Enshrouded Server Not Showing Up: The Host Side Fix

Split the problem in two first

There are two different failures that look identical from the outside, and telling them apart saves you most of the work. Ask someone outside your network to add the server to their Steam favourites by IP and port rather than searching for it. If it shows up there with its player count, the port is reachable and only the public listing is the problem; if it does not, the port itself is not reachable from the internet. If the direct connect also fails, the game port itself is not reachable.

Enshrouded needs one port, and older guides list three

This is the single most common cause, and old advice makes it worse. Content Update #2 removed the separate game port, and the server now uses one UDP port for everything, the query port:

Guides written before that update still tell you to open 15636 as a game port, and some add 27015. Neither is needed by the server today. Keen Games lists queryPort as the one port the server uses; the server also talks to Steam on the ports in Valve's Required Ports for Steam article, and those are outgoing connections that a home router allows by default.

Open the query port on UDP. If you changed queryPort in enshrouded_server.json, open the number you set, not 15637.

The bind address in enshrouded_server.json

In your enshrouded_server.json the ip field should be 0.0.0.0, which tells the server to listen on every network interface. It should not be your local address and it should not be your public address. Setting either is a classic way to end up with a server that works perfectly from inside your own network and is unreachable from everywhere else.

While you are in the file, check that queryPort matches the number you opened. Changing the port after writing the firewall rules produces exactly the symptoms on this page. An old gamePort entry left over from before Content Update #2 does nothing and can go.

Router rules that look right and are not

If you are self-hosting behind a consumer router, two mistakes account for most of the remaining cases:

• Forwarding a different external port to the query port. The server announces the port it listens on, so the external and internal numbers in the rule must be the same.
• Pointing the rules at an address that has since changed. If the server machine gets its local IP from DHCP, a reboot can move it and silently break every rule you wrote. Assign a static local address or a DHCP reservation.

Version mismatch after a patch

Enshrouded refuses connections across mismatched versions. When Keen Games ships an update, clients update automatically through Steam and your server does not, so a server that worked last night can reject everyone this morning with no configuration change at all. If the failure started right after a patch, update the server before debugging anything else.

Self-hosters need to re-run the SteamCMD update and restart. On Flux the server downloads the current build from Steam every time it starts, so this is one restart from the dashboard.

When the server is listed but joining fails

A server that appears in the browser and then refuses the join is usually one of three things: the password is wrong and passwords are case-sensitive, the server is full, or the world is still loading. Enshrouded takes a little while to finish loading a large world on start, and joins attempted in that window fail without a useful message. Give it a minute after the process starts before assuming something is broken.

Checklist

1. Have someone outside your network add the server to their Steam favourites by IP and port. If it appears there, the port is reachable and only the public listing is the problem.
2. Confirm the query port (15637 unless you changed it) is open on UDP.
3. Check that ip is 0.0.0.0 in enshrouded_server.json, and that queryPort matches what you opened.
4. If you are behind a router, forward the port to the same number on a static local address.
5. Check whether a game patch landed recently and update the server if so.
6. Give the world a minute to finish loading before testing a join.

Work down that list in order and you will land on the cause in a few minutes. If you would rather not own this class of problem at all, a managed deployment removes the ports, the router and the update step in one go.