Best Valheim Server Settings for the Perfect Viking Experience

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.

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 instead.

On a LOW.MS server that means Commandline Manager, not a config file. Switch your service to the Additional Configuration command line and you get a Preset box and an extra-arguments box, which is where -preset and -modifier actually live. The configuration guide covers that page in detail.

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 – no items go through at all. You still travel, your inventory doesn't. Brutal logistics.

One thing to be clear about, because it trips people up: this setting controls what you can carry through a portal, not whether portals work. None of the three values turns portals off. If that's what you actually want, it's a separate world key (-setkey NoPortals) rather than a modifier, and the configuration guide covers how to get it onto your launch line.

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 the 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 isn't on that list but works the same way, and it's the only thing that genuinely turns portals off.

On a LOW.MS server the Preset box takes the preset name on its own, and everything else goes in the extra-arguments box written out in full, -modifier prefix and all:

-modifier raids none -modifier deathpenalty casual -modifier portals casual

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.

The crossplay catch

Worth knowing before you spend an evening on this, because it bites people who've done everything else right.

Crossplay on a Valheim server isn't a tick box, it's a different command line. Our panel offers three: Default, Default (With Crossplay), and Additional Configuration. The Preset and extra-arguments boxes only exist on Additional Configuration, and -crossplay only exists on the crossplay line. There's no line with both.

So if you tune your modifiers, then later switch to the crossplay line so someone on console can join, your modifiers come off the launch line with it. Nothing warns you and the server starts fine. If you need crossplay and custom modifiers together, open a ticket and we'll put a custom command line on your service.

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. 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 service has Cloud Backup in the panel. It's a button, not a background job, so it only runs when something tells it to. Put it on a schedule in Scheduled Tasks 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.

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.

One caveat on our platform: -public 1 is fixed on all three of the predefined command lines, so you can't flip it yourself from the panel. If you want your server hidden from the browser, that's a quick support ticket.

Admin setup

A couple of practical notes from years of support tickets:

• Use the admin list, not a shared password. Add Steam IDs to adminlist.txt (one per line) so each admin is identified individually. Edit it from Configuration Files in the panel rather than File Manager, since the panel rewrites the file from its own copy of the list.
• 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.

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.

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 Commandline Manager.
3. Choose Additional Configuration, then fill in the Preset and extra-arguments boxes.
4. Save and restart the server.

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 the boxes, restart, done. The one thing a restart won't undo is the world itself, 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.