How to Host a Don’t Starve Together Server – Step-by-Step Guide for Survivors

If you're ready to build, explore, farm, fight, and survive together, hosting your own Don’t Starve Together server is the perfect way to take control of your world. Customize world settings, tune difficulty, install mods, and create a unique environment for your friends or community.

This guide explains how to host your own DST server and why Citadel Servers is an excellent partner for your survival adventure.

Step 1: Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider

Don’t Starve Together is a dynamic survival sandbox featuring procedural worlds, advanced AI, seasons, bosses, and heavy mod support. It requires strong hardware and stable networking to keep gameplay smooth—especially with caves enabled or large mod lists.

Performance: Powerful CPUs and fast NVMe SSD storage ensure smooth tick rates, stable cave shard performance, and responsive world simulation across all biomes.

Network Quality: Low-latency connections help maintain stable multiplayer sync, smooth character movement, and reliable combat interactions.

Ease of Management: A clean control panel makes it simple to adjust world settings, shards, mods, difficulty, regeneration, and custom configurations.

Support Availability: 24/7 support ensures help is always available—especially useful for modded servers or multi-shard setups.

Citadel Servers provides all of this—delivering excellent stability and the performance needed for large, modded, or multi-world DST environments.

Step 2: Order Your Hosting Plan

Setting up your Don’t Starve Together server is quick and easy:

1. Go to the Dont Starve Together hosting page.

2. Choose how many player slots you want.

3. Pick your server location closest to your player base for the best ping.

4. Select any extras, like process priority, premium support, etc.

5. Proceed to checkout — once payment is confirmed, your server deploys automatically.

You’ll receive an email with your control panel login details and connection info within minutes.

Step 3: Configure Your Server

After deployment, it’s time to customize your Don’t Starve Together world:

- Follow our Quick Start Guide

Set your server name, description, password, and admin options.

Enable or disable caves, adjust world size, set regeneration rules, and tune season lengths.

Configure mob difficulty, boss spawn behavior, resource abundance, and environmental settings.

Install mods using the built-in Mod Manager, or upload files manually via FTP/SFTP.

Adjust shard configurations, cluster settings, and cave linking.

All configuration is handled through the Citadel Control Panel, designed to be simple for both new and experienced server owners.

Step 4: Launch and Play

When your configuration is complete, start your server with one click and invite your players.

They can join directly through the in-game server browser or by entering your server’s IP and port.

You can monitor activity, manage players, review logs, restart worlds, or apply configuration changes at any time—right from the control panel.

Why Host with Citadel Servers

When you host Don’t Starve Together with Citadel Servers, you get the stability, performance, and customization needed to build a thriving and unique survival world. Our hosting platform ensures smooth gameplay even with caves, large mod lists, and active communities.

What Makes Us Stand Out

Instant Setup: Your server deploys immediately after payment—start surviving within minutes.

High-Performance Hardware: Dedicated CPU resources and NVMe SSD storage ensure stable tick rates across multiple shards and modded worlds.

Global Data Centers: Choose from worldwide locations for the best possible ping.

Full Access & Mod Freedom: Edit any file—world settings, shards, mod configs, and more.

One-Click Mod Manager: Install, update, and manage Steam Workshop mods instantly.

Automated Backups & Easy Restarts: Protect your progress and manage reboots directly from the control panel.

24/7 Expert Support: Our technical team is always available to help with setup, modding, optimization, or troubleshooting.

Your survival world deserves a strong and stable foundation — and Citadel Servers delivers performance, flexibility, and reliability built for serious DST players.

Order Your Dont Starve Together Server Now