Valheim server admin, permissions and world settings

Valheim handles server permissions through three text files and a short list of in-game commands. This guide covers both, plus what you can and cannot change from the panel, and one trap that can lock your players out of achievements.

The three permission files

Valheim keeps permissions in three plain text files alongside your world save:

• adminlist.txt — who has admin powers
• bannedlist.txt — who is banned
• permittedlist.txt — who is allowed in

Each takes one Platform User ID per line, in the form [Platform]_[UserID]. These are case sensitive. You can read a player's ID from the server log, or in-game from the F2 panel.

You can edit all three through the file manager on your service, which opens .txt files directly. Restart the server after changing them.

Read this before you touch permittedlist.txt

Adding a single person to the permitted list bans everybody else. The file is a whitelist, not a VIP list. Put one friend's ID in it to "give them access" and you have just locked out your entire server, including yourself.

If you want a whitelisted server, add everyone at once. If you do not, leave the file empty.

In-game admin commands

Press F5 to open the console. With admin rights you have:

Difficulty presets

Your server runs on a difficulty preset, set from the panel. The choices are Normal, Casual, Easy, Hard, Hardcore, Immersive and Hammer. Normal is the default, and changing it takes a restart.

Valheim itself also supports finer-grained modifiers on top of a preset — separate controls for combat difficulty, death penalty, resource rates, raid frequency and portal behaviour, plus toggles like passive mobs and no map. These are not exposed on your server's panel today. If you need one of them, open a ticket and we will look at what is possible on your service.

The achievements trap

Valheim 1.0 added achievements, and there is a system that flags cheating. It has consequences a server admin should know about before launch day.

Using most console commands, spawning items being the usual one, permanently marks your character and world as ineligible for achievements. Some commands such as free-fly camera are exempt. Characters that used commands before 1.0 are already marked.

Two things follow that catch server admins out:

• Spawned items carry the flag. An admin who spawns a replacement for someone who lost their gear has handed them a marked item. Picking it up puts that player into a temporary cheat state; they recover only by throwing every cheated item away.
• Hammer mode counts as a temporary cheat. Iron Gate lists it alongside the other cheat states, so a server running the Hammer preset locks achievements for everyone on it while it is set.

None of this breaks the game and plenty of groups will not care. But if achievements matter to your players, decide your position on admin item spawning before someone asks you for a free axe.

World saves and backups

Valheim saves the world every 30 minutes and keeps a rolling set of automatic backups: a recent one taken every 2 hours, then older ones every 12 hours. These intervals are Valheim's own defaults and are not adjustable from the panel.

That makes your own backups worth taking before anything big — a game update, a mod change, or a decision to restructure your base. You can download your world through the file manager.

Good to know

Valheim tells worlds apart by name, and the world name is a setting on your service, so a server can hold several and switch between them. Useful when your group wants a fresh Deep North world without giving up the old base — see the Deep North guide.

Characters and worlds are stored separately. Moving between worlds on the same server keeps your character's skills; it is the buildings and the map that stay behind.

See also: connecting to your server.