Don't Starve Together Config Editor: Edit cluster.ini From a Form

Don’t Starve Together’s cluster-wide behavior is controlled by a single file called cluster.ini, an ini-style file with [SECTION] headers and key = value lines that sits inside your server’s DoNotStarveTogether/config/server/ folder. It is a short file, but hand-editing ini syntax still means opening the file manager, finding the right key inside the right section, and being careful not to break the formatting. The Don’t Starve Together Config Editor, currently in BETA, replaces that with a grouped form: every setting the panel understands gets its own labeled control, a handful of network and shard-wiring keys are locked because they are managed elsewhere, and your save only ever touches the values you actually changed. This guide covers exactly what the editor edits, how the settings are grouped, which keys are locked and why, and when a change actually takes effect.

Note: This is a BETA feature. It is opt-in and being refined; if something looks off, the raw file is still there in the file manager as a fallback.

What the Config Editor Edits

The editor works on one file: cluster.ini, found at DoNotStarveTogether/config/server/cluster.ini on your server. This is the cluster-wide configuration Don’t Starve Together reads for both shards, the game mode, the player cap, the cluster’s name and description, and a handful of gameplay and network toggles. It does not touch the per-shard Master/server.ini or Caves/server.ini files, which hold shard wiring the panel manages automatically, and it does not touch cluster_token.txt, which holds your server token and is set from the Startup tab instead.

Note: The editor edits cluster.ini only: the cluster-wide settings file, not the per-shard server.ini files or the token file.

Note: If your server has never started, cluster.ini may not exist on disk yet: start it once so Don’t Starve Together writes the file, then open the editor.

Opening the Config Editor

Open your Don’t Starve Together server in the Loafhosts panel and look in the sidebar under the Game section for Server Config. Clicking it opens the Config Editor in place, so your sidebar and the live status header stay put while you work. The item only appears on a Don’t Starve Together server; on any other game it is hidden.

Tip: If the editor comes up empty, start the server once to let it generate cluster.ini, then reopen the editor.

How the Settings Are Grouped

The form organizes cluster.ini into three groups so you are not hunting through a flat list:

• Network: Cluster Name (what shows up in the in-game server browser), Cluster Description (the blurb shown in the Browse Games screen), Cluster Password, and LAN Only Cluster.
• Gameplay: Game Mode (survival, endless, or wilderness, presented as a dropdown so you cannot mistype it), Max Players, PvP Enabled, Pause When Empty, and Voting Enabled.
• Misc: Max Snapshots, the cap on how many past-state snapshots the server keeps.

Each field is shown with the input type that matches what it expects: a dropdown for Game Mode so you can only pick one of the three valid values, a number field with a min and max for Max Players and Max Snapshots, and on/off toggles for PvP, Pause When Empty, Voting, and LAN Only Cluster.

Tip: Game Mode is a dropdown here specifically because the raw file accepts any text: the editor prevents the silent typo that would otherwise produce a mode the game does not recognize.

Locked Settings and Why They Are Read-Only

A few keys are shown read-only in the editor and cannot be saved from here, whether through the form or by editing the raw value directly. The locked keys are Cluster Password, plus three internal shard-wiring keys that never appear as editable fields at all: master_port, bind_ip, and master_ip.

The shard-wiring keys are locked because Loafhosts wires them for you as part of the Master/Caves cluster model: the Caves shard binds to a loopback address only the server itself can reach, and shard-to-shard traffic uses a fixed internal port, both set automatically so the two shards can talk to each other. Changing them from a config editor would risk breaking that link, with the visible symptom being a server where the surface world runs fine but the cave shard silently stops communicating.

Cluster Password is locked as a safety measure consistent with how the panel treats access-control fields across every game’s config editor: sensitive, connection-gating values are kept out of general-purpose file edits rather than exposed for casual changes.

Note: Locked settings are shown read-only (or omitted from the form entirely, in the case of the shard-wiring keys) and the editor rejects any attempt to write them.

Note: master_port, bind_ip, and master_ip are the internal Master/Caves shard links Loafhosts sets up automatically; they are not meant to be user-configured.

Player Cap, Server Token, and Other Startup-Tab Settings

Max Players is editable in this form, but it is not the value that ultimately wins: your server’s Startup tab has its own Max Players field (1 to 31), and that value overrides whatever is written in cluster.ini at boot. If you change Max Players in the Config Editor and it does not seem to stick, check the Startup tab first. The Server Token that makes your server publicly joinable is not part of cluster.ini at all, it lives in cluster_token.txt and is set from the Startup tab’s Server Token field, not from this editor.

Tip: If you want the player cap to change permanently, set it on the Startup tab: that is the value the server actually applies on boot.

Note: The Server Token lives outside cluster.ini and is managed from the Startup tab, not the Config Editor.

Validation

Every field is checked before it is written. Max Players and Max Snapshots must be whole numbers inside their allowed range, Game Mode must be one of the three listed choices, and the toggles are written as clean true/false values. If a value fails validation, the save is rejected with a message and nothing on disk changes, so a bad entry never reaches a live file the server has to parse on its next boot.

Note: Values are checked against their allowed type, range, or choice list before saving; a rejected save leaves the on-disk file untouched.

When Changes Apply

Saving in the Config Editor writes your changes to cluster.ini immediately, but Don’t Starve Together only reads that file when the shards start up, so nothing takes effect until you restart the server. Because the server is really a Master and Caves cluster, a restart brings both shards back up together with the new settings applied. World-generation is a separate matter entirely: none of the settings in this editor affect it, since map layout is only decided the first time a world is created, not by anything in cluster.ini.

Note: Save writes the file; nothing applies until the next restart, which brings both shards back up with the new values.

Note: This editor never touches world generation, since that is decided once, at first install, and is unrelated to any cluster.ini value.

Putting It Together

The Don’t Starve Together Config Editor turns cluster.ini from a file you would otherwise open through the file manager into a short, grouped form: Network, Gameplay, and Misc, with validated inputs so a typo in Game Mode or an out-of-range player count never reaches the file, and the shard-wiring and password keys locked because they are managed automatically by the panel’s Master/Caves setup or treated as sensitive. It is a BETA feature, so expect it to keep improving, and the raw file is always available in the file manager if you need to see or change something the form does not yet cover. Set your gameplay preferences, save, restart, and both shards come back up running the cluster the way you configured it.