How to set up a Project Zomboid server

The open world survival game Project Zomboid has been on the market since 2013. The indie game still enjoys great pop­ular­ity, es­pe­cially in mul­ti­play­er mode. A dedicated Project Zomboid server will allow you to host private games for you and your friends. Let the survival adventure begin!

You can also host servers on your own PC. However, this may cause dif­fi­culties as you cannot easily adjust the server capacity to an increased number of players. You would have to upgrade the hardware of your entire PC to achieve this. The operating costs should also not be un­der­es­tim­ated. Therefore, it is worth­while to rely on a pro­fes­sion­al provider such as IONOS.

Different server variants are available for rent:

• Dedicated Server: Hardware 100% for your use
• vServer (Virtual Private Server): Access to vir­tu­al­ised server en­vir­on­ments
• Cloud Server: Access to vir­tu­al­ised server en­vir­on­ments, cus­tom­isa­tion on demand

You are allocated 100 percent of the available hardware resources with dedicated servers. However, this powerful per­form­ance comes at a price, but you only pay for the server power used thanks to minute-by-minute billing.

The VPS Server and Cloud Server are al­tern­at­ive vir­tu­al­ized server solutions, which allow you to share hardware resources with other users. The Cloud Server is billed by the minute and is scalable at any time, while the VPS server has a fixed monthly price.

A Cloud Server is a suitable choice for a Project Zomboid server. The power is suf­fi­cient to host the game and you can adjust the per­form­ance if more players want to join your server. The vServer is also a good al­tern­at­ive as the monthly fixed price means you can play as much as you want without higher costs.

The different server models are suited to different ap­plic­a­tion scenarios. The overview table below il­lus­trates typical gaming scenarios and the cor­res­pond­ing IONOS server plans:

The IONOS VPS Server XL with IONOS offers a simple server for two players and has the best value. The loading times are short thanks to the SSD storage which is included in the con­fig­ur­a­tion. The four-core processor also ensures a smooth gaming ex­per­i­ence.

Once you have found a suitable server con­fig­ur­a­tion, the next step choosing an operating system for your server. Whether you choose Windows or Ubuntu is up to you, but both operating systems are equally suitable for the Project Zomboid server.

The following in­struc­tions will show you how to set up a server for you and your friends. The server system used in the example is Windows Server 2016.

Your server will open once you have logged in with the ap­pro­pri­ate login data.

The server’s con­fig­ur­a­tion file must be adjusted in the next step. You can usually find it under the following path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Project Zomboid Dedicated Server

Right click on the file to edit it. The RAM that you want your server to use can be assigned here. Delete the following piece of code from the file to do this:

Edit the following code snippet where the number 16 is and enter the RAM in gigabytes which you want to allocate to your server:

You may need to make another change in the batch file. Whether this is necessary depends entirely on your operating system. You will need to replace the code section `-XX:+UseZGC´ with `-XX:+UseG1GC´ on Windows 2016 and older.

The game will start after you have suc­cess­fully connected. First, select a map where you want to play with your friends.