Installing Mods on a 7 Days to Die Server

There is no mod store for this game. A mod is a folder you upload into Mods and a restart. XML mods reach your players on their own; code mods need anti-cheat off.

4 min read · Updated Oct 25, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

Upload each mod as its own folder inside Mods in the file manager, then restart the server. That is the whole process. There is no mod browser in the panel for this game, and that is not an omission we are planning to fix quietly: the game has no catalogue to browse.

Why there is no one-click installer

7 Days to Die has no Steam Workshop. The Workshop page for the game exists and is empty, and nothing in the game's update notes has ever added a mod store, mod.io or an in-game browser. The modding support the developers added is a set of hooks for mod authors, not a place to get mods from.

So mods come from community sites, as zip files, and installing one means putting its folder in the right place. Every host does it this way, and anybody promising one-click 7 Days to Die mods is either shipping a fixed list of their own or using somebody's site without permission.

Install one

1. Download the mod. Keep the zip.
2. Sign in at customer.guavahost.com, open My servers, click Manage on your server, and open the Files tab.
3. If there is no Mods folder in the server's root, create one. The capital M matters: a folder called mods is ignored.
4. Upload the zip into Mods and extract it there, or use SFTP for anything large. Uploading files with SFTP covers that.
5. Check the shape. Inside Mods you want one folder per mod, and each of those folders must contain a ModInfo.xml directly inside it. If extracting left you with Mods/SomeMod-1.2/SomeMod/ModInfo.xml, move the inner folder up a level and delete the wrapper.
6. Press Restart.
7. Open the Console tab and look for the lines starting [MODS]. Every mod the game accepted is named there. A mod that is not in that list did not load.

The two kinds of mod, and why the difference matters

Mods that only change XML are the easy ones. The server sends them to your players automatically when they connect, so nobody has to download anything or do anything. Anti-cheat stays on. Console players can still join. If a mod's page says "server side" or "EAC friendly", this is what it means.

Mods with their own code are a bigger commitment. They need EasyAntiCheat turned off on the server, and every player has to install exactly the same files and launch the game without anti-cheat too. The moment you turn anti-cheat off:

• Console players can no longer join at all, because crossplay requires it.
• The server has no cheat protection.

Both are reasonable trades for a big overhaul and a known group. Neither is something to do by accident.

To turn it off, open Server settings in the panel, clear the EasyAntiCheat checkbox, save, and restart.

Linux is case sensitive, and that is the usual culprit

Your server runs on Linux, where ModInfo.xml, modinfo.xml and ModInfo.XML are three different files and only the first one counts. The same goes for the Mods folder itself. This is the single most common reason a mod that works on somebody's Windows machine does nothing here, and the symptom is simply that the mod is missing from the [MODS] lines in the console.

One more: do not add a second copy of Harmony. The game ships its own, in a folder beginning 0_TFP_Harmony, and a duplicate is ignored.

The big overhauls

Darkness Falls and Undead Legacy are both installable on a Linux server, and both come with the same catch: each is built for one version of the game and will not load on a newer one. Running one means pinning your server to that version.

1. Find out which game version the overhaul's current release targets. The mod's own page is the only reliable source.
2. In the panel, open the Settings tab, find Startup settings and put that version's Steam branch name in Steam branch. Leave Update the game on every start on, and the server will keep itself on that branch rather than moving to the newest release.
3. Install the mod and turn anti-cheat off.
4. Tell your players which branch to switch their own game to, because they have to match.

Undead Legacy is the odd one: it does not go in Mods at all. It unpacks into the server's root folder and brings its own start script, so running it needs the startup command changed. Open a ticket and we will set it up with you.

Removing a mod

Delete its folder from Mods and restart. A mod that has added items or blocks to your world will leave holes where they were, so take a backup from the Backups tab first.

Common questions

Do my players need to install anything?

For an XML only mod, no: the server sends it to them. For a mod with its own code, yes, every one of them needs the same files and has to launch without anti-cheat. Check the mod's own page, which usually says "server side" or "client and server".

Can I install mods without a restart?

No. The game reads the Mods folder once at startup and nothing hot loads.

Will a game update break my mods?

Often, yes. A mod built for one version is not guaranteed to load on the next, and an overhaul almost never does. If you run mods you care about, pin the Steam branch as above rather than letting the server move to each new release. Backups and game updates goes into this.

Why is my mod not in the console list?

Nine times out of ten it is the folder shape or the capitalisation: ModInfo.xml has to sit directly inside the mod's own folder, inside a folder spelled Mods, and all of that is case sensitive on Linux. The tenth time, the mod is built for a different version of the game.

• 7 days to die
• mods
• modlets
• eac
• darkness falls

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