Zigenzag

I have seen plenty of people have issues connecting to game servers and there are a few methods that might get you up and running. The following steps all assume the target server is online and all ports open and listening correctly etc. Also, the in game server browser should be your first call, these methods should be used if that doesn’t work.

Steam Favourites

Open Steam. In the top left of the window, go to View and click servers.

Then click the favourites tab and click add a server at the bottom right. Fill the IP address and port of the server in with the IP:PORT of the server you wish to connect to, and add the add this address to favourites button. Its very important to point out, that the port isn’t the game port, but the steam query port. This is the port above the game port. In a default setup where the game is on 2456, the port would be 2457.

You should then be able to click connect with the button at the bottom right when you select your server.

Steam Launch Options

The other solution is to use the launch options in Steam to load the game to the server directly. You can access this by right clicking the game in the sidebar, and going to properties. In the general section at the very bottom, you will see the launch options section. The command to enter into here is: +connect IP:PORT

Once you have added the command and closed the properties window, you should be able to start the game normally through Steam. Once you have selected your character, it should log you in.

Joining Your Steam Friends

It is also possible to connect to the server by joining a friend who is already in the game, though this is not always successful. I haven’t done this one but it should be straight forwards to do. Open the Steam overlay (typically shift + tab), find the friend you want to join in your friends list and join there game. You may have to have already selected a character for this to work.

Setting up a dedicated server was a bit tricky initially, and there are some pitfalls you may discover while doing so. As the game is in early access, the documentation for setting up dedicated servers is hard to find. In this post I will try and simplify this.

System Requirements

These requirements are a best guess by myself, and the lack of this info prior to my server development certainly cause me a few headaches.

The server itself should have a minimum of 3GB of RAM, though id recommend at least 4GB’s for smooth operation. Processor wise, its not too heavy, a couple of cores (or one powerful core) should be fine. In terms of disk space, a couple of gigs of free space should be fine. The game is roughly 600-700mb and the world isn’t ridiculous. However, you may want extra space to keep backups!

Start Arguments / Options

There has been some confusion with the options used to configure the server on the start server command. There are a couple things to mention:

Server name doesn’t have any strict limits that I can see.

World name is strict with capitalisation, and you cannot just rename your world file names.

Password should be different than the world name and should be at least 5 characters in size.

Foot note

Hopefully this information is useful to you. I will follow up in the next few days with a guide for setting up a dedicated server, using Docker to manage dependencies and simplify the installation.