Best Valheim Server Settings and World Modifiers for 1.0

Half the fun of running your own Valheim server is dialing in the settings to suit how your group actually wants to play. Some groups want the unforgiving original Valheim experience, ores-on-portals included. Others want to focus on building and want death penalties out of the way entirely. Both are fine. The trick is knowing which knobs to turn.

This guide walks through Valheim's world modifiers, what each one actually does, and the setting combinations I've seen work for the most common types of group. It's been rechecked against Valheim 1.0, which didn't change the modifiers themselves but did add a few finer dials worth knowing about.

A note on world modifiers

World modifiers arrived with Hildir's Request in August 2023 and have been tweaked since. They're offered when you create a world, but you can change most of them later from the in-game menu, and on a dedicated server they're set on the launch line with -preset and -modifier.

On a LOW.MS server you never see the launch line. The World Modifiers group on the Manage tab is the same thing as a form: a World Preset dropdown and a row of buttons for each modifier, and we build the launch line from it every time the server starts. The configuration guide covers that tab field by field.

Iron Gate has never published exact percentage tables for the modifiers in their own documentation, so I'll describe them in plain English instead of inventing numbers. If you want to dig into the data-mined values there's a community wiki page with more detail.

Combat difficulty

This is the single biggest setting for how your server feels.

• Very Easy / Easy: enemies hit softer, you take less of a beating in fights. Good if your group is here for the building and exploration and finds combat a chore.
• Normal: the default, balanced experience. If you've never played Valheim before, start here.
• Hard / Very Hard: enemies hit much harder and your damage output is reduced. Boss fights become genuinely dangerous even with good gear. Try this on your second playthrough when you already know the rhythm of the game.

My recommendation: Normal for a first run, Hard for a second world once you know what you're doing.

Death penalty

What happens when (not if) you die.

• Casual: no skill loss. Death is essentially free. Best for building-focused groups.
• Easy / Very Easy: reduced skill loss. Some sting, not enough to ruin your evening.
• Normal: Valheim's default. Death costs you skill levels, which keeps real tension in dangerous situations.
• Hard: increased skill loss on death. Every death stings.
• Hardcore: permanent loss of all items and skills on death. No corpse run, no second chances. Only attempt this if everyone in your group is on board with it.

My recommendation: Normal for the standard experience, Casual for groups that just want to build without the corpse-run loop.

Portal restrictions

This is the most argued-about setting in all of Valheim.

• Casual: everything goes through portals, ores and metals included. Logistics get easy and you spend less time sailing.
• Hard (default): ores and metals can't go through portals. The classic Valheim experience. You build cart paths, you sail with a hold full of copper, and you swear at storms.
• Very Hard: the strictest setting, which the game labels no portals. You sail everywhere.

One thing to be clear about, because it trips people up: if what you actually want is portals gone for certain, there's a separate world key for that, NoPortals, and it's the unambiguous switch. On our panel it's the No Portals toggle in the World Rules group, and the configuration guide explains why world rules behave differently from modifiers.

My recommendation: stick with the default (Hard) on your first playthrough. The whole exploration-and-haul loop is one of the things that makes Valheim feel like Valheim. Switch to Casual on later worlds if your group is over the novelty and just wants to build.

Resource rate

How generous each resource node is when you mine, chop or pick it.

• Much Less / Less: for groups that want a longer, slower survival experience.
• Normal: balanced.
• More / Much More / Most: for groups who want to spend their evenings building castles, not grinding tin.

My recommendation: Normal for first runs, More for any server where the goal is creative building.

Raid frequency

How often the game throws raid events at your bases.

• None: no raids at all. Pure creative server territory.
• Less / Much Less: occasional raids that add flavour without becoming a chore.
• Normal: the default, regular raid cadence.
• More / Much More: frequent raids for groups who treat base defence as a core part of the game.

My recommendation: keep this on Normal unless raids are actively annoying your group. Raids are the main thing that gives walls and moats a reason to exist.

Setting combinations that actually work

I've seen variations of these on customer servers for years. Pick whichever sounds most like your group.

The classic Viking experience

Best for: first-time players who want what Iron Gate intended.

The relaxed builder

Best for: groups that want to focus on creative building with friends.

The hardcore run

Best for: experienced groups who beat the game once and want to suffer.

The middle ground

Best for: a second playthrough where you want a bit more challenge but also a bit less grind.

Setting modifiers via launch parameters

Whichever profile you picked, this is how it reaches a self-hosted server. Three flags do the work:

• -preset hard: apply one of Iron Gate's bundled presets. The valid names are Normal, Casual, Easy, Hard, Hardcore, Immersive and Hammer.
• -modifier raids none: set an individual modifier. Chain it as many times as you need.
• -setkey nomap: set one of the boolean world keys. Iron Gate documents four: nobuildcost, playerevents, passivemobs and nomap. NoPortals and fire work the same way without being on that list.

Written out, the relaxed builder looks like this:

-preset normal -modifier combat easy -modifier deathpenalty casual -modifier portals casual -modifier resources most -modifier raids none

Leaving the -modifier off and typing just raids none is the single most common way to end up with a server that starts perfectly and ignores every setting you chose.

On a LOW.MS server there's nothing to type. Pick the preset from the World Preset dropdown, then override whichever dials you want on the button rows beneath it (each starts on Use preset, which means "whatever the preset says"). Save, restart, done. The values are passed on every start, so the panel's values are the world's values.

The finer dials since 1.0

Below the five main modifiers our panel has a Custom Modifiers group for the percentage-style world keys Iron Gate added over the last couple of years: Player Damage, Enemy Damage, Enemy Speed & Size, Enemy Level-Up Rate, Resource Rate, Skill Gain Rate, Skill Loss on Death and Items on Death. They're for the group that finds Hard too hard and Normal too easy, and wants enemies at 125% damage rather than a whole step up. A Combat Difficulty level, or a preset that changes combat, overrides the combat ones, so set those to Use preset if you're going to fiddle here.

And a warning that belongs in bold: the World Rules group (Free Building, Player-Triggered Events, Passive Creatures, No Map, Fire Hazard, No Portals) does not behave like the modifiers above. Valheim writes those into the world save the first time a world starts with one on, and turning it off in the panel afterwards doesn't turn it off in the world. Decide those before you commit to a world you care about.

Crossplay doesn't cost you your settings

Worth a line, because older versions of this post and a lot of the internet said otherwise. Turning crossplay on is a separate setting (the Crossplay tick in the General group on our panel, the -crossplay argument on your own server) and it leaves your modifiers exactly where they were. It also doesn't stop mods loading, whatever you've read. What it does change is that console players can join with a join code, and everyone connects through Valheim's relay rather than directly, which can add a little latency for Steam players. Leave it off unless you need it. The crossplay and join codes guide has the rest.

Save interval and backups

Valheim has its own backup system, separate from anything your host does. The defaults are:

• -saveinterval 1800: auto-save every 30 minutes
• -backupshort 7200: first backup at 2 hours old
• -backuplong 43200: subsequent backups every 12 hours
• -backups 4: keep 4 backups in rotation

Most groups don't need to touch these. If you're running a busy server with lots of players you can drop -saveinterval to 900 (every 15 minutes) at the cost of a brief stutter on each save. On our panel all four are sliders in the Saves & Backups group on the Manage tab. If you just want one save right now, an admin can run save in the console, which writes immediately and restarts the interval timer.

Separately, every LOW.MS server has the Backups tab. Create backup is a button, not a background job, so it only runs when something tells it to. Put a Backup task on a schedule under Scheduled tasks on the Settings tab and you've got a second copy that survives whatever happens to Valheim's own backup chain. Do that on day one rather than the day you need it. Backing up and restoring a Valheim server goes through both systems.

Public listing vs private

-public 1 puts your server in the in-game community browser. -public 0 keeps it off the list, and people can still join if they have your IP and password. On our panel it's the Public Server setting in the General group, and off is how most private groups run.

Admin setup

A couple of practical notes from years of support tickets:

• Use the admin list, not a shared password. Each admin is identified individually by their Steam64 ID (or Xbox_ platform ID). On our panel that's the Players tab: toggle Admin on a player's row, or add them ahead of time with Add by SteamID64. Changes apply on the next start.
• Be sparing with admin. Anyone with admin can kick, ban and force saves, and with the right mods installed they can spawn items and teleport too. Trust matters.
• Know kick, ban, unban, banned and save at minimum. That's the admin set a vanilla dedicated server gives you. Each one is checked against adminlist.txt by the server, so if you're not on the list you just get "You are not admin" back. The full command list is in our Admin Commands article.
• Want devcommands on a dedicated server? Vanilla Valheim only allows god, fly, spawn and friends in single-player or a locally-hosted game. The admin commands above are a separate set and work fine on a dedicated server, but for the cheat set you need the Server devcommands mod, on the server and on your own client.

If you're running modded

Most performance and progression mods will respect your world modifier choices, but a few override them. World Advancement-style mods can lock or change boss progression, building mods can add pieces the vanilla settings don't know about, and performance mods will quietly improve how the server holds up under load. There's a full mod walkthrough in the Mod Installation Guide, and since 1.0 check each mod has a post-9-September release before you count on it.

If you're modded and thinking about crossplay, think twice. Crossplay doesn't stop mods loading, whatever you've read, but individual mods that assume everyone is on Steam will misbehave, and console players can't install client-side mods at all.

Changing settings on a LOW.MS server

1. Open the LOW.MS panel and pick your Valheim server.
2. Go to the Manage tab and open the World Modifiers group.
3. Pick a World Preset, then override any individual dial you want.
4. Save & Restart, and take the delay it offers if anyone's mid-boss.

Because the modifiers are applied from the launch line every time the server starts, you don't need a fresh world to change your mind. Edit, restart, done. The one thing a restart won't undo is the world itself (and the World Rules, see above), so if you want a genuinely clean slate you'll still want a new world name.

The single most important thing here is that your group is having fun. There's no objectively correct setting profile. There's the one that fits how your group plays. Start with one of the presets above, give it a session, and adjust based on what people actually moan about at the campfire.