Every Vintage Story plan runs the same official dedicated server with the same features. The difference between plans is memory and the number of players the plan allows. This page explains what the memory is for, and how to keep a busy server smooth.
The plans
| Plan | RAM | Players |
|---|---|---|
| Hamlet | 4 GB | up to 8 |
| Village | 6 GB | up to 16 |
| Town | 10 GB | up to 24 |
The player number is the plan's limit, not the game's: Vintage Story itself has no fixed player cap.
Current prices are on the Vintage Story hosting page.
What the memory is for
We measured a server on our 4 GB test plan, game version 1.22.7, with nobody connected: about 1.2 GB of memory without mods, and about 2.1 GB with 16 popular mods, including Primitive Survival, Butchering, Better Ruins and Millwright.
Players add to that. The game's own wiki gives a "rough, conservative estimate" for a dedicated server of 1 GB plus 300 MB per player, for a normal survival world where players spread out, and says the figure can probably be lowered with some tuning. Mods add their own share on top.
The other big lever is view distance. The game's config notes say a higher maximum view distance needs more memory. So does a higher player limit.
Choosing a plan
- A small group, vanilla or a few mods: the smallest plan is sized for it.
- A larger group, or a long mod list: pick by the player count you expect, then leave room for mods. Our 16-mod test added about 0.9 GB.
- Not sure? Start with the plan that fits your group today. If memory sits near the ceiling on the Overview tab while people play, move to a bigger plan.
Keeping a busy server smooth
The game's wiki has a short list of server settings for performance, in data/serverconfig.json unless noted. Stop the server before editing, and change one thing at a time:
- Lower
MaxChunkRadiusto 10 or less. It caps how far players can see, and the config notes say higher values need more memory. - Raise
TickTimeto 40 or 50. The wiki says this gives "a bit of cpu headroom" by lowering the server's tick rate from 30 a second to 25 or 20. - Lower
DefaultEntityTrackingRangeto 3, inservermagicnumbers.json. The wiki says this reduces the range at which creatures stay active from 128 blocks to 96.
The wiki also says to keep the savegame on an SSD. Every Connect server runs on NVMe storage.
To see how the server is doing, run /stats in the console. It shows the tick rate and memory use.
Two kinds of lag have nothing to do with your plan. The game's troubleshooting guide notes latency when players connect from a different continent, so pick a region near most of your group. It also notes that the auto-save, every few minutes, causes a second or two of lag, which it calls unavoidable if you want auto-save.
Performance mods can help a modded server too: see Vintage Story performance mods for servers.
Related
- What each mod costs you: Adding mods to your server
- Compare plans and regions: Vintage Story server hosting