Enshrouded Gameplay Settings Explained
Every gameplay value on an Enshrouded server by what it does, with its range and how it plays: player, survival, the Shroud, resources, XP, enemies and time.
How to read this
These are the game's own gameplay values, on your Settings page. They are all live, because your server runs on the Custom preset: see Enshrouded Difficulty Presets and Start From.
Most are multipliers where 1 is the game's normal: above 1 is more, below 1 is less. Every one needs a restart, and when you save a change on a running server GameGrid restarts it for you.
The Settings page refuses a value outside its range when you save. (A value outside its range put into the file by hand does not stop the server: the game quietly uses its nearest limit instead.)
The exact keys, defaults and each preset's values are in Enshrouded Server Settings.
The player
| Setting | Range | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Player health | 0.25 โ 4 | The bluntest difficulty dial. 2 makes early fights forgiving; 0.5 makes a single mistake costly |
| Player mana | 0.25 โ 4 | Raise it for a magic-heavy group |
| Player stamina | 0.25 โ 4 | Affects sprinting, climbing and gliding as much as combat |
| Body heat | 0.5 โ 2 | How long players stay warm in cold regions. Lower makes a cold region a real expedition |
| Diving time | 0.5 โ 2 | How long players can stay underwater |
Survival
| Setting | Values | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon durability | On / off | Off means weapons and tools never wear out. A popular switch on building servers |
| Starvation | On / off | On, starving players lose health until they eat. The single biggest change to how survival-heavy your server feels |
| Food buff duration | 0.5 โ 2 | How long the bonuses from food last. Raising it makes cooking worth doing |
| Hunger to starving | 5 โ 20 minutes | The grace period between becoming hungry and starving |
| Tombstone | Backpack materials / Everything / Nothing | What a player leaves at their tombstone when they die. Check this after loading a preset |
| Glider turbulence | On / off | Off makes long glides predictable |
| Weather | Disabled / Rare / Normal / Often | Storms and weather events |
| Fishing difficulty | Very easy โ very hard | The fishing minigame only |
Tombstone is the one to decide deliberately. "Everything" means a death in a bad place can cost a player their whole kit; "Nothing" means death costs almost nothing. Most servers are happiest on the default, backpack materials.
On the Settings page Hunger to starving is shown in nanoseconds (600000000000 is 10 minutes), and Tombstone, Weather and Fishing show the game's own words, such as AddBackpackMaterials, Everything and NoTombstone. The settings reference lists them all.
The Shroud
The Shroud is the thing that makes Enshrouded Enshrouded, and it has three settings of its own.
| Setting | Range / values | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Time in the Shroud | 0.5 โ 2 | How long players survive inside the Shroud before it kills them. The single best dial for exploration-focused play |
| Shroud curse | Easy / Normal / Hard | Easy turns the curse off entirely. Hard makes it twice as likely |
| Flame level that clears the Shroud | 1 โ 11 | From this Flame level, Flame Altars push back the Shroud around them. The game's own value is 11, the last level, after the final boss |
Raising Time in the Shroud changes the game more than its small range suggests: at 2 the Shroud becomes somewhere to explore rather than somewhere to sprint through. Lowering it does the opposite and makes the Shroud genuinely frightening.
Shroud curse on Easy is the setting to reach for if your group finds the curse more annoying than tense; turning it off does not touch anything else.
Flame level that clears the Shroud is new in Enshrouded 1.0. Lower it if your group wants to build in Shroud-covered land before they have finished the story.
Resources and crafting
| Setting | Range | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Mining effectiveness | 0.5 โ 2 | How quickly mining and digging work. Raise it if your players build big |
| Crop growth | 0.25 โ 2 | Farm turnaround |
| Materials per stack | 0.25 โ 2 | How many materials each loot stack holds. The most effective "less grind" dial |
| Workstation speed | 0.25 โ 2 | How fast crafting stations produce |
| Runes back on salvage | 0 โ 1 | How many runes you get back when you salvage an upgraded item. The game's default is 0.5 |
| Rune cost of upgrades | 0.25 โ 2 | What upgrades cost |
If your group says "too grindy", raise materials per stack before you touch anything else. It changes the feel of a session more than experience rates do.
Experience
| Setting | Range |
|---|---|
| Combat XP | 0.25 โ 2 |
| Mining XP | 0 โ 2 |
| Exploration and quest XP | 0.25 โ 2 |
The game caps these at double, so "double XP" is as high as an experience event goes. On a server already on Relaxed values, a double-XP event is a smaller jump than you might expect, because Relaxed's combat XP is 1.5 already.
Enemies
| Setting | Range / values | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Enemy numbers | Automatic / Few / Normal / Many / Extreme | How much is wandering about. Automatic, new in 1.0 and the game's default, scales it with the players nearby |
| Attackers at once | Few / Normal / Many / Extreme | How many can engage at once. Raising this is harder than raising damage |
| Enemy damage | 0.25 โ 5 | |
| Enemy health | 0.25 โ 4 | Raising health makes fights longer; raising damage makes them scarier. They are not the same |
| Enemy stamina | 0.5 โ 2 | |
| Perception range | 0.5 โ 2 | How far away they notice you. Lower rewards stealth |
| Boss damage | 0.2 โ 5 | |
| Boss health | 0.2 โ 5 | |
| Attack frequency | 0.25 โ 4 | How often they commit to an attack |
| Peaceful enemies | On / off | On, enemies only fight back when provoked. Bosses still fight |
| Startled animal while taming | Keep / lose some / lose all progress | What happens to taming progress when the animal is startled |
Peaceful enemies is worth knowing about as a tool, not just a difficulty setting: it turns the server into a building sandbox for an afternoon, and it reverts cleanly.
The clock
| Setting | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Day length | 2 โ 60 minutes | 30 minutes |
| Night length | 2 โ 60 minutes | 12 minutes |
Lengthening the day is the most-requested change on building servers, because night interrupts work.
The Settings page shows both in minutes. The file underneath stores them in nanoseconds, which is why hand-editing them is a good way to get a very short night by accident.
Changing these safely
- Every change needs a restart to take effect. Saving on a running server restarts it for you.
- Use the Event Manager for anything temporary, so it reverts by itself: The Enshrouded Event Manager.
- Change one group at a time. If you move player health, enemy damage and materials per stack together, you will not know which one your players are reacting to.
- At every start the server prints the values it is actually using in the Console. When a settings event changes them, GameGrid compares what the server printed with what the event asked for, and if they differ the event is failed and your settings are put back.
Where to go next
- Enshrouded Server Settings โ the keys, defaults and each preset's values
- Enshrouded Difficulty Presets and Start From
- Bigger Stacks, Backpacks and Chests
- The Enshrouded Event Manager