Getting Started with Your ICARUS Dedicated Server
ICARUS is RocketWerkz's session-based PvE survival game, built under Dean Hall of DayZ fame. You drop onto a terraformed alien planet, gather what you can, build what you need, and try to extract before the weather, the wildlife, or your own bad decisions kill you. It's the kind of game that gets a lot better with friends, and a lot more annoying when the host has to be online for anyone else to play. That's where a dedicated server earns its keep.
This guide walks you through getting your LOW.MS ICARUS server live, configured, and ready for your group's first drop.
Why Run a Dedicated Server
Peer-to-peer hosting is fine for a quick mission with one mate, but it falls apart the moment your group is in different timezones or someone wants to log in and tend their base while everyone else is at work. A dedicated box runs around the clock, so your Open World prospect keeps ticking whether you're there or not, your Outpost storage is always reachable, and nobody's home internet is the bottleneck during a storm.
There's also the simple fact that ICARUS gets heavier the more you build. Once a base sprawls and you've got fabricators humming, having the simulation on a proper server instead of someone's gaming rig makes a noticeable difference.
Most groups we host end up running an Open World prospect on Olympus and treating it as their permanent home, which is what this guide is geared toward.
Step 1: Order the Server
Head to the ICARUS hosting page and pick a plan. Slot counts, RAM, region and billing options all live there, so we won't repeat them here. One thing worth flagging: the old 8-player dedicated cap that ICARUS shipped with was lifted in the Week 54 update, so larger groups are no longer stuck. We offer slots up to 20.
After checkout the server provisions automatically. You'll get an email with the connection details and panel login, usually within a couple of minutes.
Step 2: Log In to the Control Panel
Your server lives at control.low.ms. It's a TCAdmin-based panel, and the bits you'll touch most often as a new owner are:
- Service Settings, for starting and stopping the server
- Web Console, for watching it boot and issuing admin commands
- Configuration Files, for editing
ServerSettings.ini - Cloud Backup, for snapshots before you do something risky
- Current Activity & Stats, for CPU, RAM and player counts
Automatic cloud backups run on every ICARUS plan, so if you fat-finger a config or a prospect goes sideways you can roll back from Cloud Restore.
Step 3: Configure ServerSettings.ini
The main config file is Icarus/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/ServerSettings.ini. Open it from Configuration Files in the panel. The defaults are sane enough to boot, but a few keys are worth knowing about straight away.
JoinPassword and AdminPassword do what they sound like. Set JoinPassword if you want a private server, and always set AdminPassword because it gates the admin tools in-game.
MaxPlayers controls the slot count. With the Week 54 cap removal, you can set this to match whatever your plan supports.
ShutdownIfNotJoinedFor and ShutdownIfEmptyFor are the two settings that bite new admins. They both default to 300 seconds, which means the server will helpfully shut itself down five minutes after the last player leaves. On a hosted box you almost never want that. Bump them both to something like 86400 (a full day) so the server stays up between sessions. Do not set them to 0, despite what older guides say. Zero shuts the server down immediately on boot, which is the opposite of what you want.
ResumeProspect set to True along with LastProspectName is what makes the server come back up on the same prospect after a restart. AllowNonAdminsToLaunchProspects and AllowNonAdminsToDeleteProspects decide how much rope you give your group; we usually leave launch on and delete off.
One quirk to know: SessionName in the ini is currently broken upstream. To set the name shown in the server browser, use the -SteamServerName= command-line argument from Commandline Manager in the panel instead.
For a full breakdown of every key, the ICARUS server settings guide goes deeper than we can here.
Step 4: Create or Load a Prospect
The prospect system is the part that trips people up the first time, because ICARUS isn't a single persistent world, it's a launcher for individual scenarios. Until you create or load one, players can connect but there's nothing for them to drop into.
There are three flavours. Open World prospects are the persistent sandbox most groups want: no timer, save forever, build whatever. Mission prospects are timed objective drops with extraction mechanics, fun but not what you'd run as your daily server. Outposts are permanent home bases used to store gear between missions.
To create a fresh Open World on Olympus, add this line to ServerSettings.ini:
CreateProspect=Olympus_Outpost 3 false MyBase
The four arguments are space-separated: prospect type, difficulty (1 to 4), hardcore flag, and the save name. So the example above creates a normal-difficulty, non-hardcore Open World save called MyBase. To resume an existing one instead, set:
LoadProspect=MyBase
ResumeProspect=True
LastProspectName=MyBase
Save the file and restart the server from Service Settings. Watch Web Console as it boots, the prospect load is the slowest part of startup.
Olympus is the base map and free with the game. Styx (Styx Expansion), Prometheus (New Frontiers), and Elysium (Dangerous Horizons) are paid DLC maps, and as a rule every player who wants to join a DLC-map prospect needs to own that DLC themselves.
Step 5: Connect
Open ICARUS on Steam, hit Join, and either find your server in the browser or use Direct Connect with the IP and port from your panel. The default ports are UDP 17777 for game traffic and UDP 27015 for queries, which is what the browser uses to find you.
If your server isn't showing up in the browser, direct connect almost always works. The most common reason connections fail outright is a version mismatch between client and server right after a patch, so check Steam Update in the panel if your group can't get in the morning after a release. The ICARUS troubleshooting guide covers the rest.
Mods
ICARUS mods come from Nexus Mods as .pak files, not from Steam Workshop. Drop them into Icarus/Content/Paks/mods/ via File Manager (or use Mod Manager in the panel) and restart. Every player joining needs the same mods installed locally, otherwise they'll bounce on connect.
A Note on Linux
Upstream ICARUS only ships a Windows dedicated server. Community Docker images exist for Linux, and we run both Windows and Linux plans, but if you're starting from scratch the Windows path is the one with fewer surprises.
Once your prospect is live and your group is in, the rest is just survival. Pick a landing zone, don't get caught outside in a storm, and back up before you experiment with anything load-bearing.