---
title: "How to Play Enshrouded With Friends"
description: "Play Enshrouded with up to 16 players: in-game hosting vs a dedicated server, the hidden browser filter, role passwords, and what your character keeps."
url: "https://www.gameserverkings.com/knowledge-base/enshrouded/how-to-play-with-friends/"
category: "Enshrouded"
category_url: "https://www.gameserverkings.com/knowledge-base/enshrouded/"
published: "2026-08-19T10:59:39.515Z"
updated: "2026-08-19T11:30:38.421Z"
source_format: "markdown"
site: "GameServerKings"
---

# How to Play Enshrouded With Friends

Short answer: **up to sixteen of you can play Enshrouded together**, and there are two ways to arrange it. One of you hosts from inside your own game, or you run a dedicated server that stays up whether anyone is online or not.

Keen Games put the group size plainly in their FAQ: Enshrouded is "a co-op online multiplayer game … we strongly encourage players to grab a friend or three (and up to 16!) before setting out into the Shroud."

The rest of this guide covers which of the two models to pick, how people actually find and join the world, what each person needs to have done before they can build in it, and the thing that surprises most groups: **your character is not stored in the world, and it travels with you.**

## The Two Ways to Play Together

### Option A — one player hosts from inside the game

The simplest arrangement. One person starts a world in their own game and opens it to others. Keen document the setup: "For hosts of a peer-to-peer session, the server can be configured from within the game in the Host Settings menu."

It works, and for two or three friends playing at the same time it is entirely reasonable. The limits are structural rather than technical:

- **The world only exists while the host is in the game.** Everyone else is locked out the moment they log off. Nobody can pop in for twenty minutes on a Tuesday unless the host happens to be there too.
- **The host's machine carries the whole session.** Their frame rate, their upload, their crash.
- **Progress is asymmetric.** The host can play whenever; everybody else plays when the host does. In a group where one person has more free time than the others, the world runs away from them.

Session settings for this model live in `enshrouded_user.json`, on the host's own machine alongside their save data — not in the dedicated-server config file, which is a separate thing entirely.

> [!NOTE] A private Steam profile can hide the session
> Keen note that if a peer-to-peer session does not show up in the browser, the host's Steam profile being private may be the cause — Steam → Settings → Account → Privacy Settings. Inviting through the Steam friends list, by right-clicking a name and choosing invite to game, works around it. This applies only to in-game hosting; a dedicated server has no Steam profile behind it.

### Option B — a dedicated server

The world runs independently of everyone. It is there at 3am, it is there when the person who started it is on holiday, and everyone's progress accumulates in one place.

This is the model to pick when:

- more than about three people are involved,
- people play at different times,
- or you want the world to outlast anyone's interest in hosting it.

Getting one running is covered in [Getting started with your Enshrouded server](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/getting-started-with-your-server/). If you already have a world going in a solo or co-op session, you do not have to abandon it — [How to transfer your Enshrouded world to your dedicated server](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/transfer-your-world/) moves it across.

| | In-game host | Dedicated server |
|---|---|---|
| World available when host is offline | No | Yes |
| Load on someone's home PC | Yes | No |
| Max players | 16 | 16 |
| Permission groups | Configured in Host Settings | Configured in `enshrouded_server.json` |
| Appears in the server browser | As a peer-to-peer session | As a dedicated server, and hidden by default — see below |

## How People Actually Join

This is where most groups lose an evening, and the cause is nearly always the same.

**The in-game server browser hides dedicated servers by default.** Keen's Dedicated Server FAQ says it directly: "Make sure to enable the 'Show dedicated server' options in the server filter to show dedicated servers in the server list."

So the first instruction to give anyone joining a dedicated server is not the address — it is *turn on the dedicated-server filter*. From the main menu, choose **Join**, and the Server Filter widget on the right holds the toggle. The same widget also filters by password protection, friends' sessions, empty servers and free slots, any of which can hide a server that is running perfectly.

Keen also document the list's sort order: favourited servers, then friends' sessions, then dedicated servers, then peer-to-peer sessions. On a busy list, a dedicated server is below every session belonging to anyone on your friends list.

### The reliable route: favourite it in Steam

Rather than fight the browser every time, have everyone add the server once. Keen document this as the method to use when a dedicated server is not appearing in the in-game list, and Enshrouded then sorts favourited servers to the very top:

1. Get the server's **IP address and query port** from your panel.
2. In the Steam client, open **View → Game Servers**.
3. On the **Favorites** tab, click **+**.
4. Enter it as `IP:QueryPort` — the address and port separated by a colon.
5. In Enshrouded, the server is now at the top of the browser list.

> [!TIP] Post the address once, not the invite every time
> Put `IP:QueryPort` and the role password somewhere permanent — a pinned message in your group chat. Everyone favourites it once and never has to search again, and new people can join themselves without you being online.

## Who Can Do What: Role Passwords

Enshrouded has no allowlist, no admin list, and no Steam ID to add anyone by. **The password a player types when joining decides what they are allowed to do.** Each permission group has its own password, and handing someone a password is how you promote them.

The groups a dedicated server ships with are Admin, Friend, Guest and Visitor, in descending order of what they may touch. Broadly:

| Group | Can build in bases | Can open chests | Can terraform outside bases | Can kick and ban |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Admin | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Friend | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Guest | No | No | Varies by configuration | No |
| Visitor | No | No | No | No |

The exact flags on your own server matter more than any general table, because they are editable and the shipped defaults are not identical to the ones in Keen's own documentation — the configuration a hosted server starts with is stricter for Guests than Keen's example. Read the `userGroups` block on your own server before you promise anyone anything. [Enshrouded admin commands, roles and server settings](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/how-to-add-admins-and-commands/) is the full reference for the permission flags and how to add groups of your own.

Two practical notes:

- **Set the passwords on your control panel's Startup tab.** On a hosted server the four group passwords are written into `enshrouded_server.json` from the panel at every start, so editing them in the file does not stick.
- **Every group needs a password.** Keen are blunt about what happens otherwise: "Every player can see the server and can access it, if no password is set. At this point there is no rights management for the server other than the password."

> [!WARNING] The Admin password is a credential, not a label
> Anyone who has it can kick, ban, open every chest and terraform the world. There is no way to revoke it from one person — changing the password locks out everyone who had it. Hand it out accordingly.

## Your Character Travels With You

This is the part that surprises groups, and it is worth understanding before anyone worries about "losing" progress by joining a new world.

**Characters are not stored on the server.** Keen: "Character progression is stored only on clients. The world progression is stored on the dedicated servers." Your character lives on your own machine and comes with you to any server you join.

Keen's FAQ enumerates exactly what does and does not survive the trip:

**Carries over to a new world:**

- Your entire equipment and inventory
- Levels and unlocked skills
- Map memory — locations and the fog of war you have already cleared
- Personal crafting recipes, meaning anything that does not need a workbench
- Shroud roots you have already collected — Keen note you "cannot farm Shroud roots by making new worlds"
- Lore texts and tutorials you have found
- Towers you found yourself

**Does not carry over:**

- The majority of crafting recipes, which depend on NPCs and crafting stations unlocked in that particular world
- NPCs available to summon — they have to be liberated again in the new world
- Towers that somebody else found and shared with the group

So joining a friend's server does not cost you your character, and it does not cost you your levels or your gear. What it costs you is the world-side progress — the NPCs, the shared discoveries and the workbench recipes that came with them.

The reverse also holds, and it is the reassuring half: **a world restore never rolls a player back.** If a server owner restores a week-old backup, everyone walks in with the character they had five minutes ago. See [Enshrouded server backups and restoring a world](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/backing-up-and-restoring-your-world/).

> [!IMPORTANT] Nobody can back up your character for you
> Because characters are client-side, a server backup does not include them and a server owner cannot recover one. A character lives in `%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Enshrouded\` on the player's own PC — or in Steam Cloud if they have it enabled for the game.

## When Somebody Cannot Get In

In rough order of likelihood:

1. **They have not enabled "Show dedicated server" in the server filter.** By far the most common. Have them favourite the server in Steam instead.
2. **Wrong password, or no password.** The password is the permission; there is nothing else to check them against.
3. **They are on a different game build than the server.** Steam updates clients on its own schedule. Restart the server so it pulls the current build.
4. **The server reports full while looking empty.** Reserved slots held for another group. Keen: "the lobby will be marked as 'full' for players who try to log into the server under a different user group and would fill up all session slots."
5. **They are on an IPv6-only connection.** Keen state Enshrouded multiplayer uses IPv4 only.

[Enshrouded server connection troubleshooting](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/connection-troubleshooting/) works through all of these in detail, including the client-side network fixes Keen recommend.

## What to Read Next

- [Getting started with your Enshrouded server](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/getting-started-with-your-server/) — first boot and connecting.
- [Enshrouded admin commands, roles and server settings](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/how-to-add-admins-and-commands/) — the permission flags, and why there are no console commands.
- [Enshrouded server connection troubleshooting](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/connection-troubleshooting/) — when someone cannot find or join the server.
- [How to transfer your Enshrouded world to your dedicated server](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/transfer-your-world/) — moving an existing co-op world across.
- [Enshrouded server backups and restoring a world](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/backing-up-and-restoring-your-world/) — what a restore does and does not affect.

## FAQ

### How many people can play Enshrouded together?

Sixteen. Keen's FAQ describes the game as playable with "up to 16", and a dedicated server's `slotCount` accepts 1 to 16 with no way to raise it.

### Can I play Enshrouded with friends without a dedicated server?

Yes. One player can host from inside their own game via the Host Settings menu. The trade-off is that the world only exists while that person is playing, and their machine carries the session.

### Can I use my Enshrouded character on another server?

Yes. Characters are stored on your own machine, not on the server, and they carry your equipment, inventory, levels, skills, map memory, personal recipes, collected Shroud roots and lore. What does not travel is most crafting recipes, summonable NPCs and towers other people shared with you.

### Why can't my friend see my Enshrouded server?

The in-game browser hides dedicated servers unless the "Show dedicated server" filter is enabled. Have them turn it on, or add the server as a Steam favourite by `IP:QueryPort`, which lists it at the top of Enshrouded's own browser.

### How do I make a friend an admin on my Enshrouded server?

Give them the Admin group's password. There is no admin list and no ID to add — the password a player enters when joining is what assigns their permissions.

### Do I lose my progress if I join someone else's world?

No. Your character, gear, levels and skills come with you. World-side progress — unlocked NPCs, workbench recipes, shared discoveries — belongs to the world you earned it in.

### Is Enshrouded crossplay?

There is nothing to cross-play with today. Enshrouded is a Windows Steam release; Keen's FAQ states that other platforms, "namely, Playtation 5 and Xbox X|S", are planned "after completion", with no date announced. See [Enshrouded 1.0: what server owners know so far](/knowledge-base/enshrouded/what-changes-at-1-0/).

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