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Multiplayer
April 26, 2026 at 12:15 AM
Content expansion (2026-04-26)
Don't Starve: Elsewhere supports both solo play and online co-op. The developer's marketing line sums it up plainly: gather your friends or go it alone. The same world, the same survival ruleset, and the same threats apply either way. For the broader project pitch, see the main overview, and for the underlying survival loop that all multiplayer activity sits on top of, see Survival Basics.
Two play modes have been confirmed and listed on the storefront. Specific party caps, host model, and persistence behavior have not been published yet.
Mode | Notes |
|---|---|
Solo | Single-player session with no other humans. The full survival loop, biomes, and Fog hazards are designed to be tackled alone if preferred. |
Online Co-op | Cooperative survival with other players over the internet. Resources gathered and bases built can be shared between teammates, with in-game chat used to coordinate. |
The Steam product page enumerates a small set of multiplayer-relevant features. These are the only items the storefront has formally tagged for the game so far.
Feature | What It Means |
|---|---|
Online Co-op | Play together with other people over the internet in a shared session. |
In-Game Chat | Built-in text chat lets a co-op group coordinate inside the game without needing a third-party app. |
Steam Family Sharing | Eligible household members on the same Steam account family can launch the game without buying a separate copy each, subject to the platform's standard family-sharing rules. |
Multi-Language Support | The product page lists support for several languages out of the box, useful for cross-region groups. |
Co-op is framed as cooperative survival rather than competitive play. A group works the same survival loop together, sharing resources and a base while splitting roles such as scouting, gathering, cooking, and defense. Hunger, sanity, and the falling and Fog hazards apply to every player individually, but the food, tools, and structures produced by any one player can support the rest of the group. See Survival Basics for the underlying mechanics that every co-op group has to manage.
Specifics about how a session is hosted, how many players one world can hold, what happens to a world when its host leaves, and whether progress carries between sessions have not been spelled out publicly yet. Treat any number quoted elsewhere as unconfirmed until the developer publishes it directly.
Klei has been explicit that Elsewhere is not a replacement for Don't Starve Together. The studio's stated position is that both games will have equal reasons to exist for a long while, and that Elsewhere is shaping up to be a very different experience. Don't Starve Together will continue to receive updates after Elsewhere ships.
Cosmetics, skins, and other unlocks earned in Don't Starve Together will not transfer to Elsewhere. The art style for the new game is built from the ground up, so prior cosmetic libraries do not carry over. No cross-progression has been announced between the two titles, and groups should plan to maintain separate save data for each.
Several common multiplayer questions do not yet have official answers. The list below tracks what has not been disclosed so that nothing on this page is mistaken for a confirmed feature.
Maximum party size for an online co-op session.
Whether dedicated server hosting will be supported, in addition to player-hosted sessions.
Drop-in and drop-out join behavior during an active session.
Whether co-op worlds persist when the host is offline, and how saves migrate between players.
Cross-progression or shared unlocks between solo and co-op characters.
Voice chat support inside the game itself.
Mod support, including any equivalent of Workshop integration for shared content.
This article will be updated as the developer publishes additional multiplayer details. For now, the safe assumption is that anything not listed in the Modes or Steam-Listed Features tables above has not been formally confirmed.