Guides6 min read
Terraria and tModLoader, hosted properly
Vanilla Terraria barely needs a server; tModLoader is a different animal. What changes, how much memory each really wants, and how to keep a world safe.
A vanilla Terraria server is one of the lightest things you can run: a large world with eight players is comfortable inside 2 GB. tModLoader is where the numbers move, because every mod is loaded into the same process and some of them are not shy about it.
What tModLoader costs
A modest mod list doubles the memory. Calamity plus a handful of quality-of-life mods will sit near 4 GB, and a large pack with generated content can pass 6 GB during world generation before settling lower. Size for generation, not for the steady state, or the first world you make will be the one that fails.
- Vanilla, large world, up to eight players: 2 GB.
- A moderate mod list: 4 GB.
- A large content pack: 6 GB, most of it needed while the world is being built.
Worlds are single files, so treat them like one
The whole world is a .wld file, which makes backups trivial and makes losing one trivial too. Take a copy before every mod change. A corrupted world with a backup is an inconvenience; without one it is the end of the server.