Running a 7 Days to Die server
By Benjamin D. · PDG
· 2 min read
Contents
A 7 Days to Die server is cheap to keep and hard to keep alive. Most of them die from lack of attention rather than lack of hardware.
Admins before opening
At least two people must be able to act. One admin means that on half the evenings nobody resolves anything.
Short, visible rules
Three or four clear rules work better than a long list. The most important usually concerns what may be done to someone else's base.
Abandoned bases need a rule
An agreement that an untouched base can be removed after a month keeps the map clean. Without it the map fills within a year.
Regular restarts
A nightly restart frees memory held by long uptime. In this game the effect is noticeably clearer than continuous running.
Warn before downtime
A player who knows the reason comes back. A player simply thrown out often does not — and the difference costs one message.
Limiting traps
An agreement on trap counts is the simplest way to save the server before a blood moon.
New players
A newcomer who finds an empty map and someone else's fortress does not stay. A little starting help retains more people than any setting.
Watch the logs
Crashes and errors leave a trace. A regular look finds the pattern no player can describe.
Do not change everything at once
A new map, new mods and new rules in the same week make any feedback worthless.
Close it properly
A server nobody looks after any more deserves a clean shutdown and a shared copy of the world.
Consistency wins
A server that is there every evening and behaves predictably builds a group faster than a technically better one.
Most of what precedes is a matter of organisation rather than technique: the decisions are made before you start, the backups have to actually run, and the rules are written while nothing has gone wrong yet. Our 7 Days to Die server hosting takes on the part there is no reason to do by hand — automatic backups, mod management and instant setup, along with a panel where settings, files, mods and restarts are handled without ever opening a command line.
