Yes. Pick any raid with a leaf icon, select Isolated Raid (PvE), and nobody else can enter. No squads, no third-parties, no one waiting at the extraction.
That covers thirteen of the nineteen raids. Five are PvPvE-only by design, two are PvE-only, and two of the daily objective tiers stay locked unless you go Open. What replaces the players is worse on some maps than the players were. Here is the whole list, what the mode locks out, and why the "Isolated Raid Passes" the wikis keep mentioning are not in the game. Checked on builds 0.4.0.148 and 0.4.0.156 (25 and 27 September 2026).
The short answer
Gaijin's FAQ asks "Can I play only solo PvE or cooperative PvE and avoid fighting other players?" and answers "Yes. We designed the game so that you can choose whichever format you are most comfortable with." It adds the part the wikis skip: "Some locations are intended exclusively for PvPvE, some for PvP, and some exclusively for PvE."
In the game, the mode is a tab on the deploy panel. Hover it and you get the whole rule:
"Only you (or your group) can enter the raid. No interference from other players. Contracts and quests can be completed as usual."
"Your group" is up to two people you invite. There's no matchmaking on Isolated at all: the Matchmaking mode and Auto-fill squad controls only appear when Open Raid is selected. A PvE raid is you, or you and the people you brought.
How to start a PvE raid
- Open the Missions Terminal in your shelter.
- Pick a raid whose entry shows a leaf. Crossed swords are Open; leaf and swords together means both modes exist.
- Select the Isolated Raid (PvE) tab above the squad seats.
- If the raid has variants, step through Raid variant with the arrows, or leave the Rotation toggle on.
- Invite up to two squadmates, or don't.
- Loadout check & deploy.
Isolated raids are always open. Gaijin's developer Q&A: "All existing Isolated Raids, including their variants, can be played anytime." Open raids rotate on a schedule. PvE never waits for a countdown.
The 13 raids you can play in PvE
The terminal lists nineteen raids across three regions, and the icons are the answer.
- Both modes (11): Shegolskoe (variants Distortion and Overgrowth), Factory (Hive), Park, Ozernoe (Overgrowth), Cargo Port (Darkness), Military Base: Silent Observers, Dogorsk, Dam, Downtown, Headquarters, Airport.
- PvE only (2): Escape from Dogorsk, Downtown: Collapse. Their Open button reads "Only Available as Isolated".
- Open only (5), never PvE: Scrapyard: Midnight, Gigastructure, Military Base: Unstable Zone, Downtown: Unstable Zone, Headquarters: Unstable Zone. Their Isolated button reads "Not Available as Isolated".
- Not yet playable: Epicenter. "Raid will be available in future updates."
The five Open-only raids are a design position, not a gap Gaijin is filling. From the Q&A: "We believe that some raid designs simply aren't well-suited to certain modes. We do plan to expand the areas available for exploration, but this won't include making Unstable Zone modes playable in Isolated Raids, for example."
So a PvE-only player never sees the three Unstable Zones (Survive raids: outlast a collapsing zone, leave through a portal), never runs Gigastructure's Fragment research chain, and never sees Scrapyard at midnight. Every map and every region is yours. Five raids on them are not.
What PvE locks out
The other cost is on the objectives panel, and the game marks it with padlocks.
- Qualified Field Work and High-Value Operations, two of the daily Primary Objectives, are locked in Isolated. Their own text says it: "Complete Agent operative objectives during the Open Raid."
- Active Matter Collection, Baseline Compliance and Priority Raid all work in Isolated. So do the rotating Operative Objectives and the Investigations cases. That's what "Contracts and quests can be completed as usual" means.
- Hired Ops and Faction Battles, below the raid list, are team PvP. A PvE player skips them and loses nothing they wanted.
Progression holds up. The Monolith's gates are extractions, and Beta asks for one on Shegolskoe, Factory and Airport: all three have Isolated modes. Monolith Tokens come from objectives in both modes, but Open pays more of them and pays the two locked tiers on top. In the early version a full daily sweep paid about 14,300 tokens against about 11,000 for Isolated only. PvE is the slower climb, not a dead end. We haven't checked every gate above Beta for an Open-only requirement; if one exists, it goes here.
What's in the zone instead of players
An Isolated raid removes the other squads and nothing else. The pre-deploy map's icon strip tells you what's left: Turned Soldiers, Distorted, Invisible, Hellhounds, Flowermen, Dendroids, and anomalies that bend light and physics and are a route problem, not a fight. How to spot and beat each one is in our Active Matter monsters guide.
How many of them is the game's most argued-about setting. The most-replied thread on the Steam forums asks the developers to reduce the monster count, and on some maps a dozen converging on one building is not an exaggeration.
Two patches moved it. The Fundamental Protocol on 24 September made Flowermen slightly tougher but "turn slightly more slowly and predictably," and added Dendroid spawns to Headquarters, Cargo Port and Dogorsk. Update 0.4.0.156 on 26 September raised the Active Matter some monsters drop: 3 to 4 times from Shy Girls and about 10 times from Alpha Mimics and Alpha Flowermen. The Alphas went from a fight to avoid to a fight worth taking.
The extraction rates are the honest measure. From the terminal on 25 September:
| Raid | Isolated | Open |
|---|---|---|
| Military Base: Silent Observers | 85% | 43% |
| Factory | 82% | 36% |
| Park | 82% | 52% |
| Shegolskoe | 76% | 36% |
| Airport | 76% | 43% |
| Headquarters | 66% | |
| Escape from Dogorsk | 11% | Not available |
| Downtown: Collapse | 3% | Not available |
Removing players roughly doubles a squad's odds on the same map. It does nothing for the two PvE-only raids, which are the two hardest in the game: Escape from Dogorsk is one device carried to one tunnel extraction across a map covered in creature markers, and Downtown: Collapse is a beacon defence with a 250-kill clearing objective. Pure PvE has a hard mode. It's just not other people.
Isolated Raid Passes: there aren't any
If you've searched for this mode you've met the claim that Isolated raids cost Isolated Raid Passes: a stack per edition, one back every 24 hours, a cap of fifteen. That was a closed-test rule from 2025. It isn't in the game you can buy today.
On build 0.4.0.156 the Shop's Special tab, the only place the game sells anything for Crystallised Active Matter, lists seven items: the three safe containers, the Beacon, the Tactical Beacon, and two exchanges (10,000 Credits and 5,000 Monolith Tokens). No pass. The Isolated deploy panel shows no pass count, no cooldown and no daily limit, and we've run Isolated raids back to back since launch without meeting one.
Isolated raids are unlimited. Any wiki that says otherwise is describing a build that shipped before 1.0.
Loot, death and what you keep
Loot extracted from an Isolated raid is yours in exactly the way Open loot is: same stash, same Refiner prices, and enriched items still teach the Replicator. Nothing about PvE loot is reduced or flagged.
Death works the same way too. Everything outside your safe container stays in the zone, so the container is still the first thing to buy, and a saved gear set still turns a bad raid into a known number of Credits. Tier III chronogenes burn a charge per death whoever killed you. Since 0.4.0.156, creating a new Personal Timeline keeps your equipped gear in a temporary stash, which matters if you plan to reset.
What every currency is and what survives a reset is in the currencies guide; what the Refiner and Replicator do with your loot is in the workshop guide.
PvE with friends, cross-play and consoles
A PvE squad is up to three and invite-only. There's no auto-fill on Isolated, so a duo stays a duo. The upside: Isolated raids support squads across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S without the cross-platform opt-in Open raids ask for. A console player and a PC player can run PvE together straight away.
Solo PvE is the harshest version of the mode, because every creature that notices you is yours. Our solo guide covers what solo means in each mode and how to survive it.
When a PvE raid won't let you out
The Monolith counts extractions, not attempts, and a case can hang on a PvE-only raid for a week. If Escape from Dogorsk or Downtown: Collapse is the wall, the raid clears below put one of our pros in your Isolated squad, on their own account, until you're out. The loot is yours and nobody logs in as you.
Stated once, because it's true of every paid service in this game: Gaijin's EULA (§3.2.6) bans paid "combat services," so this is against the rules. What the self-play version avoids is account sharing, which the terms prohibit separately. The full reasoning is in Active Matter Boosting Explained.
PvE questions
Is there a PvE-only mode in Active Matter? Yes, per raid: the Isolated Raid (PvE) tab. There's no separate PvE campaign or server; it's the same zones with the other squads removed.
Can I play the whole game without PvP? Most of it. Thirteen of nineteen raids have an Isolated mode, the Monolith's early gates are all reachable in PvE, and cases and daily objectives work except the two Open-only tiers. Five raids are Open-only by design, and Hired Ops and Faction Battles are PvP queues.
Do Isolated raids use passes or have a daily limit? No. Isolated Raid Passes were a closed-test mechanic; the Shop doesn't sell them and the deploy panel doesn't count them. Run as many as you like.
Do I need a squad for PvE? No. Solo Isolated is the purest version of the mode, and the one where you learn the maps fastest, because nobody else is drawing the creatures.