How to run a Palworld dedicated server, and when renting beats your PC

A Palworld dedicated server is the game’s server program running on its own, with no game client attached. The world stays up when you log off, and everyone, host included, connects the same way. You can also let in more people than a co-op session holds. Pocketpair’s requirements call for 16 GB of RAM, four or more CPU cores, an SSD and UDP port 8211, on Windows or 64-bit Linux.

Below is the Linux setup from the official docs, the settings worth touching, and when a rented box beats leaving your gaming PC on all night.

What a dedicated server gives you over co-op

In co-op, the world lives inside the host’s copy of the game. When the host quits, the world goes with them. Pocketpair’s server overview puts the difference plainly: on a dedicated server, “the host does not need to keep the game client running at all times, and the number of people who can join is large.”

It’s fairer, too. A co-op host plays with no network between them and the world, while everyone else’s inputs go through the host’s home connection to a PC that’s also rendering the host’s game. On a dedicated server, everyone connects over the network, host included.

Player count is a setting. You set it with ServerPlayerMaxNum in the config or -players= at launch, and the docs’ own example uses 32. RAM and upload are what really cap you.

Requirements, from the official docs

The requirements page lists:

• OS: Windows 64-bit, or 64-bit Linux (“Ubuntu, AlmaLinux etc.”).
• CPU: 4 cores or more, recommended.
• RAM: 16 GB, with “larger than 32GB” recommended. 8 GB boots, but the docs say it “increases the possibility of server crashes due to out of memory.”
• Storage: a fast SSD. “Low-performance storage may corrupt saved data.”
• Network: UDP 8211 by default (changeable), forwarded on your router.

Treat 16 GB as the floor and the SSD as mandatory. A corrupted save after a month of base building is the worst thing that can happen here, and the docs name slow storage as a cause. (Pocketpair also ships an official Docker image, but the docs call Docker Desktop deprecated for the same storage reason.)

Installing it on Linux, step by step

These are the docs’ commands, plus a dedicated user and a firewall rule.

1. Make a user for the server. Don’t run game servers as root.
2. Install SteamCMD using Valve’s instructions for your distro.
3. Download the server. App ID 2394010 is the Palworld Dedicated Server, a Windows and Linux tool on SteamDB. Anonymous login, no Steam account needed.
4. Start it once, then stop it. The docs note the config folders only appear after the first start.
5. Copy the default config into place and edit the copy. Editing DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini itself changes nothing.
6. Open UDP 8211 in the firewall, and on your router if you’re at home.
7. Start it for real. Players type your IP and port into the box under the server list.

# as your admin user
sudo useradd -m steam
sudo ufw allow 8211/udp        # or firewall-cmd on AlmaLinux
sudo -iu steam

# as steam
steamcmd +login anonymous +app_update 2394010 validate +quit
cd ~/Steam/steamapps/common/PalServer
./PalServer.sh                 # first run creates the config folders; stop it
cp DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini
nano Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini
./PalServer.sh -publiclobby    # -publiclobby lists it as a community server

The docs say the server usually lands in ~/Steam/steamapps/common/PalServer. If yours didn’t, find ~ -name PalServer.sh will find it. Before you hand out the IP, run through our Linux hardening checklist.

The settings worth changing

All of these live in PalWorldSettings.ini, documented on the configuration page. Edit with the server stopped and restart to apply.

Who gets in. ServerName, ServerPassword and ServerPlayerMaxNum. Set AdminPassword too. Admin commands like /Save, /KickPlayer and /Shutdown only work after you type /AdminPassword <password> in chat.

How the game plays. ExpRate, PalCaptureRate, DayTimeSpeedRate and NightTimeSpeedRate are multipliers. DeathPenalty takes None, Item, ItemAndEquipment or All. Settle that one before anyone has something to lose.

Backups. Turn on bIsUseBackupSaveData. The server then keeps rolling copies: 5 at 30-second intervals, 6 at 10 minutes, 12 hourly and 7 daily. It adds disk load, one more reason for the SSD.

Load. The docs flag BaseCampWorkerMaxNum (up to 50 Pals per base), BaseCampMaxNumInGuild (default 4, max 10) and PalSpawnNumRate as adding processing load. Raise them slowly.

One flag to skip. Older guides tell you to launch with -useperfthreads -NoAsyncLoadingThread -UseMultithreadForDS, but the current docs say that in v1.0 and later, leaving it unset may improve performance. I’d leave it off.

Memory and restarts

Pocketpair’s only memory guidance is the requirements line above, and the docs don’t publish a restart schedule. They do give you what you need for a clean one:

• In game, as admin: /Save, then /Shutdown 60 Restarting warns players and stops the server after 60 seconds.
• Over the REST API (set RESTAPIEnabled): POST /save, then POST /shutdown with a waittime and a message. GET /metrics returns server FPS, frame time, player count and uptime, worth watching next to memory.

Run the server as a systemd service with Restart=always, and a crash or a scheduled shutdown both end with the server coming back by itself. Add a cron job that calls the REST API’s save and shutdown at 5 a.m., and you’ve got a nightly restart that saves first and warns anyone still online.

Keep RCON and the REST API off the public internet. The docs say these APIs “are not designed to be exposed directly to the Internet,” and RCON (default port 25575) is deprecated and scheduled to stop working. Reach them over SSH and open only 8211.

When renting beats your PC

Three things decide it.

Upload. Everything the server sends to players leaves through your upload, the thin side of most home connections. When the FCC raised its broadband benchmark in March 2024, it set it at 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, and that 20 is shared with everyone in the house. Pocketpair doesn’t publish a per-player bandwidth figure, so measure yours with vnstat -l during a busy session.

NAT. The docs assume you can forward UDP 8211 on your router. Some ISPs put customers behind carrier-grade NAT, where there’s no port to forward at all. The docs also warn that if your router doesn’t support hairpin NAT, you can’t connect to a community server hosted on your own network, which is awkward when you’re the one hosting.

Uptime. A world on your gaming PC is only up while that PC is on, awake and not rebooting for updates. It also shares RAM with the copy of Palworld you’re playing on the same machine.

Once two of those three bite, rent. Our dedicated game server builds are whole machines, month to month with $0 setup. Palworld’s server runs on Linux, so you can skip the $50 a month Windows Server line on the order form.

• $126 a month, Chicago or Los Angeles: Xeon E3-1230 v1 (4 cores, 8 threads), 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB HDD, 30 TB of transfer.
• $159 a month, Ashburn, Chicago or Los Angeles: Xeon D-1541 Special (8 cores, 16 threads), 64 GB of RAM, 1 TB SSD, 1 Gbps unmetered port.

For Palworld, take the $159 build. It clears Pocketpair’s guidance on both RAM and storage, while the $126 build meets the 4-core and 16 GB lines but ships with a hard drive, the storage the docs warn about. Both include 4 Gbps of DDoS protection, and the order form offers 6, 8 or 10 Gbps for $155, $330 or $525 a month if you need more. Our metered vs unmetered bandwidth post does the math on the port.

FAQ

If you’d rather not leave your PC on all week, pick a build on our game servers page, or send your player count through the custom quote form and we’ll reply within one business day with a configuration and price.