Stonewards Multiplayer: Co-op Rules, Party Size, Joining

Four players, and that is the cap

Straight from the developer’s pinned FAQ thread on Steam, posted by Banana Tiger Studio on August 11, 2026:

“You can play solo or with up to 3 friends for a max party of 4 players.”

That is the whole answer to the most common Stonewards multiplayer question, and it rules out the ones underneath it. There is no five-player option, no host setting, no lobby size slider. Steam lists the game under Multi-player, Co-op and Online Co-op.

Players do search for ways around it — “more than 4 players”, “more players mod” — and community mods do exist, but nothing official raises the cap. See mods for what that scene actually contains.

You cannot join a run in progress

This is the second thing to know, and it catches groups out. There is an open Steam thread titled “Why can’t we join sessions in progress?”, and nothing in the patch record from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8 adds join-in-progress. Assemble the party before you start the mission.

Two related requests are also live and unanswered on the forum: Hotjoin Friends and an in-game chat.

Progression is shared — since August 12

Early co-op had a serious progression bug, and it is worth checking whether you were affected. Before Hotfix 0.1.3, progression in multiplayer was awarded only to the host. That patch fixed three things at once:

Map unlocks are now correctly shared
Character unlocks are now correctly shared
Mission progression is now correctly tracked for connected players

If you played co-op on August 11 as a guest, those first-day runs earned you nothing. A forum thread — “Guest unlocking in response to the host unlocking?” — is exactly this question.

The AFK problem, fixed in two steps

The end-of-wave upgrade window used to be a hostage situation. The studio fixed it across two patches:

Version	Change
0.1.7	60-second timer on multiplayer upgrade selections, with auto-select when time runs out
0.1.8	After everyone has picked, the game stays paused until any player presses Continue

The 0.1.8 note is explicit that both mechanisms run together, “so one AFK player can’t block the run indefinitely”, and equally explicit that this is “a temporary solution for now” while the studio keeps improving multiplayer pause options.

Co-op bugs the studio has already fixed

Worth knowing which of your bad co-op experiences were the game rather than your connection:

Version	Fix
0.1.3	A client’s current health could exceed their updated maximum health, overflowing the health bar
0.1.4	Enemy health bars could overflow for clients during Infinite Waves
0.1.4	Digging textures could appear differently between players
0.1.8	Hitting teammates could trigger Life on Crit healing — an exploit, now closed
0.1.8	Dying while dancing or emoting could leave player input blocked after revival
0.1.8	A player disconnecting while being revived on a Bed could leave the Bed permanently unusable
0.1.8	Damage numbers could fail to appear for some attacks in multiplayer

Reviving a teammate is its own topic — how reviving works.

What Stonewards does not have

No crossplay. It is a Windows-only Steam game with no other platform to cross to — see platform status.
No split screen. There is an open forum thread asking for it; nothing official supports it.
No dedicated servers. Nothing in the store listing or the patch notes mentions server infrastructure, and there is no server status to report.
No in-game chat. Requested on the forum, not shipped.

Playing solo

Solo is a first-class option, not a fallback. Steam lists Single-player as a category and the store copy says: “Rally the crew or go full lone-dwarf. Whether you fight alone or with up to three friends, the monsters are coming either way.” The one thing you give up is reviving, which requires a teammate to carry you.

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