How to Install Hytale Server Mods, Assets & Plugins

Mod installation on Hytale is genuinely simple — simpler than any Java game server I've run in the last decade. The short version is: put the mod file in the mods/ folder and restart. The rest of this guide is the detail around that.

Before I get into it, a couple of things that will save you time later:

• Back up your server before installing anything. On LOW.MS click Cloud Backup in the panel and take a fresh snapshot. If you're self-hosting, copy the whole server directory somewhere safe. You'll want this if a new mod does something unexpected.
• Hytale is still in Early Access, and the modding ecosystem is moving fast. Mods and asset packs break across game updates more often than they will in a year or two. Keep tabs on your mod list when you update the server.
• Hytale hasn't formally separated "mods" from "plugins" from "asset packs" the way Minecraft Paper has. Whatever you want to call them, the install path is the same: drop the file into mods/, restart.

What goes where

Everything goes in one place: the mods/ folder at the root of your server directory, alongside HytaleServer.jar and Assets.zip. Hytale accepts two file types:

• .zip — typically mod packs, asset packs, content bundles.
• .jar — typically code-based mods and server plugins.

You don't unzip either of these. Drop them in as-is and the server will pick them up on the next start. There's no separate plugins/ folder, no datapacks/ folder, no resourcepacks/ directory. It's all mods/.

Where to find mods

CurseForge is the primary place most Hytale creators publish. Look for the Hytale category and browse. Mod authors generally provide install notes in the mod description — read them, especially for larger packs that might want a specific load order or specific config settings.

For anything you find outside CurseForge, stick to mod-author websites and repos you trust. If you've downloaded a .jar from a random forum post, don't run it — server-side mods have full code access to your server process.

Installing on LOW.MS

Two ways to install, depending on what you're doing.

Mod Manager (for curated mods)

Open Mod Manager in the control panel. It has a curated set of popular Hytale mods with one-click installs — you pick a mod, click install, and it's dropped into the mods/ folder for you. Start or restart the server and you're done.

The catalogue is small by design (curated for known-good mods), so if what you're after isn't in the list, you'll need the File Manager route instead.

File Manager / SFTP (for anything)

This is the general-purpose approach that works for every mod:

1. Stop the server from the control panel.
2. Open File Manager (or connect with your SFTP details from the top of the panel).
3. Navigate to the mods/ folder at the root of the server directory.
4. Upload the .zip or .jar file. Don't unzip it.
5. Start the server again.
6. Open Web Console and watch the startup logs. You're looking for load confirmations or, if something's gone wrong, errors mentioning the mod's name.

If the server fails to start after the upload, the most recently added mod is the usual suspect — remove it and try again.

Installing on a self-hosted server

Same flow without the panel:

1. Stop the server (/stop in the console or close the process).
2. Navigate to your server directory — the folder with HytaleServer.jar.
3. Make sure there's a mods/ folder. If not, create one.
4. Copy your mod file into mods/.
5. Start the server again and watch the console.

On Linux that's:

mkdir -p mods
cp ~/Downloads/my-mod.zip mods/
java -jar HytaleServer.jar --assets Assets.zip

On Windows PowerShell:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path .\mods | Out-Null
Copy-Item $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\my-mod.zip .\mods\
java -jar HytaleServer.jar --assets Assets.zip

What players need to do

Nothing. That's the best part. Hytale delivers server-installed mods to clients automatically when they connect, so once you've installed a mod on the server, every player who joins receives it without having to do anything on their end. No mod loaders, no manual installs, no walking your non-technical friends through a launcher setup.

This is the single biggest quality-of-life win Hytale has over other moddable games. The first time you add a mod pack to a server and everyone just joins into it, you realise how much of Minecraft modding's pain was the client-side logistics.

Updating and removing

Updating a mod

Stop the server, replace the old file in mods/ with the new version, start the server. Check the console on startup in case the new version changed anything that affects your config.

Removing a mod

Stop the server, delete the file from mods/, start the server. One warning: if the mod added custom content to your world (blocks, items, entities), removing the mod won't remove that content — you'll get missing-block errors in the logs and possibly in-game. Some mods handle this gracefully; some don't. Back up before removing any mod that has added content to a populated world.

Troubleshooting

Server won't start after installing a mod

Nine times out of ten it's the mod you just added. Stop the server, remove the new file from mods/, start the server. If it boots cleanly, that mod is the culprit — check its documentation for a version requirement you missed, or a dependency mod you need alongside it.

"Mod not loading" even though it's in mods/

Check you uploaded the file itself, not an extracted folder. A common failure mode is downloading a .zip, extracting it because it "looks like" a folder, and uploading the extracted version. Most Hytale mods want the .zip as-is.

Changes keep reverting

Hytale rewrites some of its config files when in-game events happen, and in-game actions will clobber edits you made on disk. Always stop the server before editing config files directly, and start it again afterwards.

Mod says it requires something my server doesn't have

Hytale's Early Access builds are moving quickly. Check the mod's release notes for the Hytale version it was built against — if you're on a newer or older build than the mod expects, that's your problem. Either wait for a mod update or align your server version.

A quick word on plugins

You'll sometimes hear mods for Hytale referred to as "plugins" — particularly ones that add server-side commands or admin tooling. As far as installation goes, they're the same thing: .jar file into mods/, restart.

The community terminology around "plugin" vs "mod" in Hytale hasn't settled, and Hypixel hasn't drawn a hard official line between them the way Mojang and Paper did for Minecraft. When in doubt, follow the mod author's install instructions rather than generic advice from the internet — they'll know what their specific thing needs.