Icarus server not working?
Start here.
Most Icarus trouble is the game doing what it was built to do: a server list that shows a fraction of the live servers, a lobby between worlds, and a server that saves when the last player leaves — never when you press Stop.
# what fixes most Icarus problems 1 Not in the server list → Direct-connect the panel address 2 Landed in a lobby → Pick or load the prospect there 3 Lost minutes after a restart → Empty it, wait a minute, then stop
My server isn’t in the server list, or my friends can’t get in.
Paste the address, skip the browser
Copy the address under your server’s name at the top of the panel and paste it into Icarus’s direct-connect box. The game looks the server up through Steam, shows its details, and you click Join. The in-game browser loads only a fraction of the live servers, so a server missing from it is usually the list, not the server.
Give a fresh start five minutes
After a start or restart, Steam’s own registry has the server within seconds, but the in-game listing and the direct-connect lookup trail by about five minutes. That lag is Steam’s.
Try the join twice
A first join that fails and a second that works, with nothing changed in between, is normal Icarus behaviour — we’ve had it on our own server. Count it as a failure after two or three tries, not one.
Still nothing? Stop, then Start
A running Icarus server can drop off Steam while it looks perfectly healthy, with nothing in its log. A Stop and a Start puts it back. Get everyone off first — a stop doesn’t save Icarus.
Why: The address is a lookup, not a pipe: the game resolves your server through Steam from it and play traffic rides Steam’s own sockets. That’s also why there’s nothing to port-forward.
I joined and landed in a lobby. Where’s my world?
A new server starts with no world
Icarus boots to its Server Lobby. The first player in picks the prospect — an open world, an outpost or a mission — and its difficulty, right there. Nothing to upload and nothing to set in the panel first.
Back in the lobby after everyone left? That’s the save
A minute after the last player leaves (Shut down after empty for, 60 seconds by default) the server saves the prospect and drops back to the lobby. It’s still up and still listed. The next player loads the prospect from the lobby.
Create greyed out?
Settings → turn Anyone can start or load a prospect on → Apply & restart. Being on the Auto-admin list does not unlock the lobby’s Create button; this toggle does.
Choose what a start opens
Resume the last prospect on start (on by default) brings a restart back on the last prospect. Always load this prospect overrides it by name. The prospect list under that field shows every prospect on the server and what the next start will open.
Styx, Prometheus or Elysium
Every DLC map ships inside the server download, so any server can run one — but the player who starts that prospect must own the DLC. If that isn’t you, they can only start it while Anyone can start or load a prospect is on.
Why: Creating a prospect is a request to RocketWerkz’s backend that only a connected player can make — a server with nobody on can’t make one by itself, which is why the first join is the claim-and-configure step.
We restarted and lost the last few minutes of play.
.json: the filename is part of the save, and renaming it corrupts it.Know when Icarus saves
Every 10 minutes while players are on (Save the world every), when a player joins, and a minute after the last player leaves. That’s the whole list. An empty server stops autosaving.
A stop doesn’t save it
Stop, restart, Apply & restart, Update and a scheduled restart all end the game before it can save. With people on, any of them costs up to the last 10 minutes.
Empty it, wait a minute, then stop
Get everyone off and give it the minute. Press Stop inside that minute and the panel waits for the save — up to 90 seconds — before it stops.
Schedule restarts for an empty hour
Schedule tab → Scheduled restart: pick a time nobody plays, so the lobby save has already happened.
Roll back if you need to
A prospect deleted from the Settings tab was moved aside, not erased — Restore is under the prospect list. For anything else: Worlds & backups → Restore on a nightly restore point, one of your own saved copies, or the copy taken before your last game update.
Why: Icarus runs under Wine here, and no stop signal reaches the game itself, so its own save-on-exit never runs — measured on our own server. The return to the lobby is the game closing a prospect by itself, which is why that one does save.
Nobody can join since the weekly patch.
Look for the Update banner
When a newer Icarus build is ready on our node, the panel shows A newer Icarus build is ready along the bottom, and an Update now line at the top of Settings. Steam updated your game by itself; your server moves when you press it.
Press Update with nobody on
It copies your world first, then restarts onto the new build; the copy shows up in Worlds & backups as Before your last game update. Do it with the server empty — an update is a stop, and a stop doesn’t save Icarus.
“Released, and we haven’t published it yet”
If the Settings line says Icarus has a newer build we haven’t published, that one is on us and there’s no button for you to press. It appears once it has been built and has passed our boot test.
Running mods?
The QOL Stack rebuilds itself for the new build when the server comes back up — have everyone re-download it, or send them the Share link. Third-party paks are tied to a game week, so grab the author’s new release. Details: Icarus server mods.
Why: Icarus patches weekly — usually Thursday, between about 21:00 and 04:00 UTC — and Steam updates your players’ game the moment it’s out. A server still on last week’s build is the usual reason a whole group is locked out at once.
Since I added mods, players drop with “connection lost” — or get in and craft the wrong items.
Everyone needs the exact same files
Every player needs every pak the server runs, in Icarus/Content/Paks/mods on their own PC. Each installed row on the Mods tab has a Players’ copy link; the QOL Stack has a Share link page that always serves the pak this server runs.
Same week, not just same name
Paks are rebuilt for each weekly patch, and the w### in the filename is the game week. A pak one week behind on one PC is a different mod. Check the md5 on the Mods-tab row against every machine.
Re-grab after every rebuild
Every QOL Stack rebuild — yours, or the automatic one after a game update — makes a new file, even with the same options. A copy from before the last rebuild is stale.
Restart after installing
Paks mount at boot only. The Console should show LogPakFile: Mounting pak file …/mods/yourmod.pak for each one.
The full checklist
Install routes, the by-hand path and two mods fighting over the same table: Icarus server mods.
Why: A pak replaces whole game tables rather than patching rows, so a pak built for another week carries another week’s tables — and a recipe table from a different week has its rows in different places.
How do I make myself admin, and kick or ban someone?
Log in with the admin password
Settings → Admin password (we generate a unique one per server). In the lobby chat type AdminLogin <password> with no slash; inside a prospect, /AdminLogin <password>.
Or skip the login for good
Players tab → Auto-admin: add a SteamID64 (17 digits, starts 7656119), or press Make admin beside someone who’s on. From the next restart they’re admin the moment they join a prospect — no AdminLogin.
Kick and ban in game chat
/KickPlayer, /BanPlayer, /UnbanPlayer, /AdminSay. Icarus has no RCON, so the panel can’t send them for you.
Ban them while they’re on
/BanPlayer only finds a player who is connected right now. Against someone who already left — by Steam ID or by name — it answers “Failed to find player with Id or Name”.
Why: Icarus has no separate admin account: the password is the role. That’s why we never ship it empty — an empty admin password lets anyone log in as admin with no credential at all.
The server hitches every few minutes.
A hitch on a timer is the autosave
Icarus saves every 10 minutes while people play, and on a big outpost each save stalls the server for about a tenth of a second — we measured it on our own long-running base. Settings → Save the world every (minutes) spaces them out, at the cost of more lost to a crash.
Memory is rarely the cause
An Olympus open world held about 3.5 GB with nobody on and about 3.7 GB with players on our node: the world is the cost, a player adds about 200 MB. Compare Memory used on your server card — more RAM won’t fix a save hitch.
Restart daily, when it’s empty
Unreal servers slowly gain memory over days of uptime, and a restart hands it back. Schedule tab → Scheduled restart → Every day, at an hour nobody plays — a restart with people on doesn’t save.
Why: The developer’s own issue tracker has an open report of small-group worlds freezing for longer during autosaves. If the freeze lines up with the save interval, it’s the game, and spacing the saves out is the lever you have.
My friend on PS5 or Xbox can’t find the server.
Console Icarus can’t join it
Icarus: Console Edition (March 2026) has no crossplay with PC and no dedicated-server support. Console sessions exist only while the host’s console is running.
Nothing on the server changes that
There’s no setting or port that lets a console in. A rented Icarus server is for the Steam PC edition only.
None of these, or still stuck?
Check the problems every game shares
Connections, settings that will not take, where your world is, lag: the answers that hold on every game are on the support page.
Write to us
The form arrives with Icarus already set; tell us what you tried and it saves a round trip. Pressing Need help? in your panel does the same and attaches your server, so there is nothing to look up.