Sons of the Forest server not working?
Start here.
Most Sons of the Forest tickets are the game, not the server: characters that only save once you have a tent, mods written to run on the player’s PC, and difficulty that’s fixed the day a world is created.
# what fixes most Sons of the Forest problems 1 Character resets on rejoin → Build a tent and sleep in it 2 Uploaded mod does nothing → Mods tab: read the refused list 3 Difficulty change ignored → New World slot, then restart
My character resets every time I rejoin — the intro plays again and my pack is empty.
Build a tent and sleep in it
Sons of the Forest saves a player’s character only once that player has somewhere to sleep. Build a tent, sleep in it, and from then on your character and inventory survive a rejoin and a full server restart — we tested both on our own server.
Every player needs their own
It’s per player. Anyone without a place to sleep gets the intro and an empty pack on their next join, however long they played.
Leave the server alone
Nothing in Settings changes this and there’s nothing to restore. The world itself is fine: what you built, looted and cut down is written on every autosave and every stop, tent or no tent.
Why: A joining player’s character lives on that player’s own PC, not in the server’s world file — the server’s save holds no per-player data. Until there’s somewhere to sleep, the game has nothing to write.
I uploaded a mod and nothing changed in game.
Mods folder — every mod you uploaded goes with it. Switching mods off deletes nothing; the files come back the moment you switch on again.Switch the loader on first
Mods tab → install RedLoader from the loader card (one click). Without it, nothing in Mods/ loads.
Restart, then read the Mods tab
After the next start the Mods tab reads the loader’s own log: The loader ran this boot and loaded N mods — and, by name, every mod the server refused.
A refused mod belongs on your players’ PCs
Refused means the mod’s own manifest says it’s a client mod: it changes what a player sees, and a server has no player or camera to load it into. Each player installs it on their own copy. Nothing is broken and nothing needs removing.
Check it landed in Mods/, capital M
A mod is a .dll plus a folder holding its manifest.json, extracted into Mods/. At least one popular mod ships its zip with a lowercase mods/ — on our volume that’s a second folder the loader never reads, and nothing says so. Check it in the Files tab.
Why: Most Sons of the Forest mods are written to run on the player’s PC, and RedLoader refuses those on a dedicated server by name rather than loading HUD and camera code into a machine with no screen. Some server-side mods also print errors in that log and still load fine, so an error line alone doesn’t mean the install failed.
My friends can’t find the server.
Wait for “Dedicated server loaded.”
Watch the Console for that line — it’s the server taking players. A fresh world got there in under a minute on our node; a big world takes longer.
Search by the exact name
The in-game dedicated server browser shows your Server name from the Settings tab. Change it there and Apply & restart, not in the config file.
Check the password
If Join password has anything in it, players are asked for it. Empty means anyone who finds the server can join.
Confirm it answers Steam
The Players tab’s count is read off the server’s Steam query port. If it shows a number — 0 / 8 with nobody on — the server is up and answering.
Why: The usual self-hosting causes don’t apply here: a first boot that only writes files and asks for a restart, a public-reachability self-test that hangs forever under Wine, and a third UDP port people forget to forward. We create those files before the first boot, skip that self-test on the command line and publish all three ports.
How do I make myself admin, or kick someone?
Add your SteamID64 to Owners
Players tab → Owners: your 17-digit SteamID64, one per line. Lines starting with # are notes.
Restart the server
Sons of the Forest reads the owners list only when it starts. The restart is the step people miss.
Moderate from the Pause menu
In game: Esc → Players → pick the player → kick or ban. From the same screen an owner can make other players admins or unban a guest.
I changed the difficulty (or a Custom setting) and the world plays the same.
dedicatedserver.cfg: the panel writes its values over the file on every start. A key the panel doesn’t show survives a hand edit, and an edit that breaks the JSON is set aside as dedicatedserver.cfg.broken-<time> while the server boots on the panel’s settings.Difficulty is fixed when a world is made
Game mode and every setting in the four Custom-mode groups are written into a world the moment it’s created and ignored after that. Changing them does nothing to the world you’re on.
Start a new world in a new slot
Set Game mode — Custom, if you want the Custom settings read at all — set World slot to a number you haven’t used, then Apply & restart. The server builds a fresh world there.
Your old world is still there
It stays in its own slot. Set World slot back to its number and it loads again.
Two settings apply to every world
Trees grow back and Buildings can be damaged are read on every start, old worlds included.
I uploaded my world — or changed World slot — and got a brand-new island.
New value rebuilds the world on every restart, so we force Continue on the command line where neither the panel nor a file edit can reach it.Worlds live in numbered folders
Files tab → Worlds (sotf/userdata/Saves/DedicatedServer/Multiplayer/): one folder per World slot, ten digits — 0000000003 is slot 3. The zips beside them are the game’s own three rolling backups of each world.
Point World slot at the folder
Settings → World slot → that folder’s number → Apply & restart. A number with no save in it builds a brand-new world there and leaves every other slot untouched; set the number back and the old world loads.
Uploading one? Name the folder for its slot
Upload the world’s folder into Worlds, named for the slot it should load as, then set World slot to that number. Until you do, the upload sits on disk untouched.
Restore refused?
A backup taken while the server was on a different World slot is refused, and the message names both numbers. Set World slot back to the one it names, then restore. A world brought in with Load world sets World slot for you.
The console is full of shader errors, and stopping the server looks like a crash.
It’s a headless Unity build complaining
A dedicated server has no GPU, so Unity prints shader, mesh and particle warnings by the thousand. The panel’s Console filters them: of roughly 3,500 lines a boot, about a hundred are the game. The server’s own log file in Files (sotf/userdata/logs/) carries none of that noise.
The game’s own lines start with #DS
Lines beginning #DSL, #DSW or #DSE are the server itself. Dedicated server loaded. means it’s up.
The memory report on stop is normal
Unity prints a memory-allocator report of about 140 lines on every clean stop. It reads like a crash dump. It isn’t one.
One exception pair per boot is normal
Every vanilla boot logs the same two exceptions (a Crest/GPU pair), and RedLoader on its own adds none.
My server sits at about 6.5 GB with nobody on. Is that a leak?
That’s the island loaded
A fresh Normal world held 6.48–6.67 GB with nobody connected on our node. The game loads the world up front.
Players barely move it
One player for half an hour took it to 6.61 GB. The world is the cost here, not the player count.
Mods add little once booted
RedLoader on its own: about 6.84 GB. With the server-side mods from our test all loaded: 7.08 GB. The loader’s heavy first-boot step is done when we build the image, so it never lands on your server.
What we haven’t measured
A months-old, base-heavy world. Watch Memory used on your server card as yours grows.
Why: The 10 GB floor is set by the mod loader, not the game: a cold modded boot peaked at 7.85 GB, 96% of an 8 GB box.
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 Sons of the Forest 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.