Enshrouded "Server Overloaded" Fix
When Enshrouded shows "Server Overloaded" or players rubberband, the server is running out of CPU time or memory. Use the steps below to stabilize the instance without wiping your world.
Read the log before you change anything. "Server Overloaded" is a client-side warning, and on its own it does not tell you whether the server was actually slow. The server says so itself, in its own log, and that is the difference between fixing the problem and guessing at it. See the section below.
Confirming It From the Server Log
The log lives wherever logDirectory points, which defaults to ./logs. The previous run is moved into a backup subfolder each time the server starts, so the current file is always the newest one. Two lines matter.
The statistics line, written once a minute:
[ecss] Stats: Upd:3,599 (16.7ms) Time:... Total:... Max:... Avg:3.6ms +:... -:... Ent:19,048 Pred:...
Avgis the mean cost of one server tick in milliseconds. This is the number to watch. If it stays well under the tick budget, the server is keeping up and the overload warning is coming from somewhere else, usually the client's own frame rate or the connection.Maxis the worst single tick in that window, which is what players feel as a rubberband even whenAvglooks healthy.Entis the number of live entities. This is the honest measure of how much world is loaded, and it is what grows when players spread out or when a base gets very large.
The overload line, written when a tick genuinely runs long:
[server] Bad Performance 84,213 us (peak: 210,884 us)
The figures are microseconds. If this line is absent while players see the warning, the server was not the bottleneck. If it is present and frequent, it was.
If instead you see a line from the memory allocator, the cause is memory rather than CPU:
[memory] Could not allocate ... tlsf max size reached!
Common Causes
| Symptom | Likely Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Rubberbanding during combat | CPU saturated from too many active regions | Reduce slotCount and group players together |
| Server Overloaded warning | Long uptime, entity count climbing | Check Ent in the stats line, then restart every 8-12 hours |
| Overloaded with few players | Often not the server at all | Look for a Bad Performance line. No line means the server kept up. |
| Slow interactions (chests, doors) | Network buffer full or heavy save | Lower player count, clear old backups, restart |
| Players far apart = lag | Server loads multiple regions simultaneously | Keep players in same biome when possible |
Why Core Count Helps Less Than You Expect
Enshrouded's server prints its task system layout at startup: a worker count, and a line reporting that efficiency cores are disabled. Read that together with what the game is doing and the practical advice is the same either way: on a desktop chip advertising, say, 24 threads split across performance and efficiency cores, do not expect all 24 to carry server work. Clock speed and performance-core count move the tick cost far more than the headline thread count does.
Step-by-Step Fix
- Reduce slot count. Lower
slotCountinenshrouded_server.jsonand restart. The maximum this setting accepts is 16. - Restart on a schedule. Entity counts and allocator pressure both climb with uptime. Restarting every 8-12 hours is the cheap, reliable answer, and the stats line tells you whether you need it more or less often.
- Verify resources. Compare your hardware to Enshrouded requirements.
- Check save load loops. If the log shows repeated save loads, follow Troubleshooting.
- Keep updates aligned. Update server and clients after patches to avoid performance regressions.
Config Example
{
"name": "My Enshrouded Server",
"slotCount": 12,
"queryPort": 15637,
"ip": "0.0.0.0",
"saveDirectory": "./savegame",
"logDirectory": "./logs"
}
There is only one port setting. queryPort defaults to 15637 and is the only port key the server reads; gamePort is not a key in this file and adding it does nothing.
Tip: If 12 players are spread across different biomes, the server effectively loads 12 worlds. Encourage grouping for large raids.
Keep Embervale smooth. Host your Enshrouded server with Supercraft for optimized CPU clocks and managed restarts.