Solo play

[Dirich]

Is there any advantage to solo play?
In some games exp is shared across the party, so the fewer characters you have, the faster you progress. On the other hand in this game it really looks like it doens't matter as you have so many characters (the ones not in the party are clearly getting the exp too), hence I don't see a point in kicking them when you play solo. On the other hand you don't get extra exp if you solo play, so it's strictly a harder playmode.

[Conquista]

you can deactivate exp sharing for everyone outside your current party in your options

[Wormlore]

You can get more XP with the right options. They don't even impact the difficulty rating despite being in the difficulty menu.

You still need to bring specific companions on certain quest locations. (e.g. Nenio for the Nameless Ruins.) Given that you have much to gain in some of these locations, it's always worth doing, even if you have to temporarily share XP with one companion.

There is no other benefit that I can think of.
Played right, you can hit level 20 by the end of chapter 3 / early chapter 4. Not much benefit staying solo after this, aside from the challenge... or the Swarm path.

[greckoboy]

If you select the option that only active party members earn xp, and you play solo, you will get 6x the xp while everyone else gets none. If you play with 2 party members in total, you'll get 3x the xp, etc. The game will display xp differently if the option is switched on - it will show total xp (prior to dividing among party members), as opposed to already divided by 6 if all companions are set to earn xp.

Also, do note that if you have the option on (i.e. only active party members earn xp) when a companion joins you for the first time, he/she will join at the minimum level, but if the option is switched off (as late as the end dialog button before they join in most cases) they will join at whatever greater level you are currently at.

You can abuse this by switching off the option just before any companions joins, and keep it on for the rest and spend the rest of the time playing solo and maximising your xp.

There will be a point in the game (mid chapter 2) when you will be forced to go looking for your companions and it will be like when they joined you for the first time. If you play solo as much as you can up to they point, you can get yourself and all your companions at like 2-3 levels higher what it would have been otherwise.

There are quite a lot of builds that can play solo on core and below. I even did it once with a bow user where I managed to get point blank shot just before reaching the kenabres main square. I'd say my main issue was passing all those skill checks with only 1 character.

[Wormlore]

Originally posted by greckoboy:

I'd say my main issue was passing all those skill checks with only 1 character.

All the more annoying when you might not get the number of skill points you're supposed to get. (Bug on skill point calculation if you have high intelligence and/or rely on stacked human-raised half-orc traits.)