Enshrouded dedicated server: the settings that make the difference

Enshrouded on a dedicated server is a different game from co-op via Steam: the world keeps running while you are offline, friends can log in on their own schedule, and you decide how hard the adventure is. You make that last choice not in the game but in one file: enshrouded_server.json. It holds the presets, dozens of multiplication factors and a handful of switches that make the difference between a relaxed building server and a survival trek where every death hurts. This article explains which settings matter, what the defaults are and which combinations work well in practice.

Where the settings live

On a hosted server you edit enshrouded_server.json through the file manager in the panel or over SFTP. The file has a few general fields — name, password, slotCount, saveDirectory — and a gameSettings block with the gameplay options. Changes only apply after a restart, and the server sometimes rewrites the file when it shuts down; so always edit it while the server is stopped, otherwise it overwrites your change. At MC-Node you can set part of the options directly in the panel; the guide is in the knowledge base: managing your Enshrouded server.

The four presets, and why you usually adjust them

Enshrouded has four starting points. Default is the vanilla experience: normal enemies, normal loot, no hunger penalty. Relaxed gives fewer enemies and more loot and is meant for groups that mainly want to build and explore. Hard puts down more and more aggressive enemies. Survival is the hardcore variant with starvation, harsher death penalties and tougher opponents. A preset is nothing more than a set of values for the factors below; as soon as you change one value by hand, your configuration automatically becomes "Custom". That is not a problem, but it does mean you cannot simply go back to a preset later without resetting the rest.

Factors: everything ending in "Factor" is a multiplier

The core of gameSettings is the factors. A value of 1 is the default, 2 is double, 0.5 half. A higher player factor helps the players, a higher enemy factor makes the game harder. The most important ones:

• playerHealthFactor and playerStaminaFactor: health and stamina of players. For a group of mixed experience 1.25 is a comfortable middle ground without making fights trivial.
• enemyDamageFactor and enemyHealthFactor: how hard enemies hit and how much they absorb. If you want a challenge without endless hacking, raise the damage and leave health at 1.
• playerBodyHeatFactor and enemyBossHealthFactor: cold in the mountains and the toughness of bosses, set separately so boss fights remain a group event.
• miningDamageFactor, plantGrowthSpeedFactor and resourceDropStackAmountFactor: gathering speed, crop growth and how much drops per hit. These are the knobs that make a building server "quicker" without touching combat.

Day, night and the weather

The length of day and night is in dayTimeDuration and nightTimeDuration, expressed in nanoseconds — not seconds, and that is a common mistake. The default is 30 minutes of day and 12 minutes of night; both may be between 2 and 60 minutes. A longer night makes the Shroud more dangerous and puts pressure on fire and torches; a short night is pleasant for players who mainly want to build by daylight. For a server where people log in for an hour after work, 40 minutes of day and 8 minutes of night works well: everyone sees both phases in one session.

Durability, tombstone and the price of dying

Two switches decide how strict the server is. enableDurability set to false means weapons and tools never wear out; handy for casual groups, but it also removes an economy from the game. tombstoneMode controls what happens on death: with AddBackpackMaterials a tombstone appears containing your items, so a death means a trip back rather than a loss. Combine Survival-like factors with a mild tombstone setting and you get tension without players quitting after one unlucky fall.

Players, slots and performance

slotCount sets how many players can log in at once; the upper limit of an Enshrouded server is 16. Every player costs CPU and memory, and the world itself grows with what gets built. Count on at least 8 GB of RAM and a fast processor core for a group of eight; with twelve to sixteen players and large bases, 16 GB is sensible. Enshrouded is sensitive to single-thread performance, so a modern AMD core does more than an older server CPU with many cores. Our Enshrouded servers therefore run on AMD hardware with NVMe and can be expanded per GB.

Three combinations that work in practice

• Building server with friends: Relaxed as the base, miningDamageFactor 1.5, resourceDropStackAmountFactor 1.5, enableDurability false, night 6 minutes.
• Balanced adventure: Default, enemyDamageFactor 1.25, playerHealthFactor 1.1, tombstone on, standard day and night length.
• Hardcore group: Survival, enemyBossHealthFactor 1.5, night 15 minutes, durability on, and agree that nobody softens the settings halfway through.
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Common mistakes

Most tickets about Enshrouded settings come down to three things. Seconds instead of nanoseconds for day and night length: a value of 1800 does not give you half an hour but a day that is over in the blink of an eye. Editing the file while the server is running, after which the server writes the old values back on shutdown. And choosing a preset in the panel after adjusting factors: the preset then overwrites all your custom work. Work in this order: server off, edit the file, keep a backup of it, server on, and check in the console during the first minute that the values were read.

Updates and what to arrange in advance

Keen Games releases regular updates that add new settings or change defaults. Back up the save folder and enshrouded_server.json before every update, and check afterwards that your custom values are still there. If you want to open the server to people outside your circle of friends, set a password and use the roles in the file (userGroups) to decide who may build, who may only explore and who is an administrator. That way the world stays yours even with a changing set of players.