7 Days To Die Server Troubleshooting -- Common Issues and Fixes

Most of the 7 Days To Die servers we see in support tickets are suffering from one of about a dozen recurring problems, and honestly the fix is usually the same three or four clicks in the control panel. This guide walks through the stuff we get asked about most — connection failures, EAC weirdness, Blood Moon lag, mods that refuse to load, corrupt worlds — and points you at the exact TCAdmin sidebar tool to use for each one.

Everything below is written against V1.0 and later. If you're still on an Alpha build, a lot of the commands and config keys will look familiar but won't behave identically, so treat this as V1.0+ only.

Log in to https://control.low.ms and pick your 7DTD service, and you'll see the sidebar we reference throughout this article.

Players can't connect

We've seen this one more than any other, and nine times out of ten it's not actually broken — the server just hasn't finished booting. A fresh RWG world on 8192 or 10240 can chew through 10-20 minutes before it accepts a single connection, and that's completely normal. Pop open Log Viewer and wait until you see the "GameServer.LogOn successful" / "StartGame done" lines before you panic.

If the server is up and players still can't get in, run through this:

• In Service Settings, check the service is actually running (not "Stopped").
• Confirm your players are using the right address. The default 7DTD game port is 26900, with UDP 26901-26903 alongside it. Players should connect as IP:26900.
• Open Configuration Files and look at serverconfig.xml. If ServerVisibility is 0, the server is hidden and players must direct-connect. 2 makes it public.
• If ServerPassword is set, everyone needs that password — we've had tickets where the owner forgot they'd set one months ago.
• Version mismatch is a silent killer. If Steam pushed an update overnight, run Steam Update from the sidebar so the server matches the client build.

Not showing in the in-game browser

The server list takes its sweet time. Give it five to ten minutes after a start before you assume it's broken, make sure ServerName is set to something non-empty in Configuration Files, and if you're in a hurry just hand out the direct-connect IP. We've got a dedicated walkthrough for this one at Server Not Showing in Server List.

"Server is full" with slots free

This one's almost always ghost sessions from disconnected players that the game hasn't reaped yet. A quick restart from Service Settings clears it. While you're there, double-check ServerMaxPlayerCount in serverconfig.xml matches the slot count on your LOW.MS plan, and that ServerReservedSlots isn't holding back more seats than you thought.

Easy Anti-Cheat errors

EAC is a little grumpy at the best of times. The golden rule is that the client and server have to agree: EAC on everywhere, or EAC off everywhere. Mix them and you'll get "EAC authentication failed" every single time.

If a player is the only one affected, it's almost always on their end — have them verify game files through Steam (Properties > Installed Files > Verify), and if that doesn't do it, run the EasyAntiCheat repair tool from the game's install folder. Antivirus software loves to eat EAC components, so adding 7DTD to the exclusion list is a good sanity check.

If everyone is getting EAC errors right after you installed a mod, that's your answer. Most overhaul mods (Darkness Falls, Undead Legacy, and friends) need EAC disabled entirely. Open Configuration Files, flip EACEnabled to false, and restart the service. On the client side, players launch 7 Days To Die without EAC — either by adding a launch option in Steam (right-click the game > Properties > General > Launch Options) or by running 7DaysToDie_EAC.exe vs 7DaysToDie.exe directly if the non-EAC executable is shipped with their build. The old "Show game launcher" popup with the EAC picker was removed post-V1.0, so don't go looking for it.

Fair warning: with EAC off you have zero cheat protection, which is fine for a friends-only server and not fine for a public one.

World generation woes

RWG is wonderfully atmospheric and also a bit of a diva. Bigger worlds (8192, 10240) need serious RAM and CPU just to come into existence, and we routinely see first-boot gen run 15-20 minutes on a 10240. If it's been longer than that and Log Viewer is still chewing, something's actually wrong.

Things to try, in order:

1. Drop to a smaller world size in Configuration Files (4096 or 6144 are plenty for most groups).
2. Switch to Navezgane as a test — it's a hand-built map that skips generation entirely. If Navezgane boots fine, you know RWG itself was the problem.
3. If gen keeps dying at the same percentage, you've got corrupt partial data. Use File Manager to delete the half-baked world folder (grab a Cloud Backup first if there's anything worth saving) and let it start clean.

Corrupt saves

If your world was happily running for weeks and then suddenly refuses to load, don't panic and don't start deleting things. Head to Cloud Restore or Backup Manager and roll back to the most recent known-good snapshot — this is exactly what cloud backups exist for, and it'll save you hours of pain. If only one area of the map is broken, File Manager lets you dive into the Region folder and pull the offending .7rg file so that chunk regenerates on next load. Anything players built in that chunk is gone, so weigh it against a full restore.

Performance and Blood Moon lag

Blood Moon is where undersized servers go to die. Seventh night rolls round, every zombie in the county converges on the base, and suddenly you're rubber-banding across the map. A few levers you can pull in serverconfig.xml via Configuration Files:

• BloodMoonEnemyCount — the per-player spawn budget. The V1.0 default is 8; knocking it to 4 or 6 makes a huge difference on busy servers.
• MaxSpawnedZombies — global ceiling across the whole world. Drop this to 40-50 if you're seeing horde-night meltdowns.
• MaxSpawnedAnimals — same idea for wildlife; every little bit helps.

We're deliberately not listing a BloodMoonMaxAlive setting because it isn't a real property in V1.0, no matter what a few outdated guides claim.

Between Blood Moons, the biggest win is encouraging players to actually spread out. If everyone hubs up in one megabase, every spawned zed is pathfinding to the same spot and you've created your own lag. Use say in Web Console to nudge them, or schedule a repeating announcement via Scheduled Tasks.

For general low-FPS and high-latency complaints, run mem in the Web Console to get a snapshot of allocated vs used memory. If you're sitting at 90%+ consistently, the server is starved. RAM upgrades are available from the order page — see our 7 Days To Die plans for current tiers and pricing.

Out-of-memory crashes

Same fix, more urgent. 7DTD's memory footprint grows with world size, player count, and mods — especially overhaul mods. Log Viewer will usually show a clear "out of memory" or Unity allocator error right before the crash. Options are the usual suspects: shrink the world, trim mods you're not actually using, or upgrade the plan.

Mods that won't load

The single most common mod bug in our inbox: mods dropped in the wrong folder. In the LOW.MS File Manager, your mods go in Mods/ at the root of the service — not 7DaysToDieServer/Mods/ or any other nested path you might have seen elsewhere. Each mod is its own folder inside Mods/, and each of those folders has a ModInfo.xml at its top level. If you unzip something and end up with Mods/MyMod/MyMod/ModInfo.xml, you've got a folder too many.

Better yet, use the curated Mod Manager from the sidebar where possible — it handles the paths for you and we've vetted the catalogue against current game versions.

Beyond the path, the usual culprits are:

• Mod version doesn't match your game version. A1-era mods won't load on V1.0. Check the mod page.
• EAC is on. Most content mods need it off (see the EAC section above).
• A dependency is missing. Log Viewer will spell this out loudly at startup — scroll to the boot sequence and you'll see "Failed to load XML" or a missing-reference error.

When you've got multiple mods fighting each other, pull everything out, add them back one at a time, and restart between each. It's tedious, but it's the only reliable way to find the conflict.

Overhaul mods specifically

Darkness Falls and Undead Legacy are fantastic and also extremely RAM-hungry — don't attempt either on anything under about 12 GB. Give them room to breathe on startup too; we've had customers cancel a boot that was genuinely just slow. Our Darkness Falls installation guide covers the folder layout step by step.

Admin commands and serveradmin.xml

Here's where a lot of community guides get it wrong, so pay attention: V1.0's serveradmin.xml uses a 0-1000 permission scale, not the old four-tier system. 0 is full admin, 1000 is the default permission everyone starts with, and individual commands gate themselves somewhere in between. To make yourself a full admin, open serveradmin.xml via Configuration Files and add:

<admin steamID="76561198000000000" permission_level="0" />

Restart the service afterwards — the admin list is only read at boot. Full spec is on the 7DTD wiki.

Once you're listed, you can run commands from the Web Console in the panel, from in-game with F1, or over telnet if you've enabled it. The commands we actually use day-to-day:

If you want scheduled restarts or automated saves, don't mess around with cron — Scheduled Tasks in the sidebar handles it natively and plays nicely with the service lifecycle.

When to open a ticket

If you've worked through everything above and you're still stuck, grab a ticket through the panel and include:

• The service name or IP
• A description of what's happening and when it started
• Anything you changed recently (mods, settings, a game update, a new world)
• The last 50-100 lines from Log Viewer around the error

That last one saves us a lot of back-and-forth — we can usually diagnose a boot failure from the log alone.

For deeper reading, the Getting Started guide covers first-time setup, and the server settings guide walks through every serverconfig.xml knob in detail. If you're moving an existing world across, how to upload your local save is the one you want.