Table of Content

Credit

The original guide is from Reddit user That_Conversation_91 on r/Valheim.
Original post can be found here

Instructions

Note: For this guide a free account is required on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allowing us to spin up a server which is decently specced.

In this guide, we'll:

• Set up a Virtual Machine using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including firewall rules
• Prepare and use SSH to connect to the Virtual Machine
• Update the Operating System and install the Valheim Dedicated Server software
• Finally we'll use Systemd to allow the server to run automatically.

If you have the knowledge of setting up a server on an alternative cloud provider or your own hardware you may skip ahead to Installing the Valheim Dedicated Server

Pre-requisite

Windows

To connect to the server in the section Connecting to the VM Instance we need to do some preparation.

1. First of all we need an SSH client, namely Putty
2. Head on over to https://www.putty.org/ and click on the Download PuTTY link
3. Scroll down to Alternative binary files
   1. click on putty.exe (64-bit x86)
   2. next scroll down and you'll find puttygen click on puttygen.exe (64-bit x86)
4. Open up puttygen
   1. Press Generate
   2. Copy the whole SSH key starting at ssh-rsa, we'll need this in the next section when Creating the VM Instance
   3. Press Save public key and save it to f.ex your Desktop
   4. Press Save private key and save it to f.ex your Desktop
      It will ask about password protecting the key, this isn't necessary for this setup.

Mac / Linux

Verify that we have a set of SSH key pairs

1. Open a terminal
2. Run the command ls -l ~/.ssh/.
   If you see the files id_rsa and id_rsa.pub, you can continue on with OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)
3. If you did not see these files, you can run the command ssh-keygen -N '' -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa Now you can re-run the command from step 2 and you should see both files.

OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)

1. Head on over to https://cloud.oracle.com/ to sign up for a free account.
   After logging in you will be shown a Get Started page.
   All subsequent section starts from Getting Started.

Creating the VM instance

1. From the Getting Started dashboard, scroll down a bit and click the Create a VM instance
2. On the right hand side of Image and shape click Edit
   1. Click Change image and choose Canonical Ubuntu and confirm with the Select image button.
   2. Click Change shape and set the following:
      • Instance type: Virtual machine
      • Shape series: Ampere
      • Shape: VM.Standard.A1.Flex
      • OCPUs: 4
      • Memory: 24GB
3. On the right hand side of Networking click Edit
   1. Select Create new virtual cloud network and leave the values as is.
4. On the right hand side of Add SSH keys click Edit
   • If you're f.ex on Linux or Mac you can find your SSH keys under ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub In this case you can select Upload public key files (.pub) then navigate to ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
   • For Windows, the SSH public key we copied in Pre-requisite for Windows can be pasted in by under Paste public keys
5. Click Create.
   Note: If you get a warning about Out of Capacity, scroll up to the Placement section and try another Domain (AD 1, AD 2 or AD 3), and try again.
   This will take a couple of minutes while the instance is being provisioned / set up.
   While we wait for it we'll go back to the dashboard and set up the networking.
   Click on the ORACLE Cloud header or click here to go back to the Getting started page.

Configuring the Network and firewall rules

1. At the top of the Getting started page, click on Dashboard
2. Under Resource explorer, click Virtual Cloud Networks, then click the network (f.ex vcn-20221120-1500)
3. On the left hand side, click on Security Lists, then the Default Security List for NETWORKNAME
4. We will be creating a rule so that we can connect to the server from Valheim.
   1. Under Ingress Rules, click Add Ingress Rules:
      • Source Type: CIDR
      • Source CIDR: 0.0.0.0/0
      • IP Protocol: UDP
      • Source Port Range: All
      • Destination Port Range 2456-2459
5. Click on the ORACLE Cloud header or click here to go back to the Getting started page.
6. Navigate back to the Dashboard, under the Resource explorer click on Instances then the instance (f.ex instance-20221120-1503)
7. On the right hand side you'll see Instance access, click Copy to the right of Public IP address, we need this in the next step.

Connecting to the VM Instance

The IP Address we copied in the previous step will be referenced here as IP_ADDRESS

Windows

1. Start putty which we downloaded in Pre-requisite for Windows
2. We'll configure the following parameters:
   • Host Name (or IP address): IP_ADDRESS
   • Port: 22
   • Saved Sessions: Valheim Server
   • Close window on exit: Never
   • Click Save
3. Next in the navigation tree to the left go to Connection > SSH > Auth > Credentials
   1. Under Private key file for authentication click Browse... and navigate to the Private key we saved using puttygen
4. Go back up in the navigation tree to Session and click Save
5. Then click Open*
6. You should within a couple of seconds see a prompt along the lines of ubuntu@instance-20221120-1503:~$
7. You're now good to go to Installing the Valheim Dedicated Server

Mac / Linux

1. On Mac and Linux we already have an SSH client installed.
2. Open up a terminal then execute ssh ubuntu@IP_ADDRESS
3. You should within a couple of seconds see a prompt along the lines of ubuntu@instance-20221120-1503:~$
4. You're now good to go to Installing the Valheim Dedicated Server

Installing the Valheim Dedicated Server

1. Run the following command:

   wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/husjon/c5225997eb9798d38db9f2fca98891ef/raw/setup_valheim_server.sh
   

   This will download the installation script onto your server allowing it to set up everything which is needed.

2. Then run the following command:

   bash ./setup_valheim_server.sh

   The first time this is run, the setup script will update the operating system and then reboot. If you get notification about kernel upgrades, or restarting services you may just press Enter, allowing the default values be. After it's done you will be disconnected, wait about 15-20 seconds then reconnect to the server.

3. Run the same command again

   bash ./setup_valheim_server.sh

   This will take a couple of minutes to complete.
   The script installs all the necessary packages and set up the server with initial values.
   Once it finishes it let you know that we need to make a small edit to one file then start the server.

Configuring the Valheim Server

1. Open up the server_credentials file with nano ~/server_credentials (or text editor of choice)
2. Adjust the SERVER_NAME, WORLD_NAME PASSWORD, PUBLIC as you see fit.
   Note: The setup script populated the password field automatically with a random decently strong password.
3. When done, Press Ctrl+X, then y and finally Enter. Note: Mac users might need to use the Cmd button instead of Ctrl

Starting the Valheim Server

To start the server, run the command valheim_server start
This will take a couple of minutes as the world is being generated.

From within the game, it might not show in the Select Server list, instead click the Add server button and type in the address IP_ADDRESS:2456 (Using the IP address fromConfiguring the Network and firewall rules)

More information can be found in the attached Readme.md file and can be viewed with cat ~/Readme.md

Crossplay (playing with console players)

By re-running the setup script you will be asked if crossplay should be enabled or disabled.
You will need to restart the server for this to take effect using valheim_server restart

Note: Crossplay is unfortunately not yet supported on servers running ARM architecture.
It might be in the future.

Modding

BepInEx currently do not support ARM, hence modding currently seem to not be possible.
If this changes in the future, this section will be updated to reflect that.
An issue has been raised with BepInEx and can be found here BepInEx/BepInEx#336

PS: If you're willing to try to install mods on your ARM instance and are able to so successfully, please do let me know.

As for a guide to install mods, here is one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2t9cSFidt0

Self-updating

The setup_valheim_server.sh now has a self-update feature which allow it to update itself and apply any bugfixes that should be necessary whenever the script is run.

After updating, it will show what have changed, update itself, then ask the user to restart the setup script.
It is not retroactively applied, hence the script will need to be downloaded again f.ex with:

wget https://gist.github.com/husjon/c5225997eb9798d38db9f2fca98891ef/raw/setup_valheim_server.sh -O ~/setup_valheim_server.sh

This will overwrite the existing script.

This feature was added Thu, 15 Dec 2022 19:56:51 +0100.

Adding Pre-existing worlds

If you already have a world you've played on (f.ex hosted on your own computer) and you'd like to continue using it with this server,
the following steps can be used.

1. Locate your save folder, navigate to this folder:
   The files we are interested in are the .db and .fwl files.
   • Windows: %userprofile%/AppData/LocalLow/IronGate/Valheim/Worlds
   • Linux: $HOME/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds
2. Stop the Valheim Server with valheim_server stop
3. With an SFTP client (f.ex FileZilla), upload the .db and .fwl file to the folder: /home/${USER}/valheim_data
4. Edit the ~/server_credentials and update the WORLD_NAME parameter to the name of your World files.
   F.ex if you world file was My_Valheim_World.db and My_Valheim_World.fwl, set it to WORLD_NAME="My_Valheim_World"
5. Start the Valheim Server with valheim_server start
6. Within a few moments the server should be back up and running with the world you uploaded.

TODOs

• Add ability to update the Valheim server prior to starting the server.
  Tue, 24 Jan 2023 23:01:18 +0100
  Now part of the valheim_server helper command.

• Add information about adding pre-existing worlds
  Tue, 24 Jan 2023 22:47:19 +0100

• Add support for users other than ubuntu
  Tue, 24 Jan 2023 22:33:56 +0100
  Made it so that the install script no longer is tied to the ubuntu user.