How to Set Up Your Own Dedicated Server in Valheim

Ever wondered how to set up your own server in Valheim? Valheim is best played in co-op, and local servers dedicated can cause games to lag and have other connection issues. It can be an arduous task, but setting up your own dedicated server has a variety of benefits for your own playing experience and that of your friends. Changes to dedicated servers were also made in the most recent patch update.

The most crucial benefit of hosting your own Valheim server is that it will run for as long as you want, and other players can be playing even while the host is offline. Hosting such a server requires a lot of work from a computer, and it is suggested that you use an entirely separate PC for the sole purpose of running the server. This means setting up your own server can be very costly when it comes to hardware, electricity, and bandwidth.

How to Set Up Your Own Dedicated Server in Valheim

There are many steps to setting up and joining your own dedicated server. The first step is to find the Valheim Dedicated Server tool on Steam. After, the following steps are:

1. Right click the Valheim Dedicated Server on Steam; click Properties, Local Files, then Browse
2. Back up the "start_headless_server" file in case any mistakes are made
3. Right click the original "start_headless_server" file and click Edit; this will bring up Notepad
4. Change the -name tag from "My server" to what you want your server to be called; make sure the new name is still surrounded by quotation marks
5. Change the -world tag from "Dedicated" to something other than your server name; keep quotation marks
6. Change the -password tab from "Secret" to whatever you want your password to be
7. Forward your host PC's ports to 2456-2458 TCP/UDP; this process is different for every user depending on their router
8. Run the Valheim Dedicated Server on Steam and wait for the game server to connect
9. After some time, your newly created server will appear in Valheim's list of community servers
10. Run the Valheim client and wait for your server to appear in the Community Server list
11. Once your server has appeared, click on it and enter the password to join
12. Find out the external IP Address and forwarded ports from the server host
13. Click View in the top-left of Steam and open the Favourites tab
14. Click "Add a Server" and type in the IP Address and port information as such: "IP ADDRESS: PORT"

After completing these steps, your server should be up and running and ready to join. If it remains unavailable, make sure you have completed each step correctly. Double-check when port forwarding since it can be complicated for those who've never done it.

Valheim is a Viking survival game currently in its early access phase. It is exclusively available on Steam, where it recently hit five million users.