How to Upload Worlds to Your Project Zomboid Dedicated Server

Have you and your friends built a house or world to survive the zombie apocalypse in Project Zomboid and want to use it on a dedicated server? This guide will explain where to locate your local hosted world, where that folder needs to be uploaded to on the server, and will cover some of the issues with transferring world saves.

Locate Your Local Multiplayer World

First, locate your world save folder in your PC’s Zomboid folder.

• Windows: C:\Users\<username>\Zomboid\

• Linux: ~/Zomboid/

Once you have found the folder dive further in and locate the /Zomboid/Saves/Multiplayer folder. This will contain all of your client-side player information as well as any locally hosted worlds that have been created. The name of your world folder will match your chosen Server Name which is servertest by default.

Use a Compression Utility to "Zip" the Entire World Folder

A zip utility is a program that will package all the files into one bundle, and then compress the files to make them smaller. Smaller files will mean faster upload times. Doing this is often referred to as "zipping" the files. There are several utilities that can do this, and many can be downloaded for free.

We highly recommend using 7zip, which is both free and very easy to use. You can get it HERE. Simply download the correct version for your operating system, and install and set it up. When you are ready, select the whole world folder, and zip it, and all of its contents.

NOTE: The Nodecraft control panel can support uploading entire folders without "zipping" them first, but there are still several advantages to zipping them up. The files are all bundled in one package, which can be moved around on the server easier, and the files will be smaller which means faster uploading. If you are having trouble with the zipping part of this process, you can skip it and upload just the whole folder.

Upload Your World and Unzip

All worlds on Nodecraft dedicated servers are stored in /config/Saves/Multiplayer. To upload your world zip file you can either use FTP or drag and drop the zip file into the File Manager. To learn more about FTP check out our Basic FTP Tutorial.

Once that has finished uploading select the zip file and unzip the folder.

Adjust Your Settings

To have the server load the newly uploaded world you will need to specify the folder name in the Game Settings tab of the server panel. The name will need to match exactly.

Once that is adjusted you can now start up the server with the local world.

Transferring Player Data

In Project Zomboid, player data is stored in a database. This database is structured based on the Account Name or username used to join the server. For local hosted worlds this defaults to your Steam Username. For dedicated servers players will be able to type their Account Name in when they join for the first time.

If your chosen Account Name does not match your Steam Username you will be forced to create a new character when you join your local world on the dedicated server. For example, if my Steam Account Nodecraft_4 was used to create the local server, entering nodecraft_4 for my Account Name will require a new character.

To resolve this issue you’ll either need to enter your Steam Username for the Account Name exactly, or you can attempt to adjust the username in the player.db file.

Changing Your Username in the Database

Locate your player.db file in your world folder as shown below and download to your PC if you don’t already have it. To open and edit the file you will need a DB Browser application such as SQLite Browser.

Once you have the browser, right-click on the player.db file and open the file with the application. You should see something similar to the following image.

In the top left click Browse Data and then select the networkPlayers table.

This table will contain a list of players and their characters. To adjust the Account Name or username select the third column of a particular character and edit the cell on the right. Make sure all of your changes are saved and then this file can be reuploaded to the server.