How to Create Your Own Palworld Server

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Palworld is 2024’s first big runaway video game success. Its compelling mix of Pokemon-like monster collecting and open-world survival gameplay has brought in millions of players on PC and Xbox, but one of the game’s best features is its multiplayer, letting players hop into public servers alongside friends and strangers alike. However, if you’re looking for a more private Palworld experience, you can also create your dedicated Palworld server on PC. 

Dedicated Palworld servers let you invite your friends to a private world where your progress will persist as long as the server remains active. If you’ve ever played Minecraft on a personal server, it’s essentially the same idea. Dedicated servers even give you a bit more control over the gameplay experience since you don’t need to worry about random players joining and interfering with your base building, and let you adjust settings or even customize the game’s difficulty, change the rate at which you level up, and more. 

Playing on your own Palword dedicated server is fun, but takes some work to set up. To help you through the process, we’ve put together this guide on how to create, host, and manage a Palworld server on Windows.

What you need to create and host a Palworld dedicated server

Creating a Palworld dedicated server is only possible on the Steam PC version (either on Windows 11/10 64bit or Linux 64bit). The feature is not available to Xbox players or PC users playing via GamePass. For this guide, we’re sticking to the Windows 11/10 steps.

You can run a Palworld dedicated server on the same PC you play Palworld on. However, it’s even better if you have a secondary PC running the server instead since the server software will hog up your PC’s resources whenever it’s active. The server PC should have at least 16GB RAM, or ideally 32GB and higher. It’s technically possible to run a Palworld dedicated server with just 8GB RAM, but we don’t recommend it; memory usage is high and the server may run poorly or even crash. A four-core CPU and fast SSD are also recommended.

Along with the right PC hardware, you’ll also need a stable internet connection with the fastest speeds available. We recommend using an Ethernet connection since hardwired internet connections are stronger and more reliable than wifi. However, if wifi is your only option, a 5GHz router is ideal.

Download Palworld Private server software

First, we need to install the Palworld Dedicated Server software, which is available as a free download to anyone who owns the game on Steam.

1. Open your Steam library and download Palworld Dedicated Server. If you don’t see it, make sure the Tools box is checked in the library drop-down box. You also need to install and run Palworld at least once for it to show up.

2. Once the server software is installed, run it from Steam. Select Play Palworld Dedicated Server from the popup box, then click Play.

3. A command line window will open, displaying the following message: "Setting breakpad minidump AppID = 2394010"

4. You may get a security pop-up if you use Windows Defender or third-party firewall software. We’ll go over disabling this later in the process, but feel free to give the Palworld Server permissions now if you’re able. 

5. Close the command line window and move on to the next section.

Configure the server

If you followed the steps above, all the necessary files are now installed on your PC, and it’s time to get your Palworld Dedicated server up and running. Before we do any of that, we need to find the server PC’s local IPv4 address, which we need for the server to work properly. This is a string of eight digits separated by periods used to identify the specific device in the network (it will look something like 00.0.0.000). You can find your IPv4 address easily in your Windows settings using these steps:

Find your IPv4 address on Windows 11:

1. Go to Start > Settings > Network & internet

2. Select your wifi or Ethernet connection

3. Go to Properties and scroll down to the IPv4 address. Write down the numbers.

Find your IPv4 address on Windows 10: 

1. Click the wifi or ethernet icon in your taskbar.

2. Select your connection from the list, then click Properties.

3. Scroll down until you see the IPv4 address. Write down the numbers.

Now that we have the IPv4 address, we need to configure your server’s settings. 

1. Right-click Palworld Dedicated Server and select Manage > Browse Local files OR open File Explorer and go to Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonPalServer.

2. Right-click DefaultPalWorldSettings and click Open With > Notepad.

3. Next, go to Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonPalServerPalSavedConfigWindowsServer

4. Right-click “PalWorldSettings.ini” and click Open With > Notepad. It will be a blank document.

5. Copy and paste the text from DefaultPalWorldSettings starting from [/Script/Pal.PalGameWorldSettings] over to PalWorldSettings.ini.

6. Close both files.

7. Back up your PalWorldSettings.ini file by copying and pasting it into another folder. You can use the backup to restore the default config if you ever run into issues and need to remake your server.

Next, we need to set a few parameters so others can find and connect to your Palworld server. 

Open PalWorldSettings.ini and press “Ctrl+F” in Notepad to search for and edit the following settings. 

• ‘ServerName=” (Your server”s name)

• ‘ServerDescription=‘ (A description of your server. Optional.)

• ‘ServerPassword=‘ (The password used to log into your Palwrodl server)

• ‘AdminPassword=‘ (The password used to access admin-level server settings)

• ‘PublicIP=‘ (The server’s IPv4 address we found in the previous steps)

• ‘Region=’ (Your server’s region. Optional.)

Make sure the information you add is within the quotation marks for each parameter. For example, ‘ServerName=My Palworld Ser ver.’

There are more optional settings you can change in PalWorldSettings.ini, but the above parameters are the most important. We’ll cover the custom settings you can change in a later section. 

Once you’re satisfied with the settings, save your changes and close Notepad.

Change your server’s connection settings

Now that we’ve set up your Palworld dedicated server’s name, password, and other information, we need to make a few adjustments to your router’s network to make sure other players can find and connect to it. 

First, we need to let the server through Windows Defender Firewall. 

1. Search for “PowerShell” in the Windows Start menu.

2. Right-click Windows Powershell and select “Run as Administrator.”

3. Copy and paste each of these commands into the Powershell window, pressing enter after each to perform the action:

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Palworld Server" -Direction Inbound -LocalPort 27015,27016,25575 -Protocol TCP -Action Allow

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Palworld Server" -Direction Outbound -LocalPort 27015,27016,25575 -Protocol TCP -Action Allow

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Palworld Server" -Direction Outbound -LocalPort 8211,27015,27016,25575 -Protocol UDP -Action Allow

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Palworld Server" -Direction Inbound -LocalPort 8211,27015,27016,25575 -Protocol UDP -Action Allow

1. Once the commands are complete, close Powershell.

Next, we need to set up port forwarding on your network router for the Palworld Server. This process is different for every router, so we can’t give you specific steps. However, this is possible for all routers, so a quick Google search should point you in the right direction. 

Follow the steps for your router to set up port forwarding on ports 8211, 27015, 27016, 25575. Select TCP or UDP protocols. The process may also require the server’s local IPv4 address that we found in the previous section.

With these final steps are done, you’ve completed the bare minimum process for setting up your own dedicated Palworld server. However, there are some optional steps you may want to follow to optimize your server’s performance before you start playing, and even change the gameplay experience with custom settings and mods. 

Optimize your Palworld server (optional, but recommended)

While it’s entirely possible to play on a dedicated Palworld server using the default settings, it’s likely you will experience performance dips or even crashes due to memory leaks and other issues. Luckily, users have found several tweaks to help it run better. This Reddit thread from the official Palworld dedicated server subreddit has a few suggested settings changes and .ini file edits that seem to boost performance.

It’s also wise to restart your server regularly to prevent memory leaks that lead to crashes. Once every 24 hours should be the minimum, but some users suggest restarting as often as every two hours. Another solution is to use the free program Windows RamMap to clear your server PC’s memory every two hours paired with a full restart once every 24 hours. Pocket Pair says they’re working on fixing this issue, but even if the memory leak bug is solved, restarting once a day is still a wise move since the servers eat up your RAM. 

These optimization steps are optional and can be done while creating your server or implemented later if you run into issues while hosting the server. 

Our last optimization tip is to keep Palworld’s game and server files updated in Steam. Pocket Pair Studios routinely patches the game and server software to help address these issues, so be sure to install any updates in Steam when they’re available to keep everything up to date and running well.

Customize your Palworld server (optional)

One of the perks of hosting your own Palworld server is adjusting the gameplay to suit your preferences. You can tweak everything from the game’s difficulty, the rate of EXP gain, the length of day and night cycles, and more—a lot more, in fact. Doing so is optional, so feel free to skip to the final section if you just want to play with the default gameplay settings. 

To customize your Palworld server’s experience, you need to open and edit specific parameters in the PalWorldSettings.ini file using Wordpad. Note that changing your server’s gamepay settings may cause bugs or other issues while playing Palworld, so do so at your own risk. Make sure you back up PalWorldSettings.ini before you change anything so you can restore your server’s settings if anything goes wrong.

Here’s just a quick selection of what you can change:

• Difficulty: Make the game easier or harder.

• ExpRate: Modify how much experience players and Pals earn while playing.

• PalSpawnNumRate: Change how many Pals appear in the world.

• DayTimeSpeedRate: Change how long it’s daytime on your server.

• NightTimeSpeedRate: Change the length of night on your server.

There are dozens of other settings you can adjust. Check the full list of Palworld custom settings in this guide from Dathost. 

Be sure to save any changes you make to PalWorldSettings.ini before closing the file. You will also need to restart your server, and other players will need to reconnect before the changes take effect in-game. 

Launch and connect to the server and play

With everything set up and your settings configured to your liking, it’s finally time to boot up your Palworld dedicated server and start playing.

To launch the server:

1. Open your Steam library and run Palworld Dedicated Server.

2. Select “Play Palworld Dedicated Server” in the pop-up box, then select “Play.”

3. A command prompt window will open, just like when we first set up the server earlier. This means the server is online and running—so don’t close the window unless you are turning off the server.

To join the server:

1. Open Palworld in Steam.

2. When the game launches, select “Join Multiplayer Game.”

3. To join your own server: Type in the server’s IPv4 address in the text box at the bottom of the screen. 

4. To join someone else’s server: Type in the server’s IPv4 address in the text box at the bottom of the screen, then add :8211 at the end. (For example: 000.0.0.0:8211)

5. (Optional) If the server has a password, check “Enter Password” next to the text box. 

6. Click “Connect.”

If everything worked, the game will load into the dedicated server.

Palworld Server Admin commands:

The last thing to note is server admin commands. While playing in your own Palworld sever, you can use console commands to perform certain server functions like viewing which who else is active on the server, checking server information, or even kicking and banning players.

To do this, you need to give yourself admin privileges:

1. In game, press “Enter” to open the chat box

2. Type /AdminPassword followed by the admin password we set earlier in PalWorldSettings.ini, then press “Enter” to get admin status.

Now you can type the following commands (without the brackets) in chat to perform various server admin functions:

• /Broadcast [MessageText] – Sends server-wide message to all active players.

• /Info – Displays server information.

• /ShowPlayers – Shows a list of all players active on the server.

• /KickPlayer [PlayerUID or SteamID] – Disconnects target player from the server. They can rejoin.

• /BanPlayer [PlayerUID or SteamID] – Removes player from the server and bans them from reconnecting. Players can only be unbanned by removing their name from the banlist.txt file in your PalServer local files.

• /TeleportToPlayer [PlayerUID / SteamID] – Sends you to target player’s in-game location.

• /TeleportToMe [PlayerUID / SteamID] – Brings target player to your in-game location.

• /Save – Saves current world state, player, and pal data to the server PC’s hard drive. Use this before shutting down the server.

• /Shutdown [Seconds] [MessageText] – Shuts down the server after a set number of seconds, and displays a message and countdown timer for all connected players.

• /DoExitForcefully – Shuts down the server immediately. Only use this if you experience serious issues that require you turn off the server immediately since this can cause data loss.