Installing Mods on a Dragonwilds Server

Dragonwilds has no Workshop and no official mod tools yet, and only one of the two kinds of mod works on a server at all. Here is which, and how to install it.

3 min read · Updated Sep 24, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

Only pak mods work on a server

Mods for Dragonwilds come in two forms, and the difference decides everything:

• Pak mods are .pak files. These work on a dedicated server.
• UE4SS mods are Lua scripts that need the UE4SS framework underneath them. These cannot work on your server. UE4SS hooks into the Windows build of the game, and your server runs the Linux build of the dedicated server, so it never loads. They are for the game on your own PC.

If a mod page offers both, take the pak version. If it only offers a UE4SS version, it is a client-side mod and there is nothing to install on the server.

Jagex publishes community modding guidelines but has not shipped mod tools or Workshop support, so there is no catalogue to install from. For now, a server mod is a file you upload yourself.

Install one

1. Download the mod's .pak file to your own machine, from Nexus Mods or wherever the author publishes it.
2. Sign in at customer.guavahost.com, open My servers and click Manage on your Dragonwilds server.
3. Press Stop at the top of the server page and wait for it to say Offline. Adding files under a running server is how you end up with half a mod.
4. Go to the Files tab and open RSDragonwilds/Content/Paks/.
5. Click New folder and create one called ~mods if there is not one already. The tilde is part of the name and it matters: it makes the folder load after the game's own paks, which is what lets a mod override things.
6. Open ~mods and click Upload files (or drag the .pak file onto the list) to upload it there.
7. Press Start at the top of the server page.

Some mods ship a .ucas and a .utoc alongside the .pak. Upload all three, into the same folder.

The file manager's upload is fine for a mod or two, and takes files up to 100 MB each. For larger files, or several at once, SFTP is more reliable: the connection details are under Connection details on the Settings tab, and Uploading files with SFTP walks through it.

Everyone needs the same mods

A pak mod changes the game's content, so your players need it too. Anyone joining without it will either be refused or see the world behave differently from everyone else. Put the mod list and the download links somewhere your group will see them, and update together when a mod does.

Removing one

Stop the server, delete the file from RSDragonwilds/Content/Paks/~mods/ in the Files tab, and start it again. If a mod has already changed things in your world, removing it can leave gaps where its content used to be, so take a backup before you experiment.

Before you install anything

Take a backup from the Backups page. Dragonwilds is in early access, mods are built against a moving target, and a mod that worked last week can stop a server booting after a game update. A backup takes seconds and it is the difference between a bad evening and a lost world. Backing up and restoring a Dragonwilds world has the steps.

If the server will not start after adding a mod, that is almost always the cause: stop it, pull the file back out of ~mods, start it again, and check the mod page for a version matching your current game build.

Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.

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