7 Days To Die Server Settings Guide

Every rule your 7 Days to Die server runs by lives in one file: serverconfig.xml. Server name, difficulty, Blood Moon cadence, loot, PvP, land claim protection — it's all set here. This guide walks through the settings that actually matter, organized by category.

📢 Big Change: V3.0 "Dead Hot Summer" Since going stable on June 29, 2026, difficulty, day length, Blood Moon behavior, loot, and XP are no longer separate lines in this file. They were folded into a single SandboxCode property. This guide covers the current, post-update file. If you're looking for GameDifficulty or BloodMoonFrequency, jump straight to the Gameplay Settings section below to see where they went.

⚠️ Important Warning: Always make sure your server is completely stopped on your MintServers panel before making any file edits. If you edit serverconfig.xml while the server is running, the game will overwrite your changes when it shuts down!

Step 1: Finding and Opening serverconfig.xml

Log into your MintServers panel and click Stop to shut your server down.
Navigate to the Files tab on the left-hand sidebar.
Find serverconfig.xml in your server's root directory — it sits right next to the server files, no digging through folders required:

    📁 server (your main server directory)
            📄 serverconfig.xml (Click to edit this file)
        

Click on the file to open it in the text editor.

Every line in the file follows this format:

📄 serverconfig.xml

Once you're done editing, save the file and click Start on the Console tab to bring your server back up with the new settings.

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Server Identity & Networking

These settings control how your server appears in the in-game server browser and how players connect.

Identity

ServerName — The name shown in the server browser.
ServerDescription — Blurb shown when a player clicks your server.
ServerPassword — Leave blank for a public server, or set a password for a private one.
ServerWebsiteURL — A link (like your Discord invite) shown as clickable in the browser.
ServerLoginConfirmationText — Optional text players must accept before joining. Handy for posting rules.
Region — Where your server is geographically. Accepts values like NorthAmericaEast, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and similar.
Language — Primary language for the server, e.g. English.

Networking & Slots

ServerPort — Default 26900. MintServers has this and the ports above it already open for you, so you shouldn't need to touch it.
ServerVisibility — 0 = not listed, 1 = friends only, 2 = public.
ServerMaxPlayerCount — Default 8. Match this to your plan's slot count.
ServerReservedSlots / ServerReservedSlotsPermission — Reserve a number of slots for players at or above a given permission level (lower number = higher permission, 0 = admin).
ServerAdminSlots / ServerAdminSlotsPermission — Extra slots that let admins in even when the server is full.
ServerMaxWorldTransferSpeedKiBs — Caps how fast the world downloads to a new client, in KiB/s. Default 512.

World Generation

These settings build the map itself. Changing any of them on a world that already exists does nothing — you'll need a fresh world (a new GameName, or a new WorldGenSeed/WorldGenSize combination) for changes to take effect.

GameWorld — Navezgane for the hand-crafted story map, or a random-world-generation (RWG) name for a procedurally generated one.
WorldGenSeed — Any text string. The same seed and size always produce the same map.
WorldGenSize — Common values are 4096, 6144, 8192, and 10240 (multiples of 2048). Bigger worlds take longer to generate and use more RAM. If you're running crossplay, see the note below — console play caps this at 8192.
GameName — The save folder name. Also seeds decoration placement (trees, etc.) in the world.
GameMode — Leave this as GameModeSurvival unless you have a specific reason to change it.

Gameplay Settings: The New SandboxCode System

Before V3.0, things like difficulty, day length, Blood Moon frequency, loot abundance, and XP rate were each their own line. As of the June 29, 2026 stable update, a couple dozen of those legacy properties were removed and consolidated into 150 sandbox options, which get compiled into one opaque string called a SandboxCode.

The properties that moved out of the file include GameDifficulty, XPMultiplier, DayNightLength, DayLightLength, all four Blood Moon settings (BloodMoonFrequency, BloodMoonRange, BloodMoonWarning, BloodMoonEnemyCount), LootAbundance, LootRespawnDays, AirDropFrequency, AirDropMarker, block damage settings, zombie speed and behavior settings, and a handful of others.

A fresh serverconfig.xml ships with this by default:

📄 serverconfig.xml

That default code is equivalent to the old default difficulty (Adventurer). To set your own rules:

Launch 7 Days to Die and open the Sandbox Options menu (available from the world creation / continue-game screen).
Pick a starting point — either one of the Classic Difficulty presets (Scavenger through Insane) or one of the 11 new Official Presets (Undead Matinee, Madmole's Mayhem, Legacy Survival, and others) — then adjust individual options from there. Options are grouped into Player, Entity, World, Resource, Crafting, Traders, Tasks, and Miscellaneous categories.
Copy the code the menu generates.
Paste it in as the value for the SandboxCode property in serverconfig.xml, replacing the default.
Save, restart your server, and confirm in-game that difficulty, loot, and Blood Moon cadence match what you set.

💡 Pro Tip: A SandboxCode isn't human-readable, so you can't hand-edit it or eyeball what it contains. Keep a plain-text note of the settings you chose somewhere safe (a pinned Discord message works fine) so you — or we — can recreate them later if needed.

PvP and Land Claims

Unlike the settings above, PvP and land claim options were not touched by the SandboxCode change — they're still standalone properties.

PvP

PlayerKillingMode — Default 3. 0 = no killing, 1 = kill allies only, 2 = kill strangers only, 3 = kill everyone. Set this to 0 for a pure PvE server.

Land Claims

LandClaimCount — Maximum land claim blocks a single player can place. Default 1.
LandClaimSize — Protected radius, in blocks, around a claim. Default 41.
LandClaimDeadZone — Minimum distance required between two different players' claims. Default 30.
LandClaimExpiryTime — Real-world days a player can stay offline before their claim expires and loses protection. Default 7.
LandClaimDecayMode — How claim protection decays once it starts expiring. 0 = slow/linear, 1 = fast/exponential, 2 = none (full protection until the claim expires outright).
LandClaimOnlineDurabilityModifier — Block hardness multiplier inside a claim while its owner is online. Default 4 (4x normal). 0 makes claimed blocks indestructible.
LandClaimOfflineDurabilityModifier — Same, but while the owner is offline. This is the main setting that controls how raidable bases are when nobody's home: raise it on a PvE server so griefers can't break in, or lower it (e.g. to 1) on a PvP server so offline raiding is actually possible.

Performance and Admin Settings

Performance

MaxSpawnedZombies — The hard, server-wide cap on zombies alive at once, including during a Blood Moon. Default 64. This is the setting that actually protects your performance — the per-player Blood Moon count you set inside the SandboxCode can't exceed it.
MaxSpawnedAnimals — Wildlife cap. Default 50. Lower it if you're tight on CPU.
ServerMaxAllowedViewDistance — The maximum view distance a client is allowed to request. Default 12. Capping this at 8–10 is one of the easiest performance wins if your server is chugging.

Admin & Remote Access

EACEnabled — Easy Anti-Cheat. Default true. Required for console players and crossplay; turn it off only if you're running mods that touch game assemblies.
TelnetEnabled / TelnetPort / TelnetPassword — Needed for RCON-style remote admin tools. Default port 8081. Always set a password if you enable this.
WebDashboardEnabled / WebDashboardPort — The game's built-in web dashboard for server and player stats. Default port 8080. The MintServers panel already covers most of what this is used for.

Running a Crossplay (Console) Server

7 Days to Die supports crossplay between PC (Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Console players are pickier than PC players about server settings — get something wrong and they either won't see your server in their browser or won't be able to join at all.

⚠️ Hard Requirements for Crossplay:

ServerAllowCrossplay set to true
EACEnabled set to true
IgnoreEOSSanctions set to false
ServerMaxPlayerCount at 8 or lower — this is a platform rule, not a MintServers plan limit
ServerVisibility set to 2 (public)
No mods installed — crossplay servers must be completely vanilla
WorldGenSize at 8192 or smaller

A note on gameplay ranges and SandboxCode: Before V3.0, console certification also enforced specific ranges on gameplay properties — things like XP multiplier, loot abundance, and Blood Moon settings each had a min/max console-safe value. Those properties now live inside the SandboxCode rather than as separate lines, and at the time of writing, official documentation on exactly how those ranges are checked against a SandboxCode hasn't been updated to reflect that move. Until that's clarified, the safest approach for a crossplay server is to start from one of the official presets rather than pushing individual sliders to extreme values, and to test with a console player before opening the server to your community.

If a console player can't find or join your server, check for these in the Log Viewer on your panel:

Server configuration is invalid / Failed initializing core systems, shutting down — one of the hard requirements above is unmet, or the file has a typo. PC players may be able to connect even when this is happening for console players, depending on which setting is at fault.
Non-Standard Game Settings Detected — a console client's own way of reporting that something is outside the crossplay-eligible range.
Double-check ServerVisibility is 2 and that there's nothing in your Mods folder — both are common, easy-to-miss causes.

Troubleshooting

Server won't start after an edit: Look for a typo in a property name or a mismatched quote. The server silently ignores properties it doesn't recognize, but broken XML will stop it from booting.
Updated to V3.0 and the server feels too easy: Some server hosts have reported that carrying an older save into V3.0 without setting a SandboxCode can cause the server to quietly fall back to default (Adventurer) difficulty rather than showing an error. If your world suddenly feels easier than before your update, check that SandboxCode is set to the value you intended.
Changes aren't taking effect: Make sure you edited the file while the server was fully stopped, and that you restarted it afterward — a running server will overwrite your edits on its next shutdown.
Console players can't join: Work through the Crossplay section above — mods, visibility, and the player cap are the most common culprits.

Getting the settings just right can take some trial and error, especially with the new Sandbox system. If you get stuck at any point, no worries! Just open a support ticket and our team will be happy to help.