Best Aska Server Settings for Co-op Viking Survival

Best Aska Server Settings for Co-op Viking Survival

I've been running Aska servers for my own co-op groups for months now, and we get asked about settings in tickets pretty much every week. So rather than reply with another wall of text, I figured I'd put together the presets I actually use – plus a few notes on what I've learned tuning them for different groups.

The honest answer to "what are the best settings?" is: it depends entirely on what your group wants out of the game. A crew that wants to build a sprawling longhouse village has almost no overlap with a crew that wants to fend off raid events at 3am. Below are four presets I keep coming back to, and each one has worked out well for a specific kind of group.

Custom Mode First

Before any of this matters, you need custom mode turned on. Every tweakable setting in Aska is gated behind it. Open server properties.txt on your server and set:

mode = custom

That's it – the rest of the settings simply won't apply if this isn't set. Custom mode doesn't change anything on its own, it just unlocks the other knobs. If you need a hand actually editing the file on our platform, the Aska Server Settings Guide walks through the file manager steps.

Preset 1: The Relaxed Builder

mode = custom
invasion difficulty = off
monster density = off
day length = extended
year length = extended
structure decay = low
herbivore population = high
bear population = low
wulfar population = low
precipitation = 2
terrain aspect = smooth
terrain height = normal
starting season = spring

I ran this one for my brother's crew last summer – they'd never played a survival game in their lives and wanted something chill to mess around with on a weekend. Turning invasions off and dropping monster density to zero makes it basically a Viking village-builder, which is exactly what they wanted. Extended day and year lengths let them actually finish building a great hall without sprinting against the clock, and low structure decay meant the place didn't fall apart when one of them forgot to log in for four days. High herbivores, smooth terrain, spring start – all of that is there to remove friction. If your group wants combat, skip this one. If they want to hang out and build, this is the one. Pairing it with a relaxed approach to NPC villager management is a nice combo because the villagers become the main gameplay loop.

Preset 2: The Balanced Adventure

If you genuinely don't know what you want yet, just use this one. It's the preset I recommend by default when someone opens a ticket asking. Everything sits at medium or normal, which is as close as you'll get to "how the devs intended it" while still being in custom mode.

mode = custom
invasion difficulty = normal
monster density = medium
day length = default
year length = default
structure decay = medium
herbivore population = medium
bear population = medium
monster population = medium
wulfar population = medium
precipitation = 3
terrain aspect = normal
terrain height = normal
starting season = spring

Honestly, for a 2-4 player co-op group with some survival game experience, Balanced is hard to beat. Raid events hit hard enough to matter but not so hard that losing a wall ruins your week. Default day and year lengths line up with the game's natural pacing, so seasonal shifts feel earned instead of punitive. Medium structure decay gives you a reason to keep an eye on your base without it becoming homework. It fits most people – if you're unsure, start here and adjust after a couple of sessions.

Preset 3: The Hardcore Viking

For the experienced survival crowd – this is the one I run for my old co-op group who spent a couple of years in 7DTD together and wanted something that wouldn't feel undertuned.

mode = custom
invasion difficulty = hard
monster density = high
day length = reduced
year length = reduced
structure decay = high
herbivore population = low
bear population = high
monster population = high
wulfar population = high
precipitation = 5
terrain aspect = rocky
terrain height = varied
starting season = autumn

Hard invasion difficulty combined with high monster and Wulfar populations means the world is actively hostile – you'll feel it. Reduced day length squeezes your productive hours, and reduced year length means autumn turns to winter while you're still patching the south wall. Low herbivores make food a real problem; every hunting trip is a proper expedition rather than a walk to the nearest deer. Starting in autumn is the cruel touch – you get almost no buffer before the first cold snap. High structure decay on top of that means you can't just build once and forget. Rocky, varied terrain adds a layer of "where do we even put the longhouse" that the flatter presets skip. Precipitation at 5 is atmospheric and also genuinely reduces visibility during storms, which is great until you're out hunting and can't see the wulves. Don't pick this one for a new group – it's miserable if you don't know the mechanics yet.

Preset 4: The Explorer's Paradise

The last one I'll run through is the preset I use for groups that care more about seeing the world than defending a patch of it. I set this up for a streamer friend who wanted long exploration sessions without his base quietly collapsing while he was off in the mountains.

The headline tweaks are easy invasion difficulty and low monster/Wulfar populations, which keep the world feeling alive without turning every trip into a fight. Extended day and year lengths are the real unlock though – with a long day cycle you can ride out to the far corner of the map and come back without nightfall or winter sneaking up on you. Varied terrain height is a deliberate choice here because it gives you actual landscape to explore, mountains and valleys rather than the smoother rolling hills of the Relaxed Builder.

mode = custom
invasion difficulty = easy
monster density = low
day length = extended
year length = extended
structure decay = low
herbivore population = high
bear population = medium
monster population = low
wulfar population = low
precipitation = 3
terrain aspect = normal
terrain height = varied
starting season = spring

I keep bear population at medium and leave some monsters in on purpose, because a completely empty world gets boring fast – you still want the occasional "oh no" moment when you round a corner. Low structure decay matters more here than in any of the other presets, because the whole point is that you're away from base for long stretches.

A Few Settings Worth Understanding

If you want to roll your own preset instead of using one of mine, these are the settings that move the needle the most.

Invasion difficulty is the biggest one by far. It controls how tough the raid events are – Off for a pure builder experience, Easy for occasional manageable attacks, Normal for the intended challenge curve, and Hard for attacks that will wreck an unprepared settlement. The difficulty scales the strength and scale of the attackers; the actual cadence of events is roughly fixed by the game.

Day length and year length are about pacing, not difficulty. Extended is more forgiving because you've got more time per in-game day, reduced is tighter. My one tip: keep both at the same tier. Mixing extended days with reduced years (or vice versa) makes the seasonal pacing feel weird.

monster density and monster population are two separate settings and they both exist – density controls how thickly creatures spawn in a given area, population controls the overall cap. You can tune them independently, and honestly the defaults are fine for most groups.

One more worth calling out:

keep server world alive = false

Leave this at false unless you specifically want a persistent world. When it's false, the world pauses when the last player disconnects, which is usually what you want for a casual group – nobody comes back after a week to find their village sacked by an invasion nobody was online for. Set it to true and your villagers keep working and seasons keep turning whether you're there or not, which is cool in theory but means invasions can happen to an empty server.

Tuning as You Go

My take: don't try to nail the perfect settings on day one. Start on Balanced, play for a few sessions, then adjust. If invasions feel like a joke, bump the difficulty. If your group is grinding and getting nowhere, reduce structure decay or extend the day length. Most of the gameplay settings – invasions, creature populations, decay – can be changed on an existing save. Terrain, seed, and starting season need a fresh world, so get those right early.

If something's not working or the server's misbehaving after a settings change, the Aska troubleshooting guide covers the common stuff. And if you haven't spun up a server yet, we've got a walkthrough on hosting an Aska dedicated server that goes through the order and first boot.

Applying Any of These

On our platform it's the boring workflow:

1. Log in to the LOW.MS Control Panel.
2. Open your server's file manager.
3. Edit server properties.txt and paste in the preset you want.
4. Save, restart the server, reconnect to verify.

That's genuinely it. Nothing clever required. If this is your first time setting one of our servers up, the Aska getting started guide runs through the initial setup before you touch any of this. Otherwise, pick a preset, paste it in, and go play.