Valheim server rules: a template for public servers

Good rules for a public Valheim server are short, specific and tied to how the game actually works. Six to ten rules cover almost everything: keep bases at least 300 metres apart, keep the start area, traders and boss altars clear, never lead raids or monsters into someone else's base, cap tames per player, make PvP opt-in by consent, leave other people's wards alone, and hold admins to the same rules as everybody else. Write each rule with the reason and the consequence beside it, publish them where players see them before they join, and enforce them with the three files the server already has - bannedlist.txt, permittedlist.txt and adminlist.txt - plus backups for the damage nobody can prevent.

This guide goes through each rule a Valheim world needs, why the game's mechanics make it necessary, and how much a vanilla server can actually enforce. Most of the answer to the last question is "less than you hope", which is exactly why the wording matters.

Why Valheim rules are different from other games#

Rules borrowed from a Minecraft or Rust community tend to miss the problems Valheim really has, because three of the game's design choices shape what goes wrong on a shared world.

The first is zone ownership. The world is split into 64 by 64 metre zones, and each zone is simulated by the first player who walks into it. A base built right next to someone else's is, to the game, one large area that loads together, and whoever arrives first simulates both. Spacing rules are not about manners; they are about whose machine runs the fight when a troll walks through. Valheim base placement for shared servers explains the mechanics in full.

The second is characters on the client. Inventories, skills and the map live on each player's own computer, not on the server. A vanilla server cannot tell an honestly crafted sword from one spawned in single player and carried in. Any rule about cheating is a rule you enforce by watching behaviour, not by reading a log.

The third is world-wide progression. Boss kills set global keys for the whole world. One player killing Bonemass changes the raid table, the trader stock and what Haldor will sell for everyone. A rule about boss kills is a rule about other people's game.

So a Valheim rule set has to cover space (where you build), the shared simulation (raids, tames, clutter), shared progression (bosses), people (PvP, chat, griefing), and the admins themselves.

The core rule set, with reasons#

This is a starting template. It is deliberately close to what most long-running PvE servers converge on after their first few disputes. Change the numbers to suit your group, but keep the shape: rule, reason, consequence.

1. Bases at least 300 m apart, measured centre to centre. Ask before   building within 500 m of someone else's base.2. No building within 100 m of the spawn stones, a trader, a boss altar   or a dungeon entrance. Shared portals go in the public hub only.3. Do not lead raids, trolls or other creatures into another base.   If a raid starts at your base, fight it there or wait it out.4. Maximum 10 tamed animals per player. Breed for a purpose, not a   herd. Kill or release surplus.5. PvP is opt-in. Never attack a player who has not agreed to it in   chat first, and never toggle PvP inside someone else's base.6. Do not open, dismantle or loot anything that is not yours, warded   or not. Abandoned bases belong to the server, not to you.7. Boss fights are announced 24 hours ahead in Discord. Anyone may   join. Do not summon a boss that would unlock the next biome alone.8. No exploits, no item duplication, no characters from other worlds.9. Clean up after yourself: no item dumps, no huge stone piles.10. Admins follow every rule above. Admin powers are for repairs only.

Each line of that template has a specific reason, and players accept rules far more readily when they can see it. Publish the reasons in the same place.

Base spacing

Three hundred metres between base centres is a reasonable minimum because at that distance standing in one base does not load and simulate the other. It is a rule of thumb, not a boundary the game draws: a sprawling estate with farms and pens reaches further than a compact hall. The "ask within 500 m" clause handles the edge cases without making admins measure things. Players have no scale bar on the map, so give them a reference - "about a minute of running" is close enough.

Shared places

The spawn stones (the sacrificial stones in the starting area), traders, boss altars and dungeon entrances are places every player needs to reach. Building around them makes the area heavy for everyone who arrives and invites ward disputes. Haldor and Hildir are a particular trap: a player who walls in a trader has effectively taken a shared shop. The rule also keeps shared portals in one place, which matters because duplicate portal tags pair unpredictably; Valheim portal rules and teleport restrictions covers the tag behaviour.

Raids and kiting

Raids are rolled by the server and aimed at an online player standing near their own base pieces. Players cannot redirect a raid to a base they are not near, but they can run from one, and a raid's monsters follow. A player on a boat fleeing a Moder drake raid past somebody's farm is how farms die. The rule is simply that you deal with your raid at your base. Valheim raids and events on servers explains how the target is chosen, which also tells you when a complaint about "being raided by someone else" is really just bad luck.

Tames

Tamed wolves, boars and lox are creatures the zone owner simulates every frame. A pen of forty wolves is forty AI routines on whichever machine owns that zone, and breeding left unattended will grow a herd until the game's own local limit stops it. Ten per player is a common cap that leaves room for a breeding pair of each species. Write "per player", not "per base", or a three-person base will hold thirty.

PvP consent

Valheim's PvP is a toggle each player controls, so a PvE server cannot simply switch it off. A player who turns it on can damage anyone else who also has it on. Consent rules solve the realistic problem, which is not murder but a duel that drifts into someone's base, or friendly fire that "was a joke". If you want a server where PvP is the point, that is a different rule set - see the Valheim PvP server guide.

Wards, griefing and what "yours" means#

A ward protects a sphere of about 32 metres around itself. Players it does not know cannot build there, cannot dismantle pieces with the hammer, and cannot open doors or chests. It does not stop damage: weapons, fire and creatures break warded pieces like any others. That gap is where the griefing rule has to do the work, which is why the template says "warded or not". A rule that only protects warded bases tells players that unwarded chests are fair game, which is not what anybody means.

Write down four ward-related points explicitly:

• Ward spam is banned. A player dropping wards along a coast or around a resource field to claim it is using a building piece as a land grab. Limit wards to the player's own base footprint.
• Abandoned bases. Decide when a base counts as abandoned - 30 days with no login is common - and what happens next: admins remove it, archive it in a backup, or leave it as a ruin. Never let players decide that for themselves.
• Shared bases. If a ward is used for a group base, everyone in the group should be on its permitted list. Disputes inside a group are the group's business until they spill out.
• Damage you cannot prevent. Say plainly that the server keeps backups and that admins can restore. It tells griefers their effort is wasted and tells victims there is a remedy.

Valheim wards and griefing goes deeper into what a ward does and does not stop.

Bosses and shared progression#

Boss rules are the ones new servers forget, and the one that causes the bitterest arguments. Killing a boss on a server sets a key for the world. Killing The Elder retires the troll raids; killing Bonemass opens the next tier of raids and changes what later players face; killing Moder retires the drake raids and brings in the Fuling horde. A late joiner on a world where the early bosses are dead has a different game from the one the first players had.

The rule in the template - announce, invite, do not solo the next unlock - is the mildest version. Some servers go further:

playerevents deserves a mention in the rules even though it is a server setting, because it changes what a boss kill means: raids are then chosen from each player's own progress rather than the world's keys, so a newcomer is not visited by the veteran's raids. The boss keys themselves stay world-wide, so trader stock and the world state still follow the first kill. Valheim boss progression on shared servers covers late joiners and undoing a key.

Exploits, cheating and the limits of a vanilla server#

Every public server needs an anti-cheat rule, and every owner needs to understand that on vanilla Valheim it is a behavioural rule. Characters live on the client. A player can load their character into a single-player world, use the cheat console there, and walk onto your server with anything they like. The server has no record of where an item came from.

What you can realistically do:

• Watch for impossible progress. A character arriving on day one with black metal gear and a hundred levels of skill is not subtle. Many servers require fresh characters for a new world and ask newcomers to show their inventory on first join.
• Watch the economy. Sudden piles of silver, unexplained portal shipments of Flametal, a trade market flooded with one item - these are visible to anyone paying attention.
• Use server-side mods if it matters. Server-side character storage mods exist and keep characters on the server instead of the client, but they change the setup and the player experience; test before you commit. Valheim character files and cheating goes into the trade-offs.

Write the rule in a way you can enforce: "Characters must start fresh on this world" is checkable at join. "No cheating" on its own is not.

Two exploits are worth naming specifically because players often do not think of them as cheating: duplicating items through a deliberate disconnect during a save, and hauling metals through portals on a server where the portals modifier forbids it, using any trick or bug. If the rule set says "no exploits", list the ones you mean.

Enforcing rules with the list files#

Vanilla Valheim has exactly three enforcement tools, all plain text files in the save directory, one player ID per line. The server re-reads them while running, so edits apply without a restart.

// 2026-10-03 griefing at Ash Hall, warned twice - Erik76561198012345678// 2026-10-09 PvP without consent, third offence - IngridSteam_76561198087654321

The IDs are SteamID64 numbers on a Steam-only server and platform-prefixed IDs such as Steam_ and Xbox_ on a crossplay server. Get the exact form from the server log when the player connects, not from a player's own description of it. Valheim adminlist, bannedlist and permittedlist covers the formats and the common mistakes.

In the console, an admin with F5 can use kick, ban, unban and banned. ban adds the player to bannedlist.txt, so it persists. That is the whole vanilla toolkit; the admin console commands reference lists the rest.

A graduated response keeps decisions consistent and makes them defensible later:

1. Warning, in private, naming the rule. Logged in your admin channel.
2. Kick with an explanation, for a second offence or a live incident.
3. Temporary ban - a line in bannedlist.txt with a date in the comment, removed by hand when it expires. Vanilla has no timed ban, so put a reminder in your admin channel or use a scheduled check.
4. Permanent ban for griefing, cheating or harassment.

Comments in the list files (lines starting with //) are the cheapest audit trail you will ever have. Write the date, the reason and the admin's name on every ban.

Admin conduct#

The rule players notice most is the last one in the template. A public server dies quickly when admins are seen spawning gear for friends or ghosting through other people's bases. Admin rules worth writing down:

• Powers are for repairs. Restoring a tombstone lost to a bug, removing a griefer's work, ending a raid stuck on a crash. Not for personal progress.
• Separate characters. An admin who needs devcommands through a mod should use a dedicated admin character for it, never their play character.
• Two admins for a ban. A permanent ban needs a second admin to agree. It stops personal feuds becoming bans.
• Log every intervention. What was done, to whom, and why, in a channel players can read or at least ask about.

If your admins use cheat commands at all, that needs a mod on a dedicated server - vanilla refuses them even for listed admins. Valheim devcommands explained covers which of them touch the shared world and which only affect the admin.

On RE:NODE you can give each admin a subuser on the server with only the permissions they need - console access for running kick and ban, file access for editing the list files - without sharing your account, and the per-server activity log shows who did what.

Publishing the rules and getting them read#

A rule nobody has read is a rule you cannot enforce without looking unfair. Valheim has no message of the day, so the rules have to live somewhere else:

• The server name. Short, but it is what everyone sees. Something like Longhall PvE | rules: discord is enough. The name must not contain the password.
• Discord. A rules channel players must react to before they get the password or are added to the allow list. This is the strongest option because it creates a record that they accepted.
• In-game signs. A sign by the spawn stones with the three most important rules. Signs are short, so pick spacing, no kiting and consent.
• A changelog. When a rule changes, say when and why. Players accept new rules much more readily than rules that silently became different.

Review the rules after every serious dispute. If the same argument happens twice, the rules are missing a line.

FAQ#

How far apart should bases be on a Valheim server?

At least 300 metres between base centres, and more for sprawling bases. At that distance, one base is not loaded and simulated when somebody is at the other, so each player carries only the load of their own place.

Can I turn PvP off for everyone on a vanilla server?

No. PvP is a toggle each player controls, and vanilla has no server setting to lock it off. That is why PvE servers rely on a consent rule and bans rather than a switch. Mods can enforce it if you need a hard guarantee.

Do bans work for crossplay players?

Yes, as long as you use the ID in the form the server expects, which on a crossplay server is platform-prefixed, such as Xbox_ followed by the number. Copy it from the server log rather than guessing.

Can a vanilla server detect cheated items?

No. Characters and inventories live on each player's machine, so an item spawned in single player looks exactly like a crafted one. Enforcement relies on watching progress and the economy, fresh-character rules, or server-side character mods.

Should admins be allowed to play normally on the server?

Yes, and most servers are better for it, as long as admin powers are kept for repairs and used on a separate character. Players trust admins who visibly play by the same rules.

How do I handle a temporary ban?

Add the ID to bannedlist.txt with the date and the end date in a comment, and set yourself a reminder to remove it. Vanilla Valheim has no timed bans, so the expiry is a manual job.