RuneScape: Dragonwilds Dedicated Server Guide

Jagex describes dedicated servers as persistent game instances of RuneScape: Dragonwilds, hosted independently of a player's own game client. In practice that means the world is owned by a machine rather than by whoever invited everyone in: the world stays up when the host closes the game, and joining does not depend on one player being online.

It also moves the responsibility onto you. Uptime, backups, ports and updates become your job instead of the game client's, which is why the official documentation splits the decision into three hosting routes with very different effort levels.

The official how-to guide lays the decision out as simplicity against responsibility. Shockbyte trades money for managed updates; self-hosting trades your time and hardware for control.

For Shockbyte, the flow is short: rent a server from their site, open the config page, choose RuneScape: Dragonwilds Settings, optionally point it at a world from your personal library, then note the world name down and start it. The community wiki lists three self-managed tiers, from a two-player tier through four players up to the six-player tier, with prices quoted in USD per month and discounted for quarterly and annual billing — check Shockbyte directly for the current figures, since partner pricing is theirs to change.

Two constraints decide whether your hardware can host at all.

Operating system

64-bit only. Windows and Linux are both supported.

Memory

2 GB + 1 GB per player. Two players need about 4 GB; the full six-player server needs about 8 GB.

Player ceiling

Up to 6 players as of Update 0.11 (March 2026), up from the four-player cap older guides still quote.

Ports

UDP 7777 by default; a second server on the same machine moves to 7778, and so on.

A home server is reachable only if the ports are actually forwarded. That means the firewall on the host machine, every router between it and your internet provider, and the ISP itself. Some providers hand you the tools, some require a support request, and some block forwarding outright — a common enough situation that Jagex links out to portforward.com rather than restating the process.

The symptom to watch for is specific: if other players can see your server in the list but cannot join it, port forwarding is the likely failure, not the server configuration.

1. Acquire the free RuneScape: Dragonwilds - Dedicated Servers product on Steam, or on a headless machine use steamcmd +force_install_dir C:\MyInstallFolder +login anonymous +app_update 4019830 +quit.
2. Run it through Steam, or launch RSDragonwilds.exe from the dedicated server product folder — the server binaries are not distributed separately from the game.
3. Add the launch options -log -NewConsole in the product's Steam properties so the server reports what it is doing in a console window instead of running blind.
4. Create the config file and fill in the mandatory values before starting the server for the first time.

Config files live in two places depending on platform: Linux reads Files > RSDragonwilds > Saved > Config > Linux > DedicatedServer.ini, while Windows expects the same values copied across into Files > RSDragonwilds > Saved > Config > WindowsServer > DedicatedServer.ini.

1. Open the Worlds screen

   The server is discovered from the Public tab, not from a friends list or an invite.

2. Search the exact world name

   The search is case sensitive, so "dragonwilds world1" will not match "Dragonwilds_World1".

3. Give it a few seconds

   The server should appear in the results. Search by the world name, not by the server name, and not by the file name with the .sav suffix attached.

If it does not appear, the official checklist runs in this order: confirm server and clients are on the latest version (Shockbyte servers just need a restart to update), confirm the world name you typed is the world the server is actually running, confirm every mandatory config value is set, then read the log.

On startup a dedicated server loads the newest .sav file it finds in RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames. If that folder is empty, it creates a default Standard world using the default config values — which is why importing your own save is a matter of putting exactly one file in the right place.

1. Stop the server

   Never swap saves while it is running.

2. Back up everything already in Savegames

   Copy the existing contents somewhere safe — the server drive, your own machine or cloud storage.

3. Empty the folder

   Clear the contents of RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames on the server. Do not delete the folder itself.

4. Copy your local world across

   Take the .sav from C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\RSDragonwilds\Saved\SaveGames and place it in RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames on the server drive.

5. Start the server

   It loads that save as the live world.

To build a world with custom rules on the server, create it locally first with the settings you want (Standard, Custom, Creative), enter it once and let the surroundings load — the wiki suggests a minute or two — then exit, back up, copy the save over and start the server. Custom settings cannot be chosen from the server itself, only inherited from the world file you load.

Backups are a copy job rather than a menu option: take the files from RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames, store them elsewhere, and rename the copies so you can tell them apart. The wiki treats a backup as mandatory before updating a server build.

Server logs sit at .../RSDragonwilds/Saved/Logs/RSDragonwilds.log, and the wiki points at %userprofile%\AppData\Local\RSDragonwilds\Saved\Logs as well. These logs carry the running version at the top, which is the first thing to check after an update, and out-of-memory errors, which usually mean a home host is short on RAM for the number of players connected.

For problems that logs and port forwarding do not explain, the wiki suggests sending logs to ModMail on the official RuneScape: Dragonwilds Discord server.