How To Optimize Your Enshrouded Server Performance

If you have seen a Server Overloaded or High Server Load warning pop up while playing on your Enshrouded server, rest assured this is a widely reported issue and not necessarily a sign your hardware is underpowered. Enshrouded is still in active development, and the developers continue to ship updates that improve server performance over time. In the meantime, there are several settings-level changes that make a real difference.

Enshrouded's voxel-based terrain and building systems are demanding on a server's CPU and RAM. The more players who are exploring, mining, and building in different corners of the map at once, the harder your server has to work to simulate all of it at the same time.

⚠️ Important Warning: Always make sure your server is completely stopped on your MintServers panel before editing any configuration files. If you edit a file while the server is running, your changes can be overwritten or ignored when it next saves.

Check Your Resource Usage First

Before changing any settings, it helps to confirm what your server is actually struggling with.

Log into your MintServers panel and open your Enshrouded server.
Go to the Console tab. The CPU, memory, and network graphs at the top of the page update in real time while the server is running.
Watch these graphs during normal play, especially in caves, Hollow Halls, or areas with a lot of player-built structures, since these are the heaviest moments for the server.

📊 Reading The Graphs: If CPU usage is consistently hovering at or above 80%, the settings changes below should help, and a quick manual restart can also clear a temporary spike. If usage looks normal but you are still seeing overload warnings, this is a known issue with the game's server software itself, so the fixes below are still worth trying.

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Reduce Enemy Load With Custom Difficulty Settings

Enemy AI is one of the heavier systems on the server, so reducing how many enemies spawn and how many can act at once is one of the most effective performance fixes you can make.

Stop your server on the MintServers panel.
Go to the Files tab and open the configuration file in the root of your server directory:

    📁 server (main server directory)
            📄 enshrouded_server.json (Click to edit this file)
        

Find "gameSettingsPreset" and change its value to "Custom". The individual values inside gameSettings are only applied when this preset is active.
Inside the gameSettings section, find "randomSpawnerAmount" and change it to "Few". This directly controls how many enemies exist in the world at once.
Optionally, also change "aggroPoolAmount" to "Few". This limits how many enemies can actively attack players at the same time.
Save the file and start your server.

📄 enshrouded_server.json

"gameSettingsPreset": "Custom",
"gameSettings": {
    ...
    "randomSpawnerAmount": "Few",
    "aggroPoolAmount": "Few",
    ...
}

💡 Pro Tip: Both settings accept Few, Normal, Many, or Extreme. Since this also changes gameplay difficulty and not just performance, it is worth deciding with your group how much of a trade-off you are comfortable with before saving.

Adjust Your Player Slot Count

Every connected player adds ongoing overhead for position tracking, inventory syncing, and the terrain around them. If your server is set to allow more slots than you actually use, lowering "slotCount" in enshrouded_server.json to match your real group size reduces the ceiling the server has to plan for.

Keen Games' own hardware guidance reflects this: a server built for 4 to 6 players is recommended to run on a 6-core / 12-thread CPU, while a full 16-player server is recommended to run on an 8-core / 16-thread CPU. If you are consistently running fewer players than your slot count allows, this is a low-risk change to make.

Keep Players Together When Possible

Enshrouded has to actively simulate every area of the map that a player is standing in. When your group splits up and explores in completely different directions, the server ends up loading and processing multiple separate regions at once instead of one. Dense areas like the Hollow Halls are especially demanding on their own. Encouraging players to stick reasonably close together, especially during exploration trips or dungeon runs, is one of the simplest ways to reduce ongoing load, particularly on servers that are already close to their hardware limits.

Schedule Regular Restarts

Long uptimes on voxel-heavy survival games like Enshrouded tend to accumulate memory overhead the longer a world stays loaded without a fresh start. We recommend scheduling at least one restart per day. If you are running a busy, high-population server, restarting every 12 hours can keep things running even smoother.

Log into your MintServers panel and open your Enshrouded server.
Go to the Schedules tab in the left-hand sidebar.
Click Create Schedule and set it to trigger at a low-traffic time, such as early morning.
Add a Power Action task set to Restart, and save the schedule.

Recommended Hardware By Player Count

These are Keen Games' official recommendations for a dedicated Enshrouded server. If your plan falls short of these numbers for your typical player count, that is the first thing worth addressing before tweaking settings further.

4-6 Players: 6 cores / 12 threads at 3.2 GHz or higher, 16 GB RAM, SSD storage.
Up to 16 Players: 8 cores / 16 threads at 3.7 GHz or higher, 16 GB RAM, SSD storage.

🛠️ Troubleshooting Common Performance Issues

Overload warnings even with low CPU usage: This has been widely reported by players even on strong hardware. Try the difficulty and restart-schedule changes above, as they help even when the resource graphs look normal.
Performance got worse over a long play session: This points to the world's memory footprint growing over time. A scheduled restart is the most reliable fix currently available.
Lag only in one specific area: Heavily built bases and Hollow Halls are known to be especially demanding. This is expected and not something a config change will fully resolve.
Still struggling after every change above: Because Enshrouded is still being actively optimized by its developers, even strong hardware will eventually hit a limit with massive builds or a full player count. At that point, an upgrade to your server's CPU allocation is the next step.

None of these changes require touching your Enshrouded install itself, only the server configuration, so they are safe to try in combination. If you run into any trouble getting your config edits to save correctly, no worries! Just open a support ticket and our team will be happy to help.