How to Host a Valheim Server for PS5 and Switch 2 Players

Your mate finally bought Valheim on PS5. Or your brother's got it on Switch 2, and now everyone wants in on the world you've been building on PC since the Mistlands. So you fire up the game, hit Start Server like you always have, and send them the address. And they can't join. There's nowhere on a console to type an IP into, the world only exists while your PC is on anyway, and by the time you've explained port forwarding to someone holding a DualSense the evening's gone.

The short version, and we've moved a lot of groups onto exactly this since 1.0 landed: a dedicated server started with -crossplay is the only way a PS5 or Switch 2 player joins a persistent Valheim world. There isn't a second route. Everything else in this post is the detail behind that sentence, plus one hotfix-shaped catch that's tripping up Switch 2 groups this week.

What consoles can and can't do

Two hard limits, and neither of them is something you can work around.

Consoles can't host a dedicated server. Iron Gate's crossplay FAQ says it for Xbox ("You can't set up a dedicated server on an Xbox") and the same is true of PS5 and Switch 2, because the dedicated server application is a Steam download. Full stop. A console player can host a session from inside the game, but it dies the moment they turn the console off. That's the same problem you had with Start Server on PC.

Consoles can't install mods. The 1.0 FAQ is blunt about it: "there will be no mod support for consoles for 1.0". I'll come back to that, because it decides what kind of modded server a mixed group can run.

So the shape of the solution is fixed. Somebody runs a dedicated server on a PC (yours, a spare box, or a rented one) with crossplay on, and the console players join it by code. The world lives on that machine whether anyone's playing or not.

Why it has to be crossplay

By default a Valheim dedicated server talks over Steam's networking, which console players don't have. The -crossplay launch argument moves it onto PlayFab, and Iron Gate's dedicated server guide describes exactly what that buys you: it "runs the Server on the Crossplay backend (PlayFab), which lets users from any platform join." Without it, your PS5 and Switch 2 friends can't even see the server, let alone get bounced off it.

What crossplay costs. When the server's on PlayFab, traffic goes through a relay rather than straight between the players and the box. Iron Gate says as much (the server "transmits data via a relay server"). For your Steam players that usually shows up as a few extra milliseconds of latency compared with the same server run crossplay-off. Most groups never notice. Groups who've spent a year on a direct Steam connection sometimes do, particularly in combat, so warn them before flipping the switch. It's the price of admission for the console players, and I think it's a good deal.

One thing crossplay doesn't do: it doesn't switch off mods. I've seen it repeated on Reddit, in Discords and honestly in an older version of one of our own guides that PlayFab breaks BepInEx. It doesn't. The loader attaches before the game itself starts, and a crossplay server with server-side mods logs the BepInEx banner and the PlayFab registration one after the other.

How a PS5 or Switch 2 player joins

There's no IP field on console. The whole flow is a join code.

1. The server starts with crossplay on and registers itself with PlayFab. It prints a line like Session "Your Server Name" registered with join code 604510 in its output. Six digits.
2. The console player opens Valheim, goes to Join Game, presses Add server and pastes or types the code. That's Iron Gate's wording from the crossplay FAQ: "head over to the 'Join Game' section, press 'Add server' and paste the code."
3. They connect, enter the password, and they're in.

The code isn't permanent. It's generated fresh every time the server starts, so a restart, an update, a crash, any of them hands out a new number. That's the single most common "it worked yesterday" ticket we get for crossplay servers, and the fix is always the same: get the current code and send it round again. The join codes post has more on living with that.

Steam players don't have to use it. Iron Gate's guide is explicit that a crossplay server accepts "the public IP address and port number, a join code or via the server list", so your PC friends carry on with the address they've always had, or add it to their Steam favourites, and the console players use the code. Same server, two doors.

The Switch 2 hotfix problem

Here's the catch, and it's not one any host can fix for you.

Valheim 1.0 landed on 9 September as 1.0.7. Two days later Iron Gate shipped hotfix 1.0.10 to every platform and 1.0.12 to Steam only, and then this, in their own words: "Due to an unforeseen issue, the patch was unable to be uploaded to Switch 2. Unfortunately this means crossplay is not currently supported between Switch 2 and other platforms." A 1.0.12 server and a Switch 2 player on an older build don't match, so the Switch 2 player gets refused.

Iron Gate's workaround is the default_old Steam branch, which is the 1.0.7 launch build, for both the dedicated server and every Steam player. That's a group decision more than a technical one, because it has a cost either way:

• Stay current. Keep the server on 1.0.12, play without the Switch 2 player, and bring them back the moment their patch lands. This is what I'd do if the Switch 2 player is one of six.
• Roll back. Move the server and every Steam client to default_old. Switch 2 rejoins, but you lose the 1.0.12 fixes, every Steam player has to change branch in their own Steam library, and you've got to remember to come forward again afterwards.

PS5 players are fine either way. They're on 1.0.10, which plays with a 1.0.12 server, and Iron Gate say there's no workaround for PS5 or Xbox to play with Switch 2 right now regardless of what the server does. Expect this section to go stale quickly.

Mods with console players in the group

Back to the second hard limit. Console players can't install anything, so any mod that needs a matching client copy locks them out of the server entirely. They'll get rejected or crash on load, and nothing you do on the server side changes that.

Server-side-only mods are a different story. Anything that runs purely on the server (drop-rate tweaks, spawn adjustments, admin tools) works for everyone, because the console player never needs to know it's there. The catch is sorting out which is which. Thunderstore listings rarely say "server-side only" in a way you can trust, and a few that claim it still stumble when a non-Steam ID shows up. Read the client-side vs server-side mods guide before you install anything on a mixed server, and keep it lightly modded. Two or three server-side mods you've tested. Not thirty.

Self-host or rent

You can run this yourself. SteamCMD, app ID 896660, forward UDP 2456-2457 (or don't, since Iron Gate say a PlayFab server "does not require Port Forwarding", one genuine perk of crossplay), add -crossplay to the start script and leave the PC on. Our how to host a Valheim dedicated server post walks through the SteamCMD route step by step.

Where it gets tiresome is everything after day one. Valheim doesn't update the server when you restart it, so every patch means a SteamCMD run before your players can get in, and with hotfixes landing two days after launch that's a lot of runs. Backups are on you. The join code changes every boot, so you're the person reading logs at 11pm. And the machine has to stay on.

A hosted server takes that lot off you. What you get with ours, in the order a console group tends to care:

• A Windows server that's up around the clock.
• Crossplay as a tick box rather than a script edit, with the join code on the panel so you don't grep for it.
• Game updates in one click, or on a schedule so you never think about it.
• Backups you can take, lock and restore yourself.
• A support team that knows what BepInEx is.

Pick the region closest to the bulk of your players, because a relay hop on top of a transatlantic route is where "a little latency" stops being little. The Valheim server hosting page has the regions. Ordering is a couple of minutes: pick a location, pay, and the server provisions itself and appears in the panel.

First-time setup for a console group

On any dedicated server the sequence is: set a name, world and password, turn crossplay on, start, read the join code, hand it out. The password has Valheim's own rules (at least five characters, and not contained in the world name or seed, or the server logs Error bad password: and quits). The getting started guide covers the whole first boot, and the configuration guide has every setting explained.

In our panel the crossplay switch is the Crossplay checkbox in the General group on the Manage tab. Tick it, save, restart. Once the server's registered, the Join your server card on the Overview tab shows the join code, and it's also in the Console tab if you'd rather see the raw line. Steam players still take the address from the strip at the top of the same page.

Two things worth doing before the console players arrive:

• Add yourself as admin. Steam players go on the Admins list on the Players tab as a 17-digit SteamID64, and Xbox and Game Pass players as an Xbox_ ID. The adminlist guide has where to find those. List changes apply on the next start.
• Take a backup once the world's loaded. Create backup on the Backups tab, then lock it. If a hotfix or a rollback goes sideways later, that's the one you restore to.

A few things we've learned

Don't ask a console player to "add the IP". They can't. They need the code, and any instruction that starts with an address is going to end in a message saying it doesn't work.

Send the code after every restart. Pin it in the group chat and replace it each time. The join code is per session, and the number of tickets that boil down to "the code from Tuesday" is not small.

Update the server the same day your players update. Consoles and Steam patch on their own schedules, so a mixed group hits version mismatch from two directions. Someone bounced back to the menu right after a patch? Check that first. The can't connect guide has the rest of the list.

Turning crossplay off later is fine. Untick, restart, and the server goes back to Steam-only with the same world. Handy if the console players drift off and the PC lot want to go heavy on mods.

That's really all there is to it. One dedicated server, one flag, one six-digit code, and your PS5 and Switch 2 friends are standing in the same meadow as everyone else. If something here doesn't match what you're seeing, open a ticket from the panel and tell us what changed since it last worked. We're around all hours and we'd rather help early than late.