Don't Starve Together Server Settings: cluster.ini
Your game mode, player cap, PvP setting, name and password all live in cluster.ini. The common ones are fields in Startup settings in the panel.
3 min read · Updated Sep 24, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team
Your game mode, player cap, PvP setting, name and password all live in cluster.ini. The common ones are fields in Startup settings on your server's Settings tab.
The easy route: Startup settings
- Sign in at customer.guavahost.com, open My servers and click Manage on your Don't Starve Together server.
- Go to the Settings tab and find Startup settings.
- Change what you need and click Save next to each field you change.
- Press Restart at the top of the server page.
Every time the server starts, the panel writes these fields into cluster.ini. That is why Startup settings is the route that sticks: if you change one of these lines in the file instead, the startup value is written back over it on the next start.
| Startup settings | Line in cluster.ini | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Server name | cluster_name in [NETWORK] | The name shown in the in-game browser. |
| Server description | cluster_description in [NETWORK] | The line under the name in the browser. |
| Server password | cluster_password in [NETWORK] | Leave it empty for an open server. |
| Max players | max_players in [GAMEPLAY] | 1 to 31 on our servers. |
| Game mode | game_mode in [GAMEPLAY] | survival, wilderness or endless. |
| PvP | pvp in [GAMEPLAY] | true or false: whether players can hurt each other. |
Startup settings also holds your Klei cluster token, which the server writes into cluster_token.txt on every start. See Getting your Klei cluster token.
Editing the file
For anything else, open the file itself. The easiest way is Server properties, under Game tools in the server menu: it opens cluster.ini as Server settings, one row per setting, grouped by section, with a search box. Change a value and click Save changes. You can also open DoNotStarveTogether/config/server/cluster.ini on the Files tab and edit it as text. It is grouped into sections such as [GAMEPLAY], [NETWORK] and [MISC]. Useful settings that are not in Startup settings:
pause_when_emptyin[GAMEPLAY], on by default, which stops the world running when nobody is on. Leave this on unless you want crops growing while you are away.autosaver_enabledin[NETWORK], on by default.cluster_intentionin[NETWORK], which sets the play style label in the browser. Ours starts associal.whitelist_slotsin[NETWORK], which holds slots for the players listed inwhitelist.txt. See Making yourself admin.
Keep each setting inside the section it came in. Save, then restart, because the file is read at startup. Settings the panel does not manage stay exactly as you wrote them.
What not to change
The [SHARD] section of cluster.ini, and the server.ini files in the Master/ and Caves/ folders, are wiring rather than settings. They hold the ports and which shard is which, and the panel writes them from your server's configuration on every start. Editing them by hand either gets overwritten or breaks the pair, which shows up as the caves being unreachable. How the caves shard works explains the two ports.
Game modes, briefly
- Survival, the default. Death matters and resurrection costs something.
- Wilderness, where you spawn at random and there is no resurrection.
- Endless, the forgiving one, where ghosts can always revive at the portal.
Changing the game mode on an existing world is allowed but not always graceful. Take a backup from the Backups page first. Game modes and PvP has more on each mode.
Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.
- dont-starve-together
- config
- cluster
- settings
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