Monk Took Book Co-op Guide: How Online Multiplayer Works

How many players can play together?

Four is the ceiling. The game is playable solo or in online co-op with up to three fellow monks joining you, which makes a full monastery crew of four. Everything runs through Steam — the game is a PC exclusive, so there is no platform-splitting to worry about when you pick co-op partners.

Because the core loop is built on shared memory of a shared library, co-op changes the game’s texture more than most sims: your filing system now lives in other people’s heads too. Groups that agree on shelving rules out loud tend to have a much better time than groups that assume the system is obvious.

How does difficulty work in co-op?

It scales. The official description confirms that co-op adjusts based on the number of players, so night defense and workload grow as the crew does. That scaling is what keeps a four-monk library from being trivially easy — more hands means more simultaneous shelving, deliveries and defense, not the same work divided four ways.

The exact knobs behind the scaling have not been published. Once they are documented (or tested), this section will be updated with real numbers rather than guesses.

What roles can players take?

Open ones, by design. The developers’ own framing on the Steam page is that in any good online co-op there is openness to the roles you can take, and the day loop naturally supports that: one monk can run dock hauls while another shelves, a third fields evening requests, and everyone turns out for night defense. Nothing in the official materials suggests hard-locked classes — division of labor is an agreement, not a menu.

Is solo play a full experience?

Yes — solo is not a degraded mode. The game is designed around it from the start, and the difficulty options (including reducing or disabling enemies) mean a solo player can tune the experience to taste. Several of the confirmed achievements, like completing the tutorial and finishing the sacred collection, are progression-based rather than group-based. Our beginner guide is written from the solo perspective and applies to your first co-op hours too.

What is still unverified about co-op?

Plenty, and we would rather say so than invent it. How session saving works with four players, whether progress is host-bound, how invite lobbies behave, and how the enemy-disable options interact with co-op sessions are all undocumented at the time of writing. One data point from a pre-launch playtest stream: joining through the Steam friends list failed for that group, and the in-game invite menu was what worked — with at least one player needing to rejoin mid-session. Treat that as history from an older build rather than a launch-day guide, but it is a fair hint that invites live in-game. These questions stay marked as open rather than guessed at — check back as the game’s first post-launch patches land.

For what happens when the sun goes down with four monks on the floor, the enemies guide lists what is confirmed about night defense, and the difficulty settings guide explains the official calm-mode options.