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 were added by Iron Gate in the Hearth and Home era and have been expanded since. They're applied at world creation time, but you can also change most of them on an existing world from the in-game menu. On a LOW.MS server you set them either via the panel or by passing -modifier and -preset flags as launch parameters.

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 — nothing goes through portals. Only your character does. Brutal logistics.

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

If you'd rather set modifiers from the panel's startup config than poke around the in-game menu, the official launch flags are:

• -preset hard — apply one of Iron Gate's bundled presets
• -modifier raids none — set an individual modifier
• -setkey nomap — toggle one of the boolean keys (no map, no portals, etc.)

You can chain -modifier multiple times to set several at once.

Save interval and backups

Valheim has its own backup system that runs alongside whatever 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. LOW.MS's cloud backups run on top of all of this, so even if Valheim's own backup chain gets corrupted you've still got a copy to restore from.

Public listing vs private

-public 1 puts your server in the in-game community browser. -public 0 keeps it off the list — people can still join if they have your IP and password, but unwanted strangers won't stumble onto it. If your server is for friends only, set it private.

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.
• Be sparing with admin. Anyone with admin can spawn items, teleport, and break the game balance for everyone else. Trust matters.
• Know kick, ban, save, noportals and lodbias at minimum. The full command list is in our Admin Commands article.
• Want full devcommands on a dedicated server? Vanilla Valheim only allows god, fly, spawn and friends in single-player. To use them on a dedicated server 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.

Changing settings on a LOW.MS server

1. Open the LOW.MS Panel and pick your Valheim server.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Adjust the values you want.
4. Save and restart the server.

A heads-up: some world modifiers (combat difficulty, death penalty) are only baked into a world at creation time. If you started your world before tweaking them you may need to apply them via the in-game world menu after the server is up, or create a new world if you want a clean slate.

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.