Best Enshrouded Server Settings for Co-op Survival in 2026

Pick a playstyle before you touch a single slider

We get asked about "the best" Enshrouded server settings every week, and the honest answer is that there isn't one. Four friends who want to build a giant castle and a squad of six who want every expedition to hurt need almost opposite configurations. Pick the vibe first. Tune towards it second.

This guide walks through the four group types we see most often on LOW.MS Enshrouded servers, with small verified config blocks you can paste in without bricking your world.

How presets and custom settings actually work

Enshrouded's server config has a top-level gameSettingsPreset field. That's your difficulty dial, and it takes one of Default, Relaxed, Hard, Survival, or Custom. Here's the catch a lot of guides gloss over: the gameSettings object is only read when gameSettingsPreset is "Custom". Leave the preset on Hard and paste a block of factors underneath, and the game will silently ignore every one of them. Set the preset to Custom first. Every time. This is the single biggest thing we see people get wrong.

The built-in presets, roughly:

• Default is the studio's intended balance. A fine starting point if nobody in your group has strong opinions yet.
• Relaxed softens combat, gentles the survival mechanics, and takes the edge off the Shroud. We see a lot of first-time groups run this for a session or two before deciding what they actually want.
• Hard gives enemies a bit more bite across the board. Good for a group that's already finished the game once.
• Survival is the punishing one. Every trip into the Shroud feels like a commitment.
• Custom is what you reach for the moment you want to override anything.

We won't quote exact multipliers for the built-in presets because the studio tweaks them between patches. If you need the current numbers, our Enshrouded server configuration guide tracks them.

The four playstyles

1. Builder's paradise

For the group that wants to spend Saturday afternoon laying flagstones, not fighting off scavengers. We take the edges off combat, pour fuel on gathering, and make sure a bad fall doesn't wipe an inventory full of hard-won materials.

A handful of knobs do almost all the work here – weaken enemies, thin out their spawns, speed up mining and farming, and set the tombstone so you keep your gear when things go sideways.

{
  "gameSettingsPreset": "Custom",
  "gameSettings": {
    "enemyDamageFactor": 0.5,
    "enemyHealthFactor": 0.75,
    "randomSpawnerAmount": 0.5,
    "miningDamageFactor": 2.0,
    "resourceDropStackAmountFactor": 2.0,
    "plantGrowthSpeedFactor": 2.0,
    "factoryProductionSpeedFactor": 1.5,
    "tombstoneMode": "AddBackpackMaterials"
  }
}

2. Balanced adventurer

This is the one we'd quietly recommend to most first-time groups. Stock combat – bosses still feel like bosses, the Shroud still feels like a threat – with the admin trimmed off the survival layer. A small lift to gathering means your evenings aren't 70% stone farming, and longer food buffs keep you out of the cooking pot every ten minutes.

{
  "gameSettingsPreset": "Custom",
  "gameSettings": {
    "miningDamageFactor": 1.25,
    "resourceDropStackAmountFactor": 1.25,
    "foodBuffDurationFactor": 1.5,
    "experienceExplorationQuestsFactor": 1.25,
    "tombstoneMode": "AddBackpackMaterials"
  }
}

Everything else stays at default. If you genuinely don't know where to start, start here. Play a couple of sessions, then decide whether you want it harder or softer.

3. Hardcore survival

For the groups who message support asking if we can make the game more painful. Tougher, meaner enemies with longer sight lines. Scarcer materials. A nastier Shroud timer. Stamina you actually have to manage. Leaning on threatBonus and the boss modifiers gives the whole run a Survival-preset feel without locking you out of further tweaks.

{
  "gameSettingsPreset": "Custom",
  "gameSettings": {
    "enemyDamageFactor": 1.5,
    "enemyHealthFactor": 1.5,
    "enemyPerceptionRangeFactor": 1.5,
    "bossDamageFactor": 1.5,
    "bossHealthFactor": 1.5,
    "threatBonus": 1.5,
    "miningDamageFactor": 0.75,
    "shroudTimeFactor": 0.5,
    "enableStarvingDebuff": true,
    "enableDurability": true
  }
}

A note on shroudTimeFactor: values below 1.0 shorten your Shroud window, which is the whole point. Don't push it so low that fresh characters can't leave the safe zone. 0.5 is the floor we'd go to before it stops being fun.

4. Large group (12–16 players)

Enshrouded caps multiplayer at 16, and once you're pushing that number the balance problem flips. Bosses evaporate under focused fire, loot doesn't go round, and XP pools feel stingy. This block is less about difficulty and more about keeping a big lobby feeling fair.

{
  "gameSettingsPreset": "Custom",
  "gameSettings": {
    "bossHealthFactor": 2.0,
    "bossDamageFactor": 1.25,
    "enemyHealthFactor": 1.25,
    "resourceDropStackAmountFactor": 1.5,
    "experienceCombatFactor": 1.25,
    "perkCostFactor": 0.9,
    "tombstoneMode": "AddBackpackMaterials"
  }
}

The boss health bump is the important one. Without it, world bosses with twelve people on them turn into a 20-second DPS check. Everything else is there so the late joiner who hopped in on week three isn't locked out of progression.

A few things that matter more than the JSON does

Spread out, but not by sixteen different directions. Enshrouded streams world chunks around active players, so a lobby where everyone is in a different biome is the hardest case the server sees. Pairs and trios exploring together is a much easier load than sixteen solo wanderers.

Restart cadence helps more than people think. A daily or twice-daily scheduled restart keeps things tidy – set one up under Scheduled Tasks in the control panel and forget about it.

If your group is consistently bigger than the plan you picked, the fix isn't a settings tweak, it's more RAM. Our Enshrouded plans step up cleanly for exactly that.

Actually applying the settings

Once you've picked a block above:

1. Open the LOW.MS control panel and head to your Enshrouded service.
2. Stop the server from Service Settings.
3. Open Configuration Files from the sidebar – it's a dedicated in-browser editor, no FTP needed.
4. Find enshrouded_server.json, set gameSettingsPreset to "Custom", and paste your gameSettings block in. Leave the top-level name, password, and slotCount alone.
5. Save, then start the server back up.

If it refuses to come back online, it's almost always JSON syntax – a trailing comma, a missing quote. Open Log Viewer from the sidebar and it'll tell you which line.

One thing worth flagging: a handful of world-generation values bake in when the save is first created and won't retroactively apply to an existing world. If a tweak seems to do nothing on a long-running save, that's usually why. A fresh world picks everything up cleanly.

If you're spinning up your first server, our Enshrouded getting-started guide walks the whole first hour, and the troubleshooting notes cover the usual suspects when something misbehaves. For the bigger picture, how to host an Enshrouded dedicated server and our base-building and multiplayer tips are worth a read too. Every LOW.MS Enshrouded box ships with DDoS protection, automated cloud backups, 24/7 support, and a choice of EU, UK, or NA hosting at checkout – so once you've landed on the settings that suit your group, you can get on with actually playing.