Improve Don't Starve Together server performance

A Don't Starve Together server runs two worlds at once and simulates every creature, plant and dropped item in both, so the fixes that work are the ones that reduce what it has to think about.

6 min read · Updated Oct 21, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

Know what kind of slow you have

Before changing anything, work out which of these you are looking at, because they have nothing to do with each other.

• Everyone rubber-bands or freezes at the same moment. That is the server struggling to finish its work. Everything below applies.
• One player lags and everyone else is fine. That is their connection, not the server, and it follows them to other servers.
• The whole server hitches once every few minutes, briefly. That is usually a save. Don't Starve Together pauses the world while it writes, and on a long-lived world that pause gets longer.

The Usage card on your server's Overview and Console tabs shows live CPU and RAM with a history chart. Watch it with your usual group online. Memory climbing to the limit and staying there is a different problem from CPU spiking during play, and the fixes are different.

Two shards is the thing most guides miss

Your server launches the surface and the caves together, as two game processes from one cluster folder. Both run whether or not anybody is underground, both hold their own world in memory, and both load every mod you have enabled.

That has three practical consequences:

1. Memory sizing is for two worlds, not one. 1 GB figures you find online are for a single shard. How much RAM a Don't Starve Together server needs has honest numbers.
2. Every mod costs twice. A list that looks modest is loaded in both shards.
3. The Console tab shows the surface only. If the caves are the half that is struggling, the evidence is in DoNotStarveTogether/config/server/Caves/server_log.txt, which you can open from the Files tab. How the caves shard works explains the pair.

Don't Starve Together's simulation runs at a fixed rate. There is no tick-rate setting to turn up, and nothing you can set to make the server think faster. Everything useful is about giving it less to do.

Mods are the usual culprit

If your server used to be smooth and now is not, and you have added mods since, start here. Mods in this game run game logic every tick, and a single badly behaved one can cost more than everything else combined.

How to find it without guessing:

1. Take a backup from the Backups page.
2. Open the Mods page under Game tools and write down your list, in case you want it back exactly.
3. Remove the mods you added most recently, click Save mods and restart. The server takes them out of both shards on its own.
4. Play normally for a session. If it is smooth, add them back one at a time, restarting after each, until it is not.

Worth knowing while you do that:

• Character mods and inventory mods are usually cheap. Mods that add world generation, large amounts of new creatures, or something that checks every entity constantly are the expensive ones.
• A mod that has not been updated in a long time can be fine or can be a disaster. The Workshop page comments are the fastest guide to which. Installing Workshop mods covers adding and removing them, including how options are kept per shard.

Entity build-up on an old world

A world that has been played for months accumulates things the server has to tick, and the count only ever goes up unless somebody clears it. The usual offenders:

• Big piles of items left on the ground, each one its own entity with a perish timer.
• Enormous farms and planted forests, with every plant growing on its own schedule.
• Herds of followers and pack animals that nobody culls.
• Hundreds of decorations, signs and chests in a mega-base.
• Lureplants and anything else that spreads if left alone.

Two habits keep this in check: store things in chests rather than leaving them in heaps, and tidy up after a boss fight or a long gathering run instead of leaving the loot where it fell.

If you want to measure rather than guess, an admin can use the console to count a prefab (the game's internal name for an object) before deciding whether it is a problem. From the Console tab or in game as an admin:

c_countprefabs("prefabname")

The settings worth changing

• pause_when_empty in [GAMEPLAY]. On by default and worth keeping on. With it off, both worlds keep running while nobody is connected, so your plants grow, your food rots and your seasons turn on an empty server, all of it costing CPU for nobody's benefit.
• max_players in [GAMEPLAY]. Up to 31 on our servers. Raising it is free until people actually turn up, and then every extra player loads more of the world. Set it to what your group needs rather than the maximum.
• autosaver_enabled in [NETWORK]. Leave it on. The save hitch is annoying, but a crash on an unsaved world is worse.

These live in cluster.ini. The quickest way in is Server properties under Game tools, which shows the file as Server settings with a search box, and the cluster.ini guide explains which values the panel manages for you and which stay as you wrote them. Settings that have a field in Startup settings should be changed there, because the panel writes those into the file on every start.

Scheduled restarts

A restart clears memory that has built up and shortens the save hitch for a while, and it is the single cheapest thing you can do for a long-running world.

1. Open Scheduled tasks in the server menu.
2. The Restart every night starter sets one up at a quiet hour in one click. For your own, click New schedule, choose Daily and pick a time when nobody is on.
3. Leave Skip if the server is offline ticked so it does not switch on a server you turned off.
4. Choose Restart the server and create it.

For a heavily modded server, warning players first is kinder. The Warn players, then restart starter handles the announcement, and the scheduled restarts guide shows how to build the steps yourself. Before a risky change, run c_save() in the console so the world on disk matches what is in front of you.

When more RAM is the answer, and when it is not

Memory sitting at the limit, slow saves and the occasional crash all point at RAM, and a bigger plan fixes them. Plenty of free memory with stutter during busy moments points at how much the server is simulating, and a bigger plan will not touch it.

Common questions

Can I raise the tick rate on a Don't Starve Together server?

No. The game simulates at a fixed rate and there is no setting that makes it run faster, so performance work means reducing what the server has to simulate: fewer heavy mods, fewer loose entities and a sensible player cap.

Do the caves use as much as the surface?

Roughly, yes. The caves are a full second world with their own memory and their own mods loaded, running whether anybody is down there or not, which is why a Don't Starve Together server needs more memory than single-shard figures suggest.

Why does my server freeze for a second every few minutes?

That is almost certainly the autosave, which pauses the world while it writes to disk, and the pause grows as the world does. A nightly restart and a tidy-up of loose entities both shorten it, and turning the autosaver off is not worth the risk.

How many mods is too many for Don't Starve Together?

There is no number, because one heavy mod can cost more than ten light ones. Judge it by the Usage card and how the server feels with your group on, and remember every mod is loaded into both shards, so your list costs twice what it looks like.

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

• dont-starve-together
• performance
• lag
• shards
• mods

Host a Don't Starve Together server From $2.99/mo, with instant setup and DDoS protection.

Still need help? Our team is online 24/7 to answer questions.

Contact support