Stonewards Solo Guide: Best Classes & Survival Tips

Last verified: September 24, 2026 — Game version: Stonewards Early Access 0.2.2 hotfix on top of 0.2.0 “Later Summer” (current). Facts come from official Steam sources and verified player reports.

Stonewards supports solo play. The Steam store page lists single-player as a supported mode, and Demo Update 0.1.8 confirmed that time is frozen during solo runs when you are not in combat. That said, the game is tuned for co-op, and community feedback says some classes struggle more than others when playing alone.

Is Stonewards Solo Friendly?

Yes, but with caveats. You can queue into a mission alone and complete the full mining-defense loop. However, you have to cover every role yourself: mining, repairing, crafting, and killing. Mercenaries hired in the Hub (0.2.0) take some of the fighting off your hands — see below — but gathering, repairing and crafting still fall on you, so a balanced build matters more than in co-op.

Best Solo Classes

Class	Solo rating	Why
Warrior	Strong	High melee damage and survivability make wave clearing reliable
Miner	Strong	Fast resource gathering keeps your economy moving
Hunter	Viable	Companion can hold a lane while you mine or repair
Archer	Harder	Long charge times leave you exposed without a teammate covering
Mage	Harder	Spell charges are slow and risky when enemies swarm

These ratings come from community feedback, not official tier lists. Early Access balance may shift with future patches.

Solo-Specific Mechanics

Demo Update 0.1.8 fixed time being frozen during solo runs. This means you can pause the action while planning repairs and upgrades, which makes solo play more manageable than it would be otherwise. Use that time to organize your inventory and decide which walls to repair first.

Mercenaries: The Solo Answer (0.2.0–0.2.2)

The Later Summer update added Mercenaries, and the developer positions them as especially useful for solo players. You hire them in the Hub before a run and they fight alongside you for that run.

Two follow-up patches made the hired help and pets worth a second look:

• 0.2.2 made their kills pay. Enemies killed by mercenaries or ballistas can now drop Gold for all players, so base defenses and hired help feed your economy instead of just holding the line.
• Companions changed in 0.2.2 too. Companions can deal Critical Hits, their kills can drop Gold, enemy projectiles now hit them correctly, and they no longer chase enemies outside the playable battle area — that last one is the case where a pet ran off and died somewhere you could not reach it to revive.

If you play Hunter solo, a companion plus a hired mercenary is the closest thing Stonewards offers to a second player.

Solo Build Tips

• Prioritize health and self-sustain upgrades. You have no one to revive you.
• Take mining speed early. You cannot split duties with a partner.
• Do not ignore wall toughness. A single breach ends the run.
• Avoid all-in ranged builds unless you are comfortable kiting.
• Keep spare arrows crafted before the horn sounds.

Common Solo Mistakes

• Over-mining and missing the horn.
• Spending everything on damage and running out of repair resources.
• Trying to face-tank large groups instead of using choke points.

If you prefer playing with others, our multiplayer guide explains how co-op and matchmaking work.

From Community Gameplay

Footage of live Early Access runs adds several solo-specific observations:

• Solo is an official mode, not an afterthought. One walkthrough describes the loop the same way whether you play alone or with friends: “you have to work together or solo to defend the walls and survive the night” (community gameplay, 00:45).
• Treat the opening tunnels like a commute. Rather than emptying the first cave, one player got through the early tunnels quickly to reach the pink-layer rooms where the better ore and chests spawn (community gameplay, 01:45).
• Death costs the whole run. “If you die you lose all the progress you made,” which makes solo defense mistakes twice as punishing as in co-op (community gameplay, 08:06).
• Chests are findable by sound. Treasure rooms make a faint jingling or glittering noise behind the rock, which is especially useful when you have no teammate to scout a second tunnel (community gameplay, 02:05; 02:26).
• Your ring slots are limited to four. One solo player confirmed “I can only have four rings,” so choose the four effects that cover your weak spots instead of stacking one stat (community gameplay, 02:32).
• The timer is your only teammate. The wave countdown is always visible at the top of the screen, and solo players have to check it themselves between pickaxe swings (community gameplay, 00:59).

Sources

• The Boys are Dwarves (community gameplay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-XuIMMYeW8
• Official Steam store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4502710/
• Official Steam announcements hub: https://steamcommunity.com/games/4502710/announcements/
• Steam Community discussions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4502710/discussions/

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