Going for a no companions run for my first playthrough, questions about difficulty.

[A Rhetorical Question]

Going for a totally solo run on my first playthrough,

I have experience with games like Underrail, Age Of Decadence was always pretty damn difficult though and I suspect going totally solo on this might be more so.

Does anyone have any ideas what would be good settings to start with?

Currently going with mostly default hero settings besides these:
Starting Equipment: Underdog
Accuracy Penality for enemies when below 50% health set to 40 instead of 80
Crit Chance Limit: Underdog.

Will this still be reasonably challenging solo? Or will it perhaps be too challenging?

[skaudus]

It all depends on how much trouble you get into and how well-attuned you get with the combat system.

You can very easily do a solo tech-sneak-speech playthrough. For the few fights you take, you can leverage the powerful consumables you'll find along the way.

Going for a solo murderhobo as your first playthrough will require you to become very intimate with a lot of mechanics -- you have to use every advantage you can muster, from consumables to positioning to feat choice.

You can finish the game without entering combat once (there are even achievements for it).

Regarding character creation, tagging any combination of civic skills and having not-minimum charisma will get you a very long way without thinking too much about metagaming.

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Starting with a Solo-run seems unnecessary hard.

You will find it easier to play smarter rather than harder very soon, which means reloading and more often than not starting over and trying out different paths is very common in this game.

The only thing you kind of want to make your mind up on, is how much of the Meta-Game you want to find out yourself (by replaying and starting over) vs reading on the Wiki and the forums.

I suggest, you just go for your first playthrough as long as it is fun, and feel free to start over when it no longer is. - Once you did your first playthrough, you will find that a new run can be done over a long weekend. - This is not like a Baldurs Gate 3 playthrough, where your time investment is on the order of weeks rather than days.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Originally posted by A Rhetorical Question:

Going for a totally solo run on my first playthrough,

I have experience with games like Underrail, Age Of Decadence was always pretty damn difficult though and I suspect going totally solo on this might be more so.

Does anyone have any ideas what would be good settings to start with?

Currently going with mostly default hero settings besides these:
Starting Equipment: Underdog
Accuracy Penality for enemies when below 50% health set to 40 instead of 80
Crit Chance Limit: Underdog.

Will this still be reasonably challenging solo? Or will it perhaps be too challenging?

The game is linear and you need to remember most events, most skill checks, what combat to do or avoid.
Its a super hard game even with companions so do your second run with a single companion and a spreadsheet.
Keep in mind there is no procedural encounters so even if you win lose resources its still a loss