Delverium Co-op

Scott Lowther has said Delverium started as a family co-op project. That origin is still visible in the Steam feature list: solo play, 4-player split-screen, 8-player online co-op with Steam friends, and the rare ability to run split-screen and online at the same time. Full controller support, rebinding, Steam Cloud, and Remote Play Together sit beside those caps. What does not sit beside them is an official dedicated server. This page is the multiplayer manual for the free demo (on Steam since February 2025) and for Early Access, which is scheduled for September 22, 2026.

If you are the person whose PC will stay on, read system requirements before you promise eight seats. If you are handing out pads, read controls. If nobody has a house yet, getting started still comes first. A lobby full of unarmed players in the dark is not co-op; it is a shared corpse run.

The world lives on the host

In stock Delverium, the world lives on one player’s machine and only while that player has the game open. Friends join through Steam. When the host sleeps, the farm sleeps. There is no official dedicated server on Sagestone’s roadmap. Third-party Lodestone hosting exists so a world can stay up without that host sitting in the chair. It is community infrastructure, not a Sagestone product. If you need that model, use the dedicated server page and never call a rented box “official.”

Practical host rules:

• The host should be the most stable PC on a wired connection, not the most enthusiastic player on Wi-Fi.
• The host is the person who must not alt-tab into a browser during a boss. Pause culture on split-screen can freeze everyone.
• Saves belong to that world. Do not assume a guest can take the homestead to their own menu. Characters may travel with players in some third-party setups; that is a Lodestone pitch, not the default Steam join.
• Steam Cloud will not host your friends. Cloud is for the account’s settings and progress, not a shadow server.

Invite Steam friends only. Public matchmaking is not the pitch. If someone cannot see the lobby, they are on the wrong Steam account, the host is offline, or an update mismatch landed — check the links hub and the Delverium Steam page for the build you are supposed to be on.

Delverium multiplayer gameplay trailer

Eight online, four on the couch, mix both

Caps, as Sagestone states them:

• 1 player — a complete game. You do not need friends to farm or delve.
• Up to 4 on one screen (split-screen / shared screen).
• Up to 8 in online co-op with Steam friends.
• Simultaneous split-screen + online — a couch group plus remote friends in the same world, still inside those caps.

Older store copy and older articles sometimes say “1–4” because the original demo was local. The multiplayer demo update in February 2026 is when 8-player online and the mixed mode were the headline. If a third-party co-op database still says combo play is unsupported, ignore it; the developer’s own list wins.

Split-screen is generous and it is visually expensive. Four HUDs, four hotbars, four ways to miss a door gap. Zoom out. Put the keyboard on the host so someone can place a legal NPC room (walls, door, bed, light) without fighting a stick. Pads get farming and combat. Remote Play Together can fill a pad slot for a friend who does not own the game, with the usual latency tax — fine for killing zombies, miserable for tiling a floor.

Online players should not “help” by opening the same chest the host is nesting a recipe from. Crafting pulls from nearby chests and skips a chest another player currently has open. Call the furnace. Call the ore. Craft one copper pickaxe, then the next.

Jobs that actually work in a group

Delverium is a sandbox, so groups fail by all doing the same verb. Assign lanes for the first hour:

• Builder — walls, door, beds, torches. Recruits the gatherer, blacksmith, agronomist, and merchant into separate rooms. See players.
• Gatherer — wood, straw, stone, copper. Drops it in the chest, does not wander to the coast “for two minutes.”
• Farmer — hoe, watering can, trough. Demo watering is lower-friction than Stardew, not optional. See farming.
• Delver — pickaxe, placed torches, a real weapon. Does not pull the whole lobby into a spectre nest. See dungeons.

Rotate after the first night so nobody is stuck as unpaid labor. Kids on the couch often want chickens; give them the pen (fence, gate, trough) and a gate they cannot lose. Adults who want Faults lore can take the cave once food exists.

Difficulty modifiers (playtests mentioned casual, harder, Horde, and Permadeath as things being tuned) should be a group vote. Permadeath is a terrible surprise for a four-year-old with a pad. Adjustable difficulty is listed on Steam; use it.

What co-op will not fix

It will not create an official 24/7 server. It will not keep crops watered while the host is at work, unless you pay a third party and accept that risk. It will not pause the Faults mystery into a raid lockout — there is no MMO calendar. It will not make nested crafting drop free loot on every player at once; someone still has to stand near the anvil.

It will let one person water while another mines, which is the reason this game exists. Jeff van Dyck’s score and the pixel farm are nicer when someone is laughing on the other half of the couch. That is also why binds matter: if interact and use are the same button, the farmer will hoe the blacksmith. Fix that before you advertise “family night.”

The embedded video is a multiplayer gameplay trailer, not a configuration tutorial. Use it to show hesitant friends the pace of a shared world, then send them the review if they still think they are downloading Stardew. For the two-year Early Access window, the price-rise warning, and extra biomes still to come, read Early Access notes. Rankings for “what the group should craft first” can wait on the tier list until you have died together once.

Host etiquette, last pass: announce when you are logging off. Snapshot a screenshot of the farm so people remember where the trough is. Leave the door closed. Leave a torch in each NPC room. When you come back, the world is where you left it — because you are the server.