How to Change the Difficulty on Your Vintage Story Server

Vintage Story lets you control how challenging the world is for your players. Whether you want a relaxed, creative experience or a brutal survival fight, adjusting the difficulty settings on your server is straightforward from the RiverHosting panel. You do not need to edit any files by hand.

Before you start

• Make sure you have an active Vintage Story server on panel.riverhosting.com.
• You will need owner or admin access to the server in the panel.
• It is a good idea to stop your server before making world or difficulty changes to avoid any issues with players currently online.

1. Open the Server Config page

The Server Config page is where you manage the main settings for your Vintage Story server, including difficulty-related options.

1. Log in to the RiverHosting panel at panel.riverhosting.com.
2. Click on your Vintage Story server from the server list.
3. In the left-hand menu, click Server Config.
4. You will see a list of settings that control how your server behaves.

2. Adjust the difficulty settings

Inside Server Config, look for the options that control game difficulty. Vintage Story uses a few different settings that together shape how hard the world is.

1. Locate the difficulty or hardness-related fields. These typically include things like the overall game mode, temporal stability, hostile mob spawning intensity, and how punishing death is for players.
2. Change the values to match the experience you want for your server. Lower values create a more relaxed game, while higher values increase the survival challenge.
3. If you want a pure building or exploration experience with minimal danger, look for any options that reduce enemy hostility or disable certain threats entirely.
4. Once you have made your changes, click Save to apply them.

3. Restart your server to apply the changes

After saving your settings, you need to restart the server so the new difficulty values load properly.

1. In the left-hand menu, click Console.
2. Use the Restart button at the top of the page to restart your server.
3. Wait for the server to come back online. You will see startup messages appear in the console output.
4. Once the server is running again, join the world and verify the difficulty feels correct.

4. Fine-tune using World Generation settings (optional)

If you are setting up a brand new world and want full control over the challenge from the start, the World Generation page lets you configure additional options before the world is created.

1. In the left-hand menu, click World Generation.
2. Review the available options, which can include things like world type, starting conditions, and environmental hazards.
3. Set these before you generate your world for the best results, as some options are harder to change after the world has been created.
4. Save your choices, then start or restart your server to generate the world with those settings applied.

Troubleshooting

• The difficulty does not seem to have changed after restarting. Double-check that you clicked Save on the Server Config page before restarting. It is easy to navigate away without saving.
• Players are not seeing any difference in challenge. Some Vintage Story difficulty options apply to new chunks or areas of the world that have not been explored yet. Already-loaded areas may behave differently until the world updates those regions.
• The Server Config page is not showing the option I expect. Make sure your server is running the correct version of Vintage Story. Some settings may vary between versions. You can check the version from the Worlds and Saves page or the Startup tab.
• My server crashed after saving new settings. Check the Console for any error messages. If a value was set incorrectly, it may prevent the server from starting. You can go back into Server Config and correct the value, then restart again.

Need help?

If you run into any issues adjusting difficulty on your Vintage Story server, the RiverHosting support team is happy to help.