Playing Solo
How single-player works — your AI companion, the difficulty scaling, and how to survive the forest alone.
You're not alone by default
The Mound is built around co-op, but it fully supports solo play. Start an expedition on your own and the game hands you an AI-controlled companion with a preset loadout — someone to draw fire, revive you when you go down, and give you a second pair of hands in the jungle. You get a partner to lean on while the forest works on your mind.
The difficulty scales to your headcount
Contracts and enemy pressure adapt to the number of human players in the party. A solo run isn't a four-player expedition you're expected to clear alone — the objectives, spawns, and loot thresholds scale down to a one-player squad. Going in by yourself is a genuine, supported way to play, not a self-imposed hard mode.
Directing your companion
You steer the AI partner with gestures rather than a menu. The key call is telling it when to go loud: you can order it to switch between its quiet weapons and a firearm. The gun is more effective in a fight but far noisier — and noise wakes the forest. Keep the companion on silent weapons for routine clearing and only call for the rifle when a fight genuinely demands it.
Going truly alone
If you want the purest test, you can disable the AI companion entirely in the options. Expect it to be substantially harder — no one to revive you, no one to split aggro, and, tellingly, no one to confirm whether what you're seeing is real. With sanity in play, a second set of eyes is worth more than the extra firepower. Ease into solo with the companion on before you try switching it off.
Solo survival tips
- Keep the companion nearby — separating from your only ally accelerates sanity loss just as it would with a human teammate
- Leave the companion on silent weapons; only order the firearm when a fight is unavoidable
- Lean on backstabs and melee to keep noise down, since you have no one to bail you out of a forest awakening
- Extract earlier than you would in a full squad — one downed player with no reviver ends the run
- Stack the ox-wagon with loot as you go so a single death doesn't cost your whole haul
A note on scope
The deeper, more demanding contracts are designed with a full crew in mind, and solo play gets progressively steeper as the game opens up. You can absolutely run the early and mid tiers alone; just treat the toughest Legendary and Portal work as co-op-first content and don't read a solo wall there as you doing something wrong.