How to make an Enshrouded server

Your Enshrouded server is installed and waiting for you - here's how to start it, get your friends in with the right password, and keep your world safe.

What you get after ordering

Your server is installed and stopped, ready for its first start. Its join password and admin password are made for you at setup, so you can press Start straight away.

Start the server

Press Start, then open the Console. Enshrouded's own log is long and technical, so the console hides it and shows a short list of plain-English lines instead:

The first start takes a little longer while the server sets itself up. After that it's usually online within a few seconds.

Passwords and roles

Enshrouded lets people in by password, and the password someone types decides what they can do on your server. Your server has four roles, set in the Startup tab:

The join password and admin password are made for you, and the join password is also shown in the left rail of your dashboard. Guest and Visitor are off until you switch them on.

The Players tab's Roles tab shows every role with its password and what it can do. Switch Guest or Visitor on there and the server makes a password for it, or switch it off again. With the server stopped, you can also change what each role may do: build in bases, move and extend Flame Altars, open chests, dig and change the world, and kick and ban. Changes apply from the next start.

Give every role its own password. Enshrouded won't start if two roles share one, and the Console says which roles to change:

[PYW] Enshrouded will not start like this: the Friend and Guest roles have the same password.

Join your server

1. Start Enshrouded and choose Play, then Join Game.
2. Search for your server's name. You set it in the Startup tab under Server Name.
3. Pick your server and type the password for the role you want: the join password for friends, the admin password for yourself.

If your server doesn't show up in the list, add it in Steam instead: in the Steam client open View, Game Servers, Favorites, choose Add a server and enter the address from your dashboard. Your server then appears at the top of the in-game list.

Who plays, and bans

The Players tab shows who is on right now. Its Sessions tab keeps everyone who has played, with when they were last on, how long their last visit was and their total play time.

An admin bans a player in the game, from its Social tab. Banned players are listed in the Players tab's Banned tab, where you can unban them while the server is stopped.

Player cap

Your plan sets how many players can be on the server at once: 4, 8 or 16, the most Enshrouded allows. The server enforces it, and the game's server list shows it next to your server's name. When your server fills up, your dashboard shows a note naming the plan that fits more. To fit more friends, move to a bigger plan, then restart the server so it picks up the new cap. If one player lags while the rest are fine, check their ping against what ping to expect from each city.

Saving, stopping and restarting

Enshrouded saves your world about every 30 seconds while players are on. When you press Stop or Restart, the server waits for the next save, up to 35 seconds, before it shuts down, so nothing is lost:

[PYW] Stopping: saving the world first. then [PYW] Waiting for the next autosave (up to 35 s)., [PYW] World saved. and [PYW] Server stopped.

Your world lives in the savegame folder in the File Manager tab.

If players have been on for 20 minutes and the world hasn't saved, your dashboard shows a note, and you get an email if crash emails are on in the Settings tab. A restart usually gets saving going again.

Bring your world from the game

Already playing together in someone's own game? Bring that world to your server:

1. On your PC, open Saved Games\keen games\Enshrouded\default (or Steam\userdata\<your id>\1203620\remote; a world you haven't opened since before 1.0 is still in Saved Games\Enshrouded). Each world is one file ending in .ksd. A world from before Enshrouded 1.0 is a set of files named after an eight-character code, such as 3ad85aea, 3ad85aea-index and 3ad85aea-1, and the server converts it when it starts.
2. Zip the one world you want: its .ksd file, or all of an older world's files.
3. Stop your server, open the World Import tab and drop the zip on it.
4. Pick the zip and press Import selected world, then Start the server.

The server's current world is kept in a dated folder in savegame, never deleted.

Start a new world

For a new playthrough, Stop the server and press Start a new world at the bottom of the World Import tab. The current world is backed up and kept in a dated folder in savegame, and the server makes a brand-new world when it next starts.

Backups

Before a big change, make a backup from the Backups tab. A backup holds your whole server, world included, and you can restore it with one click if something goes wrong.

When Enshrouded releases an update, your server also takes a backup named Before update with the new build number, before its next start installs the update. It only does this when one of your backup slots is free, so it never replaces a backup you made yourself.

Change the difficulty

Your world starts on the Default difficulty. Enshrouded also has Relaxed (fewer enemies, more resources), Hard (more enemies, more aggressive), Survival (adds survival mechanics on top) and Custom.

1. Stop the server.
2. Open the Server Settings tab and pick the preset, then save.
3. Start the server. The console line Game settings: the ... preset. shows the new setting.

With Custom, the other settings on the same tab take effect, such as enemy damage, day length and resource drops.