Skip to content

Managing your 7 Days to Die server

Set up a restart schedule, daily backups, and quick fixes for horde night lag, mod loading, and crash recovery on your 7 Days to Die server.

Updated September 28, 2026
7 Days to Die

Scheduled Restarts

7 Days to Die benefits from daily restarts due to memory creep. From the Schedules tab:

  • Cron: 0 5 * * * (5 AM server time)
  • Tasks:
    1. Send Command: say "Restart in 5 minutes." — the command reference covers say syntax and the other server-side commands
    2. Send Power Action: Restart (offset 300s)

Backups

The world save lives in the Saves/ folder, which the Backups tab on your 7 Days to Die hosting plan captures.

Horde nights raise the chance of a crash

Schedule a daily backup at minimum, especially on horde nights when entity counts (and the chance of a crash) spike.

Common Issues

  • Server starts but no one can connect: Check the address, not the config. Take the IP and port from the Address at the top left of your panel and have players paste that exact pair into Connect to Server — the assigned port is often not 26900. 7 Days to Die also uses the two ports above the one you were given, and the panel allocates that whole block for you, so editing ServerPort in serverconfig.xml moves the server off its own allocation and causes this symptom far more often than it fixes it.
  • Mods not loading: They go in Mods/, not Data/Mods/, and each mod needs its own subfolder.
  • Lag on horde nights: Horde size is no longer a serverconfig.xml property. V3.0 moved it into the encoded SandboxCode value, so editing BloodMoonEnemyCount does nothing and reports no error. Lower Blood Moon Count in the in-game Sandbox Options menu — plus Enemy Density if the pressure is constant rather than horde-only — then paste the regenerated code into serverconfig.xml. The server-side cap MaxSpawnedZombies does still live in that file and is the fastest way to put an immediate ceiling on entity count. Pathfinding gets expensive past 100 active zombies. The serverconfig.xml reference covers the migration.
  • World corruption after a crash: Restore the most recent backup. Always back up before mod installs.

Made with 💜 by GameServerKings

Need a 7 Days to Die server?

Deploy an instantly-provisioned 7 Days to Die server on high-clock hardware — DDoS protected, no contracts, cancel anytime.

From $12.00 /month

Deploy a server 7 Days to Die server hosting