Enshrouded Server Difficulty and Presets
Enshrouded's Default, Relaxed, Hard and Survival presets: what each changes, why your server runs on Custom, and how to start from a preset and then tune it.
The four presets
Enshrouded ships four difficulty presets. They are the game's own, not GameGrid's.
| Preset | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Default | The standard balance. The right answer for a group new to the game |
| Relaxed | Double player health, mana and stamina, fewer and weaker enemies, more materials and faster crops and workstations, no weapon wear, and nothing dropped at the tombstone. Builders and casual play |
| Hard | More enemies hitting harder and more often, bosses with more health, and half the combat and mining XP |
| Survival | Hard's enemies, plus starvation, everything dropped at the tombstone, less health and body heat, fewer materials, dearer upgrades, frequent weather and a 20-minute night |
Your server runs on Custom, on purpose
Every GameGrid Enshrouded server runs on the game's Custom preset.
That sounds like a decision about difficulty. It is not: it is what makes the Settings page work at all.
Enshrouded only reads the individual gameplay values when the preset is Custom. On any other preset the server ignores them silently: nothing in its log says so, and the values you carefully set simply do not apply. It is a common surprise on self-hosted Enshrouded servers, and running on Custom removes it.
So the gameplay values on your Settings page are always live, and you never have to remember to switch a preset first. The preset switch itself is shown read-only in the System category.
Start from a preset
Because you are on Custom, you still want a sensible starting point. That is the Start from a preset card, at the top of the gameplay settings.
1. Pick Default, Relaxed, Hard or Survival.
2. Press Load. The button says how many values will change. The preset's values are filled in as ordinary unsaved changes.
3. Change anything you like.
4. Press Save Changes. On a running server GameGrid restarts it to apply them, and it then plays exactly as that preset does, except where you changed something.
While your values match a preset exactly, the card says so, for example "Custom (based on Relaxed)", which is a quick way to see at a glance what your server is running. Once you change one value it says "Custom: your own values."
The values follow the game's builds
The presets are not a list GameGrid typed in once. Each new Enshrouded server build is measured automatically on a throwaway server, never a customer's, and the card loads the values of the build your own server is running. The line under the card names it: "The game's own preset values, read from server build โฆ".
So when Enshrouded updates and Keen rebalance a preset, "Start from Hard" gives you the new Hard, not last month's. Values you have already saved are never changed by a new measurement.
What the presets change
They move the same values you can set yourself: player health and stamina, enemy numbers and damage, boss health, materials and crops, experience rates, night length, and switches such as weapon durability and starvation. Every value for each preset is in the table in Enshrouded Server Settings.
Three differences matter more than the numbers:
- Survival turns on starvation. Starving players lose health until they eat. It changes how the game plays more than any single multiplier.
- The tombstone. Relaxed drops nothing when a player dies, Survival drops everything they carry, and Default and Hard drop the materials in their backpack. Check the tombstone setting after loading a preset, because it decides whether a death is an inconvenience or a disaster.
- Experience. Hard and Survival halve combat and mining XP; Relaxed raises them.
What each value feels like in play is in Enshrouded Gameplay Settings Explained.
Presets in the Event Manager
The same four presets are available as ready-made settings events (Default preset, Relaxed preset, Hard preset and Survival preset), so you can run a weekend on Hard and go back to your own values automatically. Each carries the same values the card loads, for your server's build.
The Survival preset asks you to tick a confirmation before it can be added, because it changes things players notice sharply: players drop everything they carry at their tombstone, and starving players lose health. That tick is there so a scheduled event does not surprise your players on a Saturday morning.
If somebody uploads a config with a different preset
If the settings file is uploaded over FTP, or edited by hand, and names a preset other than Custom, GameGrid puts it back on Custom and fills in that preset's measured values before the server starts.
The result is that your server plays exactly as the preset the file asked for, and the individual values still work. Nothing is silently ignored.