How to set up a Don't Starve Together dedicated server

🧭 What you'll have at the end

Your Don't Starve Together server online 24/7, with the surface and the caves, the mods you pick and your group inside. Everything is done from the panel, in your browser. Follow the steps in this order.

🔑 1. Get your Klei server token (it's free)

Don't Starve Together needs a token so the server registers with Klei and shows up in the server list. You get it yourself with your Klei account, the same one you play with:

Go to accounts.klei.com and log in.
Open Games → Game Servers.
Click Add New Server and copy the token that appears.

Treat it like a password: it is tied to your Klei account.

📝 2. Paste it in the panel and start

In the panel, open your server and go to the Startup tab. Paste the token in Klei token and press Start. The first time, the server creates both worlds, the surface and the caves, in a minute or two. When it's ready, the console shows Sim paused: the game waits, paused, for someone to join.

If you start without a token, the console tells you so with the Klei link and the server stops. It isn't an error: that step is just missing. The email telling you the server is ready reminds you too.

⚙️ 3. Name, password, mode and players

The same Startup tab has everything about the game:

Server name and Description: how your server appears in the list.
Server password: empty, anyone can join; with a password, only people who know it.
Max players: from 1 to 64.
Game mode: survival (the standard one: when you die you become a ghost someone else can revive, and if everyone dies the world starts over), endless (the world never resets and you can revive at the portal where you started) or wilderness (each player spawns at a random spot and, on death, starts again with a new character).
PvP: whether players can hurt each other.

They're applied on every start: after changing them, restart the server.

🕳️ 4. The caves

With Caves on, which is the default, the server runs two worlds at once, each on its own port, and when you go down into the caves the game moves you to the other world by itself. If your group doesn't use them, turn it off and the server will use roughly half the RAM. The panel console shows the surface; what happens in the caves is logged in DoNotStarveTogether/config/server/Caves/server_log.txt.

🧩 5. Workshop mods

In Workshop mods, type the mod IDs separated by commas. The ID is the number at the end of the mod's Steam Workshop address, for example ?id=378160973. On start, the server downloads them and enables them on the surface and in the caves, and players get the server's mods when they join.

Server mods, the ones that change the game, go here. Client mods, like maps or interface tweaks, are installed by each player in their own game.
With mods in that field, the server rewrites modoverrides.lua on every start, with the mods enabled and their default options. To change a mod's options, leave the field empty and edit modoverrides.lua yourself in the Master and Caves folders, from Files or over SFTP.

👑 6. Make yourself an admin

To use commands inside the game, such as kicking a player or going back to an earlier save, add your Klei ID to the adminlist.txt file:

Your ID starts with KU_. You can see it on your Klei account page, which opens from the Account button in the game menu.
Create or open DoNotStarveTogether/config/server/adminlist.txt and write one ID per line.
Restart the server.

You can also type commands in the panel console, such as c_save() to save the game.

🎮 7. Connect

Open Don't Starve Together, go to Browse Games and search for your server by its name. If you set a password, the game asks for it when you join. You can also join from the game console with c_connect("address", port), using the address and main port shown in the panel. Don't Starve Together has no crossplay: everyone has to play on PC.

🔄 Updates

The game only lets players in with the same version as the server. That's why Update on startup is on by default and the server updates on every start: if you can't join after a game update, restart it.

🚨 If something goes wrong

“Missing your Klei cluster token” in the console: the Klei token field is empty. Paste the token and press Start.
It doesn't show up in the list: check that the token is the one you copied from Klei, complete and without spaces, and restart.
A mod doesn't load: check the ID and that it's a server mod. The console shows what it downloads on start.
You can't join after an update: restart the server so it catches up.

If you'd rather receive it ready to go, Assisted setup is an optional one-off paid service: you get the token, pass it to the technician and they leave the server ready with the mode, mods and settings you ask for. If you have questions, open a ticket on our Discord. And if you don't have a server yet, here are the Don't Starve Together hosting plans.