Voxel Desync and Networking on a Busy Enshrouded Server
Every block you place and every hole you dig is a change to the world that has to reach everyone else. On a full server that goes wrong in visible ways: terrain that reappears after you dug it, a base that is missing pieces when you join, players sliding around during a fight. This page is about what you can actually do, and it starts by clearing away what you cannot.
There Are No Networking Settings
Enshrouded's server configuration file has thirteen top-level keys and a block of thirty-seven gameplay settings. None of them is a networking setting. There is no tick rate, no bandwidth cap, no buffer size, no packet priority and no compression toggle to turn on.
If you have found a guide offering a "network" block for enshrouded_server.json, or keys named for adaptive tick rates, voxel compression or self-healing terrain, none of those exist. The server will start with them in the file and ignore every one. The only settings it reads are the documented ones, and the config guide lists all of them.
How the Server Actually Moves Data
Enshrouded's dedicated server runs entirely on Steam's networking. It joins a Steam lobby, advertises itself there with its name, its build version, whether it needs a password and its slot and player counts, then runs a Steam authentication handshake with each client and talks to them peer to peer over Steam's transport.
Two consequences follow, and they explain most of what people blame on "voxel desync":
- Build versions must match. The server refuses any client whose build version differs from its own, and says so in the log. After a patch, nobody connects until both sides have updated. See version mismatch.
- There is no bandwidth knob. Rate control belongs to the transport, not to a setting you own. What you control is how much the world has to send in the first place.
What You Can Actually Control
- Player count.
slotCountaccepts 1 to 16. It is the single biggest lever on how much world is loaded at once. - How spread out players are. Sixteen players in sixteen places is sixteen regions of the world live at the same time. Grouping for raids and builds costs the server far less than the same sixteen people scattered.
- Restarts. A long-running server accumulates entities and allocator pressure. A restart every eight to twelve hours is the cheap answer.
- Base size. Very large, very detailed bases are the other thing that grows the per-tick cost and the amount of state that has to reach a joining player.
Measure It Instead of Guessing
The server reports its own load, once a minute, in its log. The line carries the average cost of a tick in milliseconds, the worst tick in that window, and the number of live entities. If a tick genuinely overruns, the server writes a separate line reading Bad Performance with the figure in microseconds and the peak beside it.
That gives you a test rather than a theory. If players report rubberbanding and there is no Bad Performance line in the log for that period, the server was keeping up and the problem is on the connection or the client. Server overloaded walks through reading both lines.
Common Troubleshooting
Base or terrain missing when I join?
Give the join a moment before deciding: the world state arrives after the connection does. If it persists, check the log for allocator or save errors, and check that the server and client are on the same game version. There is no buffer setting to tune.
Terrain I dug came back?
The world is only durable once it has been saved. An unclean shutdown loses whatever happened since the last save, and terrain reverting is the most visible form of that. Check the log for save failures, and see save rollback and backups.
Is my disk too slow?
Disk matters at save time and at world load, not continuously: the server does not stream the world off disk as players dig. An SSD is worth having. There is no evidence that a particular NVMe generation is a requirement, and CPU is the resource this server runs out of first.
Next Steps
- Server overloaded: reading the tick stats
- Difficulty settings for a full 16-player server
- Every enshrouded_server.json key
- Back to Enshrouded Wiki Home
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