is having a squad manatory to make this doable?

played it completely solo your all good

Definitely, after more than 1k hours put into it, I'd estimate maybe 35-40% of those hours were with a friend or two, and most of my 'wow' moments happened on my own when I was free to build and explore as I wanted to on my own.

All my friends suck a$$ so I've only played solo. It's great fun, but I'd imagine it gets way better in a group

Game difficulty is balanced well for solo play. No worries, you may need to play a bit more carefully because no one is there to cover for you, but it isn't like Remnant where things like the boss agro make it so you need more people. It is fairly easy going, and if you get stuck there are plenty of people on the forums that can give you good advice.

No, solo is a miserable hell, hence why I have nearly 200 hours solo. Self loathing.

Solo is completely fine. I find it relaxing because I can go at my own pace and have no ones terrible eyesores excuses for buildings are screwing up my camps. (only my own terrible eyesores)
You do have to be cautious since there is no one to bail you out. Dying hurts (5% skill loss) along with trying to figure out how to get your gear back. So play careful. Valheim rewards patience and preparation not rushing in blindly.
Collecting materials for crafting isn't any worse as you just need mats for yourself no one else and 90% of materials go into gear.

After I got to bronze level, I found that greydwarvess were basically a walkover. Obviously you need to feed up first to have a reasonable health and stamina pool, but a typical attack by a shaman, a brute, and 2-3 lesser dwarves should be little trouble. A bronze axe will decimate them easily.

shaman farts and then can't do anything for a while. He heals the others, so doing a little damage to them can be a strategy to distract it, but he will undo anything short of death on the others.
that means your best bet is to play in & out with the shaman to get him to do the toxic gas attack and then once that is done he can't do it again for a while so you rush him and kill him. Then mop up the others.

if you get a brute/shaman pair, the shaman is still the focus but you may want to simply run away. Its perfectly fine to run away from stuff you can't handle.

-> anything unaware of you takes a lot more damage from that first bow hit from stealth.
-> honey is really nice to heal up any damage you take in combat at the low levels.
-> shaman will ninja you even at high levels. That one time you forgot to eat and pay attention, bam, death by toxic gas. They are the most dangerous thing in the forest because they will blindside you without as much warning.

kiting, dodging, weedling down one or two hits at a time.

Simultaneous block the brutes for a window to act.
Run attack greys to knock them back.
Roll dodge forwards to the shamans flank when the poison cloud animation starts.

If there is only 1 shaman you will out damage the healing if your aggressive.

I started playing yesterday, don't know anything about the game. Reached that are and built a house. Shaman dies from 3 arrows, I thinks brutes as well. The others take 2 arrows. Running away is also easy, I even entered another area and defeated a much harder creature along with them. Melee would be dangerous though.

You gear up and kill them in 2-3 hits with level appropriate weapons. Brute should be dodged, shaman focused down first. Start in with the bow if possible, fire arrows do wonders against tree people.
Make sure you are well fed and rested for the buffs to regen and stamina.
Multiplayer buffs the enemies so its only easier in regards to someone can play a tank roll while someone else does a dps focus, and you can rotate if you are coordinated.

Make some good food, potions, upgrade your gear and you should be fine, first bronze tool I would advice to get is the axe since you can unlock better wood for a good bow, then pickaxe, if you have problem with greydwarves you should avoid venturing black forest at night or make much noise like mining and wood cutting

Originally posted by Cheesus:

I started playing yesterday, don't know anything about the game. Reached that are and built a house. Shaman dies from 3 arrows, I thinks brutes as well. The others take 2 arrows. Running away is also easy, I even entered another area and defeated a much harder creature along with them. Melee would be dangerous though.

i been fighting them melee with my spear. i just tried arrows on a non star brute and it took 5 which can be a problem when you got multiple enemies coming at you lol

Originally posted by Trickst3r:

Make some good food, potions, upgrade your gear and you should be fine, first bronze tool I would advice to get is the axe since you can unlock better wood for a good bow, then pickaxe, if you have problem with greydwarves you should avoid venturing black forest at night or make much noise like mining and wood cutting

Yeah i figured it might be my gear. i have a spear and leather armor lol i just wanted to check how doable it is for solo players.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Jump on a tall boulder and shoot them with your bow. Use terrain to your advantage.

BTW, don't waste time on bronze on armor. Troll armor offers almost the same protection without slowing you down and doesn't require the copper/tin heavy grind. It makes the early game a lot less of a grind to know this. Bronze is the worst metal to grind thanks to needing 2 copper/1 tin per bronze.

You can totally play it by yourself but everything takes tremendously longer with only a single person.

Enemies do have less HP when solo (+40% per additional player) but you will also not be able to play as aggressively or capitalise on stagger bonuses as frequently.

All aspects will just be slower than is possible with extra people.
Every person multiplies the number of goods that can be moved at a time, and portal linking requires more planning with only yourself to set up each end.