Valheim Server Hosting On the Decentralized Cloud

Not to keep playing: an existing world loads in 1.0 and gets the new content. The catch is generation. The Deep North is written into terrain the first time you go there, so on a world where you have already explored the far north it lands in a landscape that was generated before the biome existed, and Iron Gate recommends a fresh world if seeing the biome properly is the point. A dedicated server makes that cheap either way, because you can run the new world beside the old one on the same server and switch by world name.

Yes. Turn BepInEx on when you deploy and the server installs BepInExPack Valheim on first start. Plugin .dll files go in the mod folder on your server's volume, which you can upload to directly from the panel, with no SFTP and no rebuilding an image. ValheimPlus is supported the same way as an alternative. Two things no host can change. Most Valheim mods are client-side too, so everyone joining needs the same plugins at the same versions. And 1.0 is a major version change, which historically breaks plugins until each author republishes: check the mods you depend on before you move a modded world onto it.

Thunderstore is where the Valheim modding community publishes, and it is what mod managers install from. A Thunderstore package is a .zip: unpack it on your machine and upload the .dll files inside to your server's plugin folder. Server-side-only mods need nothing from your players; anything that changes items, recipes or the world needs to be installed client-side as well.

A flat monthly rate for your server's resources, from $3.93/month, billed monthly with no long-term contract. There are no per-player surcharges, and backups are not a paid add-on; they are on by default in every tier.

Flux is a decentralized cloud running on thousands of independent nodes across 50+ countries. Your server runs on a specific node with its own CPU and RAM, exactly as it would in a data centre; what is distributed is where those nodes are and how your world save is replicated between them.

On a VPS you install steamcmd, write a systemd unit, open ports, and own every update and every backup script. Here the server installs itself, backups are scheduled from the first boot, and the save is replicated rather than sitting on one disk. You keep the same control over settings, mods and world data.

Inside the server it is UDP 2456 for the game, 2457 for the Steam server query, and 2458 for crossplay and for mods that expect the game port plus two. All three are published when it deploys, so there is no firewall or port forwarding to configure yourself. The address to give your friends is the one the panel shows, on its own and with no port after it: crossplay servers are joined through Valheim's relay, so the game finds your world from the name alone. Console players join with a code and need no address at all.

Yes, and the panel does the fiddly part. Since 1.0 a world is a FOLDER, worlds_local/<name>/, holding the world in chunks; a world made before 1.0 is still the older pair of files, <name>.db and <name>.fwl, until a 1.0 server opens it. Upload either shape as a .zip from the Backup tab and it is renamed to the world this server boots, so there is no world name to line up by hand. Take a copy first: writing over a live world while the server is running is the one way to lose it.

Four layers, and it is worth knowing which is which. Valheim has its own automatic backups built in: the dedicated server writes timestamped copies of the world next to the live save, keeps a small rolling number of them, and its -backups and -backupshort/-backuplong arguments control how many and how often. That happens on any Valheim server anywhere, hosted or not. On top of it, the server image we run adds an hourly layer: it zips your world every hour onto the same persistent volume as the world, keeping three days of archives by default, and you can browse and download any of them from the panel. Alongside that, the panel's Backup tab lets you take a manual snapshot before you change something risky. Those live on the node and clear themselves after 24 hours, so they are a safety net for the next hour rather than an archive. Finally there are FluxDrive checkpoints, full app backups held in Flux's own cloud storage and listed in the same tab, which you can restore from. Underneath all of it the volume itself is replicated across the nodes your app runs on.

Valheim requires one for a public server, and it must be at least five characters. Two rules catch people out: the password cannot appear inside your server name or world name, and the server will refuse to start if it does. Set it at deploy and it is stored with your server configuration.

The server name, yes: change it and restart. The world name is different: it selects which save file the server loads, so pointing it at a name that does not exist yet generates a brand new empty world rather than renaming your old one. Your existing world is still on disk, and switching the name back loads it again.

You get the infrastructure layer: restarts, redeploys, resource stats, a live container log, and a file browser over your server's volume, which is where the world saves, backups, admin list and mod plugins all live. Valheim's dedicated server has no RCON console, so in-game admin commands are run by an admin from inside the game.