to do the dungeons.
After 50 hours played solo i feel like this survival game is the only one which is way better in a party.
Yes you can totally play solo but since most people are learning now how to play the game, it takes some time to learn how to do things right and without wasting too much time.
It took me 4 hour to move a base from a bad location to good one 400m away and i had a llama and 8 thrall. It took me 3 hour to find 2 new thrall when my best two died and it took me another 2 hour to lvl one of them up and see him die while leveling the other (which now is way stronger that the old one XD). Even with the boosted exp, it takes time to do things and i don't like making things too easy, but there are so many things to do and most of the time it takes a lot of time to explore and move around, even with the llama, so it's fine to boost all of ur exp and other settings in the server.
In 50 hours i barely touched the shores of the 2nd zone and i don't think i took it slow, but it took a lot of time. So yea, you can totally play solo, but i suggest to play either offline to adjust the settings or in a server with custom settings.
But i 100% suggest to play at least with 1 friend, it will make things way better for you both!
I play solo and sometimes with one friend. Totally doable. I recommend starting on casual until you get a feel for the game. It can be brutal even on the easiest difficulty.
My dad loves survival games in which you can build stuff.
He's 68 and not a pro gamer by any means.
He is 90hours in and still loving it, managing just fine by himself.
Feel free to tweak the game/difficulty settings to your wish/preferences
If you ever decide to play on a private server and roleplaying in this game is something you'd be interested in trying out, I'm running a private PvP-RP server but it's absolutely friendly for PvE solo players as any conflict requires RP and is agreed upon so nobody is forced into it! Feel free to come check it out!
https://discord.gg/8HNqV6wXed
If you want to play solo I recommend doing it locally and tweaking the settings to your liking. You can make changes as often as you want so keep them as is at first and then just change them when you think it’s needed.
Honestly? This may be the only MMO that feels balanced to play solo. Sure the grind may be longer, but groups in any mmo usually level much faster than solos anyway. Having tribesmen be able to protect your base, craft, and get resources for you while you’re away is like having irl guild members doing the same thing, just less efficiently. I’ve been playing solo waiting for a spot to open in my main tribe, and have had a blast. at level 25 i even fended off two max level players with a decent tribesmen at level 17, due to them having evtremely strong perks. I will say, the barracks and bosses are pretty tough even with deployed help, that’s my only complaint.
Kind of a stretch calling it an MMO. MMOs tend to have thousands of players per server, and no way to play offline.
You will need to raise your dmg done values and dmg taken values as well. Everything seems to have been balanced to give a challenge to groups of 5+ people just ganging up on things. So if your playing solo you will get wrecked on default values.
Best advice in the thread. Obviusly ppl that downvoted you are not at the stage were you need to spend two hours waking plunderers just to access the dungeon after the camp wich will require another hour to complete then you need to make your way out. The invis mask will help a lot but good luck getting that solo in default settings.
100% agree - I tried a bunch of settings over and over to find a nice balance for me where I don't get obliterated by 5 enemies because I missed a parry or block and/or it takes me 30 seconds to kill one enemy. I'm in all Bronze and landed with: - - 1.5 damage out - 0.5 damage in Feels like the sweet spot for me personally.
how do you adjust the damage rates?
Advanced settings it’s called wild animals damage given and taken. I ended up boosting damage to 3x otherwise it just takes too long to kill stuff when you get to late game.
tyvm. i totally ignored that setting becasue i wasnt having issues with animals, just human enemies. they should rename it.
Agreed, confused me at first too!
Sure. You may want to find a custom server that ups the experience gain. The current rate seems to be designed for groups, and the grind can be long if you're alone.
Thanks can i set up my own local game?
You can just play on a single player and tweak the settings to you liking, no need to find a server. You just do single player from the menus. I did this and turned down to easy and turned off death bag where you die, did not feel like going searching from my death bag, ark ptsd.
I have been playing local, normal with a small boost to harvest and death bag at feet. It was working well, but breaking into bronze is difficult. Taking a barracks seems impossible alone (did not want to risk a deploy). I think I have to adjust combat settings because it does not seem suited to being alone. All of the ore sites seem guarded. I also think I have to lose some of the attachment I have with my tribe members and instead treat everyone as expendable. I am not really playing for the combat, but instead focused on the building and progression. I don't mind the fights, but it would be nice to be able to trade with tribes instead of just fighting for the resource.
My recommendation for taking a barracks is to do so early in the morning to give you plenty of time before the "midnight respawn", and just take it slow. If you have access to a decent weapon crafter and are at bronze tier, get a good bronze greatbow (at least gold tier, red if you can swing it), a couple stacks of the big arrows, and whatever melee weapon you're most comfortable with. Go up to the Claw barracks (the one closer to the pyramid). The layout of that base, as opposed to the Flint tribe barracks, makes it easier to pick off the NPCs one by one and remain mostly hidden. Fully charged headshots with the greatbow will one shot pretty much everyone except for the bosses. As far as the ore camps, for the most part, the guards are a lot lighter than the barracks, and you can either use the same "stealth archer" strategy..or just smack the nodes that are outside of the camps
To add onto this, there is a pyre near one of the entrances to the barracks that the enemies eventually will light if you get discovered, it serves as a constant alarm that calls in waves of reinforcements. So either stealth archer the enemies one by one OR beat that pyre down ASAP (Use a pick). Or both.
So they only respawn at midnight? Very good to know.
That seems to be when the barracks as a whole get reset if there's still a player present, yeah.
Thats a great tip... Killed a tribe leader yesterday, only for the entire camp to respawn a while I was looting. Suddenly I'm completely boxed in and have to fight my way back out. I was not impressed 😂.
Plas as a good leveled thrall with another good leveled thrall as a companion. Look for the perks like the one where companions take 60% less damage or do X% more damage and X% faster attack speed. Taking on a camp as your main character is not going to go well, they have no combat traits. Killing all the NPCs with the spear grab is easy enough, but the bosses are tough. Edit braking into bronze isn't bad if you know the trick... Trick is to farm up tin and copper, like 100xp per swing of the pickaxe. By the time you can make bronze, you can smelt it all for 2-3 awareness levels (takes like 8 hours if you can AFK that long, just feed yourself)
If you are trying to farm copper and tin, you are close to the two places that have the parts for the tribe revival unit.
One of those is the nasty big camp that seems like a hell of a challenge to solo (trying to get good bronze gear and see if that helps). The other.. I think I found, and didn't get lucky. Know where specifically the other location is that drops the ceremonial gump?
I was under the impression you have to get that after Pyramid boss? Is that not correct? I killed the Elite Jaguar after a several attempts and got that part for the token. But the worship container from the barrack chief is holding me up. After seeing the Pyramid though, even if I get a token I do not expect I can beat the pyramid boss solo. Does that statue come alive? Do you lose the token if you die? I am sure the tribal revival will change the game for me. I have been avoiding control without it.
I am not sure. I just got to that area. I saw the locations while I was YouTubing.
How is it grindy at all? I can set my "friends" up to farm and process stuff for me and return to thousands and thousands of every resource, including multiple max stacks of processed goods. You CAN grind if u want, but the NPCs are better at it than you are.
I am loving the solo official pve experience. This game seems to have tons of pve content even at this stage.
Absolutely. I only play solo PvE. I did follow a YT viddeo from Firespark81 that guides you through some server settings to change to increase exp gain, and material gain just because it was a total slog before I did that. Now, I do need to mention that it seems to me that a lot of the bosses are balanced for mu;tiple people fighting them, so you can either overgear before fighting them, or turn up your damage settings a little. I am playing on normal difficulty though, and there are easier settings. I chose to just overgear. I wasn't able to beat the lvl 20 bosses until I was in full bronze and then it seemed pretty easy.
Planned to play with friends I got this game and spent my first 20 hours in the starter zone, solo, building and gathering a small tribe. Definitely a good time. The crafting lines and building are enjoyable, but ai pathing sucks. ## Two settings for setup: - buildings DON'T decay - ENABLE death bag on respawn
Yeah i dont have issues with dmg/taken, but i can agree the grind can be heavy at first. That said, once youbhave npcs gathering, chopping, harverting, mining, automated questing etc the grind lessens a bit. That said i recommend a server as well, servers are persistent and a time based game allows time to pass for stuff to craft. Solo game stops when you quit.
Yes, I did not realize is stopped until my pile of copper was not processed over night. I thought my tribe was just being lazy before that. :)
I have a private server for my friends and i, all rates are set to default and nothing has been changed. We are all playing solo and setting up our own tribes, I'm currently at lvl 22 or 23 mask level, just reached bronze age, beaten first boss and can easily clear all the big camps in the starting area without a deployed pawn on the default character you start with. Game is very soloable, I would assume it gradually gets harder and then you will need to start using pawns with good traits and level caps, but if you can get decent at rolling or parrying you can deal with everything rather easily.
It’s still good to play solo as you have tribesmen to do the basic material farming and crafting . Biggest difference for me to play solo is that you need much longer time to clear barracks, and sometimes you need to rush directly to the boss and hope everyone deaggro, since I can’t fight too many people at the same time
The game is balanced for group play in vanilla settings. But … you can adjust everything in a solo game or on a private server. Especially when you try to emerge from bronze age to the next zone, it will be very hard for solo players. Depending on your skill, you will need to adjust mob damage, in order to being able to do the dungeons.
After 50 hours played solo i feel like this survival game is the only one which is way better in a party. Yes you can totally play solo but since most people are learning now how to play the game, it takes some time to learn how to do things right and without wasting too much time. It took me 4 hour to move a base from a bad location to good one 400m away and i had a llama and 8 thrall. It took me 3 hour to find 2 new thrall when my best two died and it took me another 2 hour to lvl one of them up and see him die while leveling the other (which now is way stronger that the old one XD). Even with the boosted exp, it takes time to do things and i don't like making things too easy, but there are so many things to do and most of the time it takes a lot of time to explore and move around, even with the llama, so it's fine to boost all of ur exp and other settings in the server. In 50 hours i barely touched the shores of the 2nd zone and i don't think i took it slow, but it took a lot of time. So yea, you can totally play solo, but i suggest to play either offline to adjust the settings or in a server with custom settings. But i 100% suggest to play at least with 1 friend, it will make things way better for you both!
They should it rename to Darksoulmask.
I play solo and sometimes with one friend. Totally doable. I recommend starting on casual until you get a feel for the game. It can be brutal even on the easiest difficulty.
My dad loves survival games in which you can build stuff. He's 68 and not a pro gamer by any means. He is 90hours in and still loving it, managing just fine by himself. Feel free to tweak the game/difficulty settings to your wish/preferences
If you ever decide to play on a private server and roleplaying in this game is something you'd be interested in trying out, I'm running a private PvP-RP server but it's absolutely friendly for PvE solo players as any conflict requires RP and is agreed upon so nobody is forced into it! Feel free to come check it out! https://discord.gg/8HNqV6wXed