7 Days to Die world generation and RWG

A 7 Days to Die server builds its map from three lines in serverconfig.xml: GameWorld picks Navezgane, a random world (RWG) or a world folder you already have; WorldGenSeed and WorldGenSize describe the random world to build. The same seed at the same size on the same game version gives the same map. A 6k world generates in a few minutes and suits up to about four players; 8k is the sweet spot for a group of six to eight; 10k is for a public server that can afford the memory and the long first start. The most reliable way to get a map you actually like is to generate it in the game client, where you can preview it and tune towns and terrain, and upload the folder to the server.

This guide covers how generation works, what each size costs, the settings the server exposes and the ones it does not, how to bring a client-made world onto a server, and the mistakes that leave a group on a fresh map they did not ask for. For the rest of the config file, see 7 Days to Die server settings.

World and save: two different things#

Everything about map handling makes sense once you hold two folders apart.

• The world is the terrain: a heightmap, biome and splat images, water data and a list of every point of interest (POI) placed on it. For a random world it lives in GeneratedWorlds/<World Name>/ under the server's user data folder. Navezgane and any shipped pregenerated worlds live in the install, under Data/Worlds/. The world never changes while you play.
• The save is everything players did to it: broken blocks, bases, loot taken, the clock, quests, land claims and player files. It lives in Saves/<World Name>/<GameName>/.

GameWorld chooses the world. GameName chooses the save inside it. That split is what lets you wipe a server without regenerating the map (new GameName, same world), and regenerate the map without losing the old one (new seed, old world folder stays on disk until you delete it).

A random world's folder name is not the seed. The generator turns seed and size into a name - two or three made-up words, often ending in something like "Territory" or "County" - and prints it in the log on first start. Note it down. It is the name of the folder you will be backing up, and the name to put in GameWorld if you ever want to pin the server to that exact world.

Navezgane, RWG or a pregenerated world#

Navezgane is the hand-made map the game was designed around. It is compact, its towns are placed with some thought, and it starts immediately because there is nothing to generate. For a group of three or four who want a familiar map and a quick start, it is a perfectly good answer, and it has the lowest memory and disk footprint of any option.

RWG is what most servers run, because a new map is half the point of a new season. Its weakness is that the generator is a generator: some seeds put the only trader in a corner, scatter towns thinly, or give you a desert where everyone wanted forest. On a client you can look at the result before committing. On a headless server you find out when players do.

Recent versions also ship a few pregenerated random worlds in Data/Worlds/, with names beginning Pregen. Their exact names and sizes change between releases, so look in that folder on your install rather than copying a name from a guide. Setting GameWorld to one of those names skips generation entirely.

Map size: memory, disk and how long the first start takes#

WorldGenSize is the edge length of the square map in blocks. The comment in the shipped config describes the officially supported range as 6144 to 10240, in multiples of 2048 - so 6144, 8192 and 10240. Larger values are accepted by some builds and are entirely at your own risk: generation time, memory and the chance of a broken world all grow faster than the map does.

The times depend heavily on CPU speed and game version, so treat them as relative rather than promised. Three practical points follow from the table.

Generation is a memory spike. Building the world needs more memory than running it, because the generator holds whole-map images and the POI layout in memory at once. A server that runs a 10k world comfortably in 12 GB can still be stopped during generation if it is close to its limit. If that happens on RE:NODE, the container is stopped at the limit and restarted clean, which mid-generation means starting the generation again. Generate the world with the server otherwise idle and nobody connected.

Do not interrupt it. The log goes quiet for long stretches while the generator works, and the instinct is to assume it has hung. It has not. Stopping half-way leaves a partial folder that may load and be wrong, or not load at all. Watch the console until the log reports the world loaded and the server is accepting connections.

Bigger is not more content per player. A 10k map has more towns, but the players are the same people, and they spread out further. Spread is what costs a 7 Days server, because every player keeps their own set of chunks awake. For a group of five, an 8k world means you meet each other; a 10k world means four separate servers that happen to share a chat.

Disk is less dramatic than memory. The generated world folder is modest. The save is what grows, through region files written only for areas players have actually visited, so a well-travelled 10k world reaches several gigabytes over a season while a barely explored one stays small.

The generation settings the server exposes#

On a dedicated server, generation is controlled by just these properties:

<property name="GameWorld"      value="RWG"/><property name="WorldGenSeed"   value="Thursday Season 4"/><property name="WorldGenSize"   value="8192"/><property name="GameName"       value="Season4"/>

The seed is a string, not a number, so Thursday Season 4 is a perfectly good seed. Spaces and capitals matter: thursday season 4 is a different map.

What the server does not expose is everything the client's world generator lets you choose: town count, wilderness POI density, rivers, lakes, craters, cracks, and the balance of plains, hills and mountains. A server generating from RWG uses the defaults defined in Data/Config/rwgmixer.xml. You can change those defaults with a modlet that patches rwgmixer.xml, the same XPath mechanism described in the admin commands and modlets guide, but it is a blunt instrument for something the client does with sliders and a preview.

Generating in the client and uploading the world#

This is the method worth learning, because it gives you a map you have looked at before anyone plays it.

1. In the game client, go to the new game screen and open the world generator. Enter a seed, choose the size, and set towns, wilderness, rivers, lakes and terrain to taste.
2. Generate it and look at the preview map. Check the things that matter for a group: whether there is a trader near the middle, whether the starting area is forest rather than wasteland, whether towns are spread or clumped. If you dislike it, change the seed and generate again. It costs you minutes, not a server restart.
3. Find the result on your PC. On Windows the client writes to %APPDATA%\7DaysToDie\GeneratedWorlds\<World Name>\.
4. Stop the server. Upload that whole folder into the server's GeneratedWorlds/ directory, keeping the folder name exactly as it is. SFTP is the sensible way to move a folder of this size; SFTP and the file manager has the connection details.
5. Set GameWorld to the folder name, set a new GameName, and start the server.
6. Watch the log for the world loading under that name. If it starts generating instead, the name does not match the folder.

<property name="GameWorld" value="East Nikazohi Territory"/><property name="GameName"  value="Season4"/>

Two details catch people. The game version that generated the world and the version running it should match; a world made on an older build may load on a newer one, but POI layouts and world file formats do change between major versions, and a mismatch shows up as missing or broken buildings. And once GameWorld names a folder rather than RWG, the seed and size properties are ignored, so do not change them expecting an effect.

On RE:NODE the file manager unpacks archives in place, so you can also zip the world folder on your PC, upload one file and extract it on the server, which is faster than uploading thousands of small files individually.

Biomes, traders and what makes a seed good#

A random world is assembled from biomes - pine forest, burnt forest, desert, snow and wasteland - with towns and POIs placed on top. Since 1.0, biomes carry difficulty: harder biomes have tougher spawns and better loot, and recent versions add biome hazards that need gear or buffs to survive for long. That makes the layout matter more than it used to. A seed that spawns half the group in snow and half in forest is a seed where the first week plays very differently for different people.

What to check in a preview before committing:

• Traders. Quests and the early economy run through traders, and the generator places them in towns. A map with a trader within reasonable reach of the likely spawn area plays far better for a group than one where the first trip is a two-day walk.
• Starting biome. Forest is the forgiving start. Look at where the spawn points sit relative to biome borders.
• Town distribution. Clumped towns concentrate players, which is cheap for the server and good for a social group. Scattered towns spread them out, which costs memory and makes the map feel empty.
• Water and roads. Long stretches without either make vehicles miserable before they are available and repetitive after.

None of this can be tuned on a headless RWG start, which is the whole argument for generating in the client.

Exploration cost, pregenerating and keeping the world healthy#

The map exists as a design from the moment generation finishes, but chunks are only built and saved as players visit them. That has two consequences.

The first time anybody walks into an area, the server creates those chunks, populates POIs and writes new region files. On a fresh server where everybody runs off in different directions, the first couple of evenings are the heaviest the server will see outside horde night. It settles once the commonly travelled areas exist.

7 Days to Die has a visitmap console command that walks the server through an area and generates its chunks ahead of time, much as Chunky does for Minecraft. It is useful for rendering a full web map with the dashboard, and occasionally for smoothing out a launch. It is also slow, it writes region files for the entire area, and a full 10k map pregenerated this way is many gigabytes of save before anybody has built a thing. Run help visitmap on your build for its exact syntax, and use it on a part of the map rather than all of it unless you have a reason.

Two settings help a mature world:

On a big, well-explored world, new players can take a long time to join because they are being sent a lot of world. Raising the transfer speed helps if the server has the uplink and the player has the connection.

Region files are where world damage happens. Each .7rg file covers a square of the map, and a server killed mid-write can leave one damaged, which appears as a specific area that crashes anyone who walks into it while the rest of the map is fine. Stop the server with shutdown or the panel's Stop, never by killing it, and keep backups you can browse file by file so you can restore one region rather than the whole season.

Wipes, new seasons and keeping the old world#

Because world and save are separate, there are three kinds of reset, and they are worth naming before a group argues about which one they meant.

The safe routine for a new season:

1. Announce it, with a date.
2. On the day, run saveworld, then stop the server.
3. Take a backup of the old world folder and the old save folder together, and lock it so rotation does not remove it. On RE:NODE, backups can be locked against rotation for exactly this.
4. Change GameName, and the seed or GameWorld if the map is changing.
5. Start the server, let the world generate or load, and join once yourself before telling anyone it is open.
6. Once you are sure nobody wants anything from the old season, delete the old save and world folders to reclaim disk.

Keeping last season's world is cheaper than it looks and occasionally priceless - for the player who swears their base had a chest you are now being asked to recreate, or for a "finale weekend" on the old map. Backups that actually restore covers why you should test that a backup like this opens before you need it.

Troubleshooting#

The server has been "stuck" for fifteen minutes on first start. It is generating. Large worlds on modest CPUs take a long time. Watch the console; it will report the world loading when it is done.

The server restarted during generation and started again. It reached its memory limit. Make sure nothing else is happening, try again, and consider a smaller size or a world generated on your PC and uploaded instead.

Everyone spawned on a fresh map after a config change. Seed, size or GameWorld changed, so a new world and save loaded. The old ones are still on disk. Put the old values back, or set GameWorld to the old world's folder name.

The uploaded world generates a new map instead of loading. The GameWorld value does not match the folder name exactly, including spaces and capitals, or the folder was uploaded one level too deep (GeneratedWorlds/Name/Name/).

Buildings are missing or half-built in an uploaded world. The world was generated on a different game version. Generate it again on the version the server runs.

One area crashes players who walk into it. A damaged region file. Restore that .7rg from a backup.

Joining takes minutes on an old server. Players are downloading explored world data. Raise ServerMaxWorldTransferSpeedKiBs, and consider whether a long-running world is due a new season.

FAQ#

What is the best map size for a 7 Days to Die server?

8192 for most groups of four to eight. It has enough towns and traders that the map does not run out, while keeping players close enough to meet. 6144 or Navezgane suits small groups and smaller plans; 10240 is for public servers with the memory to carry it.

Will the same seed give me the same map as a friend's game?

On the same game version and the same size, yes for a world generated on the server from RWG. A world generated in the client also depends on the sliders chosen there, so a client world only matches if those settings match too. Across major versions the generator changes and the same seed produces a different map.

Can I make an existing world bigger?

No. Size is fixed at generation. A larger world is a new world, which means a new save for it. Your current world stays on disk so the change can be undone.

Can I set town count or terrain on a headless server?

Not through serverconfig.xml. The server uses the defaults in rwgmixer.xml. Either patch that file with a modlet, or generate the world in the client with the options you want and upload the folder.

Is Navezgane worse than a random world?

Not worse, just known. It is hand-designed, compact and starts instantly, which suits small groups and short seasons. Its drawback is that everybody who has played the game before already knows where the good loot is.

How much disk does a world need?

The generated world itself is small. The save is what grows: region files appear as players explore, and a long season on a 10k map can reach several gigabytes. Budget for the save plus at least two backups of it.