Enshrouded User Groups and Difficulty Presets Explained

How Enshrouded user groups work

Groups are objects in the userGroups array. Each has these fields, per Keen's documentation and the example configurations hosts publish:

• Every group has full access to the world outside bases, including combat, gathering and quests, unless the group is restricted further (see Visitor below).
• A fresh file after Update 2 generates preset groups with randomized passwords. If your file already defined a password, only a single default group is created, with Friend-level permissions.
• You can define up to ten groups.
• The old top-level password no longer protects the server. It only triggers creation of the default group.

Admin, Friend, Guest and Visitor: what each can do

The container, base editing and kick/ban columns match Keen's description of the dedicated server presets. The extend-base column comes from the default files published by hosting documentation, and Keen's help article does not define it, so confirm it in your own file.

How to set up your own roles and passwords

1. Stop the server

   Edit the file only while the server is stopped, so the server does not rewrite it.

2. Give every group its own password

   The password is how the server decides which group a player belongs to, so identical passwords make the result ambiguous. Use long unique ones.

3. Add or edit a group

   Copy an existing group object and change the name, password and flags.

   Copy

   {
     "name": "Builder",
     "password": "AnotherLongUniquePassword2",
     "canKickBan": false,
     "canAccessInventories": true,
     "canEditBase": true,
     "canExtendBase": true,
     "reservedSlots": 0
   }

4. Check the JSON

   Commas between objects, no comma after the last one, and every brace closed. Validate the file before restarting.

5. Share passwords by role

   Players enter the password for the role they should have when joining. Tell each person only their own.

Reserved slots work as follows: when one or more slots are reserved, the lobby shows as full to players in other groups once the remaining slots would fill. Keen's example reserves 1 slot for Admin, 3 for Friend and 0 for Guest on a 16-slot server, so there is always room for your admins and regulars even when guests are queueing. Keep the total reserved below slotCount.

Enshrouded difficulty presets explained

Set gameSettingsPreset to one of these values:

Changing the preset changes the rules for the whole server, so announce it before you do and consider whether it fits a world your group has already played in.

Custom difficulty: the gameSettings values

With gameSettingsPreset set to Custom, the server reads the values in gameSettings. The generated block holds around forty keys. These are the ones most admins tune, with the defaults one host's documentation lists for a default server (compare against your own generated file):

A tidy way to tune: change one or two values, restart, play an evening, then adjust. Because the file is read at startup, you will not see changes while the server is running.

What 1.0 changed for server difficulty

• Enemy amount: there is a new Automatic option that scales enemy numbers to the nearby, actively playing party.
• Enemy damage: the underlying values behind the slider were reworked. Keen did not publish new file values, so a custom enemyDamageFactor you set in Early Access may not feel the same.
• Shroud and Flame Altars: the Flame level at which altars push back the Shroud can be lowered in world settings. In the host documentation this appears to correspond to flameLevelFogRemoval with a default of 11.
• Permissions: unchanged on dedicated servers.

Because Keen's configuration articles have not been visibly updated for 1.0, generate a fresh file on a test server and compare key names before copying a template from an older tutorial. Hosting with ChicagoServers? The Enshrouded server hosting page lists what is included, such as free server backups and SFTP file access.

Frequently asked questions