How to Host a Don't Starve Together Server on Loafhosts

Hosting a Don’t Starve Together server means renting a machine that keeps Klei Entertainment’s wilderness survival co-op world running around the clock, so your group can hop in and out without one person having to leave their own game open as the host. A dedicated server also unlocks the things the in-game “host a server” option cannot do well: a permanent address, a proper config file you fully control, scheduled backups, and a server that survives a crash on its own. This guide walks through what a Don’t Starve Together server actually is under the hood, choosing a plan, deploying it in LoafHub, getting the one credential the game requires before anyone can join, the startup settings you will actually touch, and the Loafhosts tools that work with it.

What a Don’t Starve Together Server Actually Is

Don’t Starve Together is not a single process, it is a cluster of two: a Master shard, which is the surface world your group spawns into, and a Caves shard, which is the underground world reachable through a cave entrance on the surface. Both shards have to be running for a fully functional server. On Loafhosts, the startup command launches Caves first as a background process and then starts Master; when Master shuts down, it sends a shutdown signal to Caves so both stop together. You do not need to manage this yourself, it happens automatically every time you start or stop the server, but it is worth understanding because it explains why a Don’t Starve Together server takes a moment longer to come fully online than a single-process game, and why the Caves shard is the one to check first if players can reach the surface but the cave entrance does not work.

Only the Master shard needs a port reachable from the outside. It listens on the port Loafhosts assigns to your server. The Caves shard binds to an internal address only the server itself can reach, and shard-to-shard communication happens over another internal-only port. None of that needs to be forwarded, opened, or given to players, only your one assigned server port and IP matter for players connecting.

Note: A Don’t Starve Together server is really two processes, a Master shard (surface) and a Caves shard (underground), started together and stopped together.

Note: Only the Master shard’s assigned port needs to be reachable by players; the Caves shard and shard-to-shard link are internal-only.

Choosing a Plan

Don’t Starve Together is a light server by modern standards. Klei’s dedicated server is efficient even running both shards at once, so you do not need to over-provision. A good baseline is 2 GB of RAM at minimum and 4 GB recommended for a comfortable buffer once a few players are online and both shards are active, with a few gigabytes of disk for the game files, your world saves, and any mods. Loafhosts runs one configurable Custom server: you slide RAM from 1 to 32 GB and storage from 10 to 500 GB and pick a protection tier. A small build is plenty for a friends-and-family cluster, while more RAM and CPU headroom is worth it if you plan to run a busier server or a longer mod list. Every Custom server uses AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPUs, DDR5 memory, and NVMe storage, and includes unlimited player slots, so sizing comes down to performance headroom, not a seat cap. Pricing starts at $13.50/mo, and longer billing cycles save up to 25%.

Tip: 2 GB RAM is the floor and 4 GB is the comfortable target for a Master + Caves cluster with a normal group size

Tip: A small build suits a friends server; size up on RAM and CPU headroom if you plan to run several mods

Note: The Advanced and Strict protection tiers add Terabit.io L4/L7 DDoS filtering; the Basic tier includes standard DDoS mitigation

Picking a Server Region

Don’t Starve Together is a slower-paced, non-twitch game, so latency is more forgiving than in a shooter, but hosting close to your players still keeps movement and building feeling responsive. Custom servers are available in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Frankfurt, covering US East, Central, West, and EU, with Montreal available for Strict protection.

1. List where your core players actually live, not where you live
2. For a US East or Canadian group, choose New York, or Montreal if you want Strict protection
3. For a Central US group, choose Dallas
4. For a US West or Pacific group, choose Los Angeles
5. For a European group, choose Frankfurt

Tip: If your group is split across regions, pick the region closest to the majority of players

Deploying Your Server on LoafHub

Loafhosts runs the LoafHub panel at hub.loafhosts.com. After checkout your Don’t Starve Together server deploys in about 60 seconds with no setup fees, so you can move straight to configuration.

1. Configure your Custom server, pick your region, and complete checkout at loafhosts.com
2. Open LoafHub at hub.loafhosts.com and log in
3. Select your new Don’t Starve Together server to open the panel
4. Wait for the deploy to finish and the server to show a ready state
5. Before starting the server, set your Server Token on the Startup tab (covered next), because the server will run without one but will not be reachable publicly
6. Open the Console tab so you can watch the first boot, then press Start

Tip: There are no setup fees, so the price you saw at checkout is the price you pay

Tip: Bookmark hub.loafhosts.com for quick access to the panel

Getting Your Server Token (Required)

Before your server can be listed or joined publicly, you need a Klei account Server Token. This is the one step every new Don’t Starve Together host has to do outside the panel, and it is easy to miss:

1. Sign in with the Klei (KleiMO) account you want tied to this server at accounts.klei.com/account/game/servers?game=DontStarveTogether
2. Generate a new server token
3. Copy the token and paste it into the Server Token field on your server’s Startup tab in LoafHub
4. Save and start (or restart) the server

Without a valid, non-expired token, the server typically will not finish authenticating with Klei’s services, will not show up in the public server browser, and players will not be able to join it. The token is written to disk once during install and is not overwritten on later reinstalls, so if you ever need to rotate it, generate a fresh one from the Klei account page and update the Startup tab field, then restart.

Note: The Server Token comes from your Klei account, not from Loafhosts, and is required for a server to be publicly reachable.

Note: The token is written to disk on first install and is not touched again by reinstalls, even if you change the value later: update it on the Startup tab and restart to pick up a new one.

Key Startup Settings

Your server’s Startup tab exposes the handful of settings that actually matter day to day:

• Max Players: the player cap for the cluster, from 1 to 31. This overrides the matching value inside the config file, so always change it here rather than by hand-editing the file.
• Server Token: covered above; required for a public server.
• Game Mode: survival (respawn with a stat penalty), endless (respawn freely), or wilderness (permadeath). This is a free-text field, so a typo (like “Survival” with a capital S) will silently produce an unrecognized ruleset, so stick to the three exact lowercase values.
• Cluster Name: what shows up in the in-game server browser.
• Cluster Description: the blurb shown in the server details on the Browse Games screen.
• Auto-update server: when enabled, the server checks for and applies Don’t Starve Together updates on boot.

Note: Max Players is capped between 1 and 31 by the server template; the value here is the one that takes effect, not a manual edit inside cluster.ini

Tip: Double-check Game Mode is spelled exactly survival, endless, or wilderness. Anything else is accepted but will not behave like a real mode

Where Saves and Config Live

Everything for your cluster lives under DoNotStarveTogether/ in your server’s file manager. The world save data sits under the cluster’s Master/save/ and Caves/save/ folders, and the settings that shape a new world are written once at first install: config/server/cluster.ini (cluster-wide settings), config/server/Master/server.ini and config/server/Caves/server.ini (per-shard settings), and config/server/cluster_token.txt (your server token). Because the install step only writes these files if they do not already exist, once your world has generated, changing world-generation options will not affect that world, and it takes a fresh install (and a fresh world) to apply new world-generation settings.

Note: World-generation options only apply the very first time a world is created; they have no effect on an already-generated world

Connecting to Your Server

Once the server shows a running state in the console, with both shards up, players connect the same way as any Don’t Starve Together server: through the in-game server browser (search your Cluster Name) if your token is valid and the server is public, or directly by IP if you shared it with your group and kept the cluster private. There is no separate query port to hand out, players just search or connect using the server’s listed name.

Tip: If your server does not appear in the browser after a few minutes, double-check the Server Token first: that is the most common reason a Don’t Starve Together server stays invisible

Loafhosts Features That Work With Don’t Starve Together

• Config Editor (BETA): a form-based editor for cluster.ini covering game mode, max players, cluster name and description, PvP, voting, pause-when-empty, and more, without hand-editing the ini file. See the dedicated Config Editor guide for details.
• Console: the panel’s Console tab sends whatever you type straight to the server process, which is how Don’t Starve Together accepts admin commands. There is no RCON protocol for this game, so commands like c_shutdown(), c_rollback(1), c_regenerateworld(), or c_announce("message") are typed directly into the Console tab rather than a separate RCON tool.
• Backups: schedule regular backups of your entire server, including both shards’ saves, so a bad world event, a corrupted save, or a mistake in the console is always recoverable.
• Schedules: automate recurring tasks like a nightly restart to clear memory, independent of any in-game day/night cycle.
• Auto-Restart: the panel can detect a crashed process and bring it back automatically, which matters more for a two-shard server than a single-process one, since a crash in either Master or Caves should not leave your world half-running.
• Mods: Don’t Starve Together mods come from the Steam Workshop and are installed through the game’s own mod system: dedicated_server_mods_setup.lua and modoverrides.lua inside the DoNotStarveTogether/mods/ folder list which Workshop items to download and enable. You can generate these from the in-game Mods menu on a client that connects to your server, or edit them directly through the panel’s file manager. After adding a mod’s Workshop ID, restart the server so it can download and load the mod.

Note: Change Game (switching the server to a different game entirely) and the panel’s standard file manager, console, and player-facing tools all work normally on a Don’t Starve Together server, alongside the game-specific tools above.

Putting It Together

A Don’t Starve Together server on Loafhosts comes down to a handful of real steps: pick a plan sized to 2 to 4 GB of RAM, deploy it, generate and paste in your Klei Server Token before you go public, set your cluster name, description, game mode, and player cap on the Startup tab, and start it. Because it is really a Master and Caves cluster running together, the panel handles the coordination between the two shards for you, both on start and on stop. From there, the Config Editor, scheduled backups, auto-restart, and the panel’s Console tab cover the day-to-day of running a stable wilderness survival world for your group.