Best Vintage Story Server Customizations (No Mods Required)

One of the best things about hosting your own Vintage Story server is the ability to tweak nearly every aspect of gameplay — without installing a single mod. The game ships with a powerful configuration system that lets you adjust difficulty, world size, resource rates, and much more. This guide covers the most impactful settings you can change in serverconfig.json to create the perfect experience for your community.

Where to Find serverconfig.json

After your server has generated a world, the configuration file is located at:

/opt/vintagestory/data/Worlds/YourWorldName/serverconfig.json

Always stop your server before editing this file. Make your changes, save, then restart. If the JSON is invalid, the server will fail to start or regenerate defaults, so take care with syntax.

World Size and Terrain

Control how large your world is and how it generates:

• WorldSize — Accepts values like 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, or 16384 (blocks in each direction). Larger worlds offer more exploration but increase RAM and disk usage.
• WorldType — Set to standard for default terrain, or superflat for a flat creative-style world.
• MaxChunkRadius — Controls how many chunks are loaded around each player. Lower values reduce CPU load.

For a small server with 4–6 players, 4096 or 8192 provides plenty of room without excessive resource usage.

Player Count and Limits

• MaxPlayers — The maximum number of players who can be online simultaneously.
• MaxPlayerDistance — The maximum distance (in blocks) a player can wander from spawn before the server stops generating new terrain. Useful for containing players on a small map.

Difficulty and Gameplay Settings

Vintage Story offers more granular difficulty control than most games:

• GameMode — creative, survival, or wilderness. Wilderness mode removes temporal stability and makes nights extremely dangerous.
• Difficulty — Integer from 0 (Peaceful) to 5 (Wilderness). This affects creature damage, hunger rate, and temporal storm frequency.
• CreatureHostility — Set to true or false to enable or disable hostile mobs entirely.
• TemporalStorms — Adjust how often temporal storms occur. Set to 0 to disable them completely.

Resource and Drop Rates

Fine-tune how much loot and resources players find:

• DropRateMultiplier — Multiplies all item drops from creatures and ruins. A value of 1.5 means 50% more loot.
• ToolDurabilityMultiplier — Extends or reduces tool lifespan. 2.0 makes tools last twice as long.
• ResourceRespawnTimeMultiplier — Controls how fast resources (trees, clay, surface metals) regenerate.
• AnimalSpawnMultiplier — Increases or decreases the number of animals that spawn in the world.

Time and Day Cycle

The TimeSpeed setting controls how fast in-game time passes. The default is 60 (real seconds per in-game minute). Increase for faster day-night cycles (good for action-oriented servers) or decrease for a more relaxed pace.

Land Claims and Protection

If you want players to claim territory and protect their builds:

• LandClaiming — Enable or disable the land claiming system.
• MaxLandClaimsPerPlayer — How many claims each player can create.
• MaxClaimSize — Maximum size of a single claim area.
• AllowLandExpiration — Automatically releases inactive players' claims after a set number of days.

Food Spoilage and Nutrition

Food spoilage adds realism but can be frustrating on casual servers:

• FoodSpoilageRate — Default is 1.0. Lower to 0.5 to make food last twice as long, or 0 to disable spoilage entirely.
• NutritionMultiplier — Adjusts how much nutrition players get from food. Useful for servers where you want eating to be less frequent.

PvP Settings

Enable or fine-tune player combat:

• PvP — Master toggle for player-vs-player damage.
• PvPProtectionTimeout — Seconds after logging in before a player can be attacked.
• DamagePlayerMultiplier — Adjust incoming player damage percentage.

Sleep and Spawn Settings

• Sleeping — Toggle whether players can sleep to skip the night.
• SkipNightPercent — Percentage of players who must be asleep to skip the night (default is 100).
• MoveToSpawnOnSleep — If enabled, sleeping moves players back to their bed or spawn point.

Built-In Chat Commands

No mods needed for basic administration. Out of the box, Vintage Story servers support commands like:

• /time set day — Change the in-game time.
• /weather set clear — Control weather.
• /tp — Teleport to a player or coordinate.
• /give — Spawn items.
• /ban and /kick — Player moderation.
• /whitelist add <name> — Add a player to the whitelist.

Setting Up a Whitelist

To restrict the server to approved players only, set WhitelistMode to true in serverconfig.json, then use the /whitelist add command in-game or via the server console to add players by their username.

Server Description and Rules

Set a welcoming experience from the moment players connect:

• ServerName and ServerDescription — Displayed in the server browser.
• WelcomeMessage — A message players see when they join.
• Rules — A text block shown to players on first connect (add this directly in the JSON under the Rules property).

Conclusion

Vintage Story's built-in configuration options give server owners remarkable control without touching a single mod. Whether you want a laid-back survival experience with no food spoilage and slower nights, or a brutal wilderness server with extreme difficulty and full PvP, it is all achievable through serverconfig.json. Experiment with these settings on a test world before applying them to your live server, and your community will thank you.