7 Days to Die Permission Levels Guide
How permission levels work, the levels the panel offers, where serveradmin.xml actually lives, and how to reach the console.
Permission Levels
7 Days to Die uses permission levels from 0 to 1000. Lower numbers mean more power. A player can run any command whose required level is equal to or above their own.
The Admins list in Settings > Player Management offers four levels, and these are the labels you will see in the panel:
Level 0 - Super Admin. Everything, including shutdown, saveworld and admin management.
Level 1 - Senior Admin.
Level 50 - Admin.
Level 100 - Moderator.
Level 1000 - a regular player. Anyone not on the admin list is at this level; you never add someone at 1000.
Two other settings read permission levels: Reserved Slots Permission (default 100) and Admin Slots Permission (default 0), both in Settings under Players. They decide which levels can use reserved and admin slots.
Setting Up Admins
Settings tab > Player Management > Admins > Add Admin is the supported path. Enter the player's ID, their name, and a level.
The list is backed by serveradmin.xml. That file is not in the server root - it lives with the save data, at Saves/serveradmin.xml under your server's saves directory.
An entry looks like: <admin userid="76561198000000000" name="PlayerName" permission_level="0" platform="Steam" />. The id attribute is userid in lower case and the platform attribute is required.
To find a player's ID, run "lpi" in the Console tab while they are connected, or look for "PltfmId=" against their name in the server log after they join.
If you edit the file by hand, stop the server first. A running server rewrites it and will discard your change.
Command Permissions
serveradmin.xml also holds a <permissions> section that sets the level required for individual commands, for example: <permission cmd="kick" permission_level="1" />
The panel does not edit this section - Player Management covers admins, whitelist and bans only. Editing command permissions means editing the file with the server stopped.
The console equivalents are: cp list to show current command permissions, cp add <cmd> <level> to set one, cp remove <cmd> to reset it.
For most servers the defaults are right. Changing them is worth doing when you want moderators who can kick but not shut the server down.
How to Reach the Console
GameGrid Console tab - the one to use. It runs commands as the server over the platform's own connection, so there is no password to hold and nothing to expose. Type the command and press Enter.
In-game console - press F1 during play (the key can differ by keyboard layout). Your permission level decides what you can run here.
Telnet - the server does run a Telnet interface, on your port block's base + 3, but it is deliberately firewalled to the host itself. You cannot connect to it from outside and neither can anyone else. Its port is assigned by the platform and shown read-only. Telnet Enabled and Telnet Password are editable under Admin in Settings; leave Telnet Enabled on, because the Console tab and the player list run over it.
The game's built-in web dashboard runs on base + 2. It is enabled and port-assigned by the platform; Web Dashboard Enabled and Web Dashboard Port are read-only in Settings.
Essential Admin Commands
Player management: lpi (list connected players with their platform IDs), kick <player> [reason], ban add <player> <duration> <unit> [reason], ban remove <player>, ban list
Whitelist: whitelist add <player>, whitelist remove <player>, whitelist list
Server control: saveworld, shutdown, say "message", version, mem
Creative and testing: creativemenu (cm), debugmenu (dm), spawnentity <playerID> <entityID>, giveself <item> [quality], teleportplayer <player> <E/W> <y> <N/S>
Type help in the console for the full list available at your level.
The Player Management lists in Settings do the same job as the kick, ban and whitelist commands, and they persist the change for you. Use whichever you prefer - they write the same file.