Set up a Valheim server: Here’s how

On the 2^nd of February 2021, the Swedish developer team Iron Gate released the survival-thriller ‘Valheim’ as an Early Access game - that is, as a not yet fully developed game - on Steam. Just 22 days later, Iron Gate announced that Valheim had already sold more than four million copies on the popular gaming platform. Twitch fans helped get the game off to a good streaming career: Valheim, which transports its players to the fictional tenth world of the same name within the Yggdrasil world tree of Norse mythology, was streamed on Twitch for over 30 million hours in the first three weeks after release.

The single-player mode has a lot of exciting adventures - however, the multiplayer variant is much more popular, in which up to ten players try their hand at bringing order to the shaken Valheim. In the following, we’ll therefore summarise all the important requirements that need to be met in order to host your own Valheim server. With our step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to create a Valheim server and make it available for other players to join the fun.

If you want to play Valheim together with friends and acquaintances in multiplayer mode, you have three different options:

1. You can start a private or a public server (community server) directly in the game.
2. You can join a community server together with friends (without password, or password is known to all players).
3. You create and host (or rent) your own Valheim dedicated server.

Starting up your own default server in Valheim (option: Create server) is the easiest and most straightforward way to play together with friends: In this case, you simply specify an individual name and the desired Seed for the new game world, start the Valheim server and then invite your fellow players via the Steam friends list.

If you choose a community server for your shared survival adventure, neither you nor your friends will have to host the server. However, in this case you won’t have any influence on which seed is used to generate the map. In addition, expect that other players will also join or that the server will be shut down and no longer available.

If you host your own Valheim dedicated server, you’ll have more freedom for your own hardware and still have complete control over the seed and the players that are on the server. In addition, this option lets you run the server permanently, so that your fellow players can leave for Valheim without you in case you’re busy.

If you start a Valheim server directly in the game, keep in mind that you run not only this server, but also the game itself (as well as the operating system) on your PC. Your computer must be able to not only handle the server, but also meet the requirements of the game. In addition, your Internet connection is critical in the stability of the server set up. Even very powerful connections will reach their limits if there are more than three players on the server.

For the hosting of Valheim’s dedicated server software, there is no official information from the manufacturer’s side so far. Since the graphical design of the survival game - at least in the Early Access status - was deliberately kept simple, Valheim is by no means particularly resource demanding. However, technical information from players suggests that less powerful setups are less suitable for hosting the game world in the long run. The more intensively players interact with the world, for example by constructing buildings or entering dungeons, the more volatile Valheim servers with little RAM and CPU have been. The same is true when the number of simultaneously active players increases.

Below we have summarised the most important system requirements of a Valheim server for you.

Valheim isn’t too demanding on the processor performance, which is why most server setups hardly reach their performance limits at this point. Two cores with 2.8 GHz should be a good basis for a joint online adventure for almost all scenarios - both with Windows and Linux as the server system. If the provider works with virtualised cores that have less GHz, a four-core processor (or a suitable number of virtualised cores) is recommended. For a Valheim server for more than five people, it is also a good idea to have more CPU in view of upcoming developments to the game.

RAM seems to be the most important performance component in many current Valheim servers. Minimal setups with two gigabytes of RAM or four gigabytes of RAM (for operating systems with a graphical user interface) are said to be enough, but these RAM figures lead to problems during longer sessions. Even for the server size of three to five players recommended by Iron Gate, eight gigabytes of RAM seem to be the safer long-term option. If your budget allows, an increase to 16 gigabytes is recommended if between six and ten players will regularly join your adventure at the same time.

The need for hard disk space is hardly worth mentioning with the current Valheim version. You only need to plan one to two gigabytes of memory for the program files. For the standard installation of a dedicated server via Steam, an additional space of about three gigabytes is needed. So, with five gigabytes of hard drive space, you’ll be well equipped for the current Valheim version. In addition, there are the memory requirements of the operating system - for a Windows Server 2016, for example, 32 GB, for an Ubuntu server (20.04) 25 GB memory.

If you’re planning regular backups of your Valheim server, this should also be taken into account when planning your storage.

The broadband requirements for hosting a Valheim server should, in theory, be easily met by all professional providers. If you take the upload guideline of 53.4 Kbit/s per player for Steam source games provided by Steam developer Valve as a guide, a broadband connection that offers one to two Mbit/s upload speed should be more than enough. In practice, many gamers experience serious lags as the number of players increases, since these providers may limit the maximum upload speed by default. In this case, consult your provider to remove the restriction - if possible.

In principle, you have the option of hosting a Valheim server on your own home computer or a separate second PC. In this case, however, you have disadvantages compared to a rented server, e.g. high acquisition and operating costs or a lack of flexibility when it comes to increasing or decreasing the server capacities.

If you want to rent the hardware for a Valheim server, however, you’ll need to choose between providers and server models, which is easier said than done. With IONOS, for example, you can choose one of the following three variants:

• Dedicated Server (dedicated server, either self-managed or managed by IONOS)
• vServer (also referred to as Virtual Private Server, or VPS for short).
• Cloud Server

The three available server options from IONOS differ regarding their pricing. In addition, the way in which the resources are made available to customers plays an important role. To make it easier for you to choose the right model for your Valheim server, we present the three options below:

A cloud server rental from IONOS means that you rent virtualised server resources that are billed by the minute. If you want to ramp up the performance, you can do so at any time via your account. The same applies if you want to reduce the service package or switch off the server completely.

vServers grant you access to virtualised server environments. However, there is always a fixed monthly charge for the VPS solutions, regardless of how the resources are used.

If you choose a dedicated server, IONOS assigns hardware that is reserved just for you. Only this option allows customers to have processors with strong single-core power of up to 3.8 GHz, but that also affects the price.

For the three server options presented, IONOS has a few packages to choose from, which differ in terms of scope of services and costs. To make it easier for you to find the right package, we have compiled three possible set-ups for your own Valheim server in the following table, including the appropriate rates for vServers, cloud servers, and dedicated servers at IONOS.

Once the server setup is complete, it is important to choose your operating system. In the case of a dedicated server for Valheim, you can choose between Microsoft and Linux server systems such as Windows Server or Ubuntu.

In the following, we will show you how to create a Valheim server as an IONOS customer and then how to make it accessible for playing together with friends via the game client. Windows Server 2016 is used as the server system.

Theoretically, you can now start and stop your Valheim server at any time via the Steam client. However, the interface does not offer any options to revise the properties of the server, which is why we recommend starting it via the start_headless_server file, which can be found in the following directory by default:

Highlight the batch file by right-clicking and select the ‘Edit’ option to open the configuration file in the standard editor. The information for the server can be found in the bottom line of the file:

The three parameters in quotation marks are relevant and required in this case:

• Name: the name of your Valheim server, which is displayed in the server listing in the client if you make the server publicly available.
• World: the name of the storage file of the Valheim server
• Password: the password for accessing your server