Valheim Server

How to Change a Valheim Server's Name and Password

The server name and password are launch settings, not in-game options: you edit them where the server is started — your start script, your Compose file, or your host’s control panel — and restart. The one rule that catches everybody is that the password must be at least five characters and must not appear anywhere inside the server name, or the server refuses to start at all. Neither change touches your world, so nothing is at risk beyond a couple of minutes of downtime.

Where the values live

On a script-launched server, they’re arguments on the line that runs the server binary — the name argument and the password argument in your own start script. If you’re still using the start script that shipped with the download, copy it to a file of your own first, because updates overwrite the bundled one.

In Docker, they’re environment variables in your docker-compose.yml — the server-name and server-password variables for your image.

On a rented host, they’re fields in the control panel, which writes the same arguments behind the scenes.

There is no vanilla configuration file where these live, and there’s no console command to change them on a running server. Anything claiming otherwise is describing a mod or a panel.

Changing the name

Pick something distinctive. The community browser is huge and search is how anyone finds you, so “Valheim Server 1” is a bad name for practical reasons rather than aesthetic ones.

Edit the name argument in your start script:

./valheim_server.x86_64 \
  -nographics -batchmode \
  -name "Thornhall" \
  -port 2456 \
  -world "Midgard" \
  -password "longboat" \
  -public 1

Then restart. On systemd:

sudo systemctl restart valheim

In Docker, changing an environment variable needs the container recreated, not just restarted:

docker compose up -d

What breaks: nothing structural. Players who joined by IP or by favourite are unaffected — favourites track the address, not the label. Expect the old name to linger in the browser for a few minutes while listings refresh.

Changing the password

Same file, same restart. What matters is the constraint:

  • Minimum five characters.
  • It must not be a substring of the server name. So a server named “Thornhall Nights” cannot use the password “hall” or “night”.

Break either and the process exits during startup with a complaint in the console. If your server “crashes on start” right after you edited settings, this is the first thing to check — scroll back through the log rather than assuming something bigger is wrong.

Practical advice for a friend-group server:

  • Two or three unrelated words is the sweet spot: memorable enough to paste into a group chat, long enough to not be guessed by someone browsing the public list.
  • Don’t reuse a password you use anywhere else. It gets shared in chat logs and screen shares forever.
  • Change it if the server is public and you’re getting strangers. That’s what it’s for.

What happens to players when the password changes

Everyone currently connected stays connected — the password is checked at join time. The next time they connect, they need the new one, and the game may have remembered the old one for them, producing a confusing failure.

Tell people to expect it. If someone can’t get in after a password change:

  1. Have them fully restart the game, not just leave and rejoin.
  2. Re-enter the password manually rather than accepting a cached prompt.
  3. Confirm they’re typing the new password — a wrong password gives a clear error, unlike a network problem, which is silent. If they’re seeing a timeout instead, it isn’t the password: see Why Valheim Says Connection Timed Out — and How to Fix It.

Running without a password

You can host an unlisted server and skip the password, but think about the combination:

  • Private (not advertised) and no password — only people with your address can join, which for a group behind a shared IP is often fine.
  • Public and no password — anyone browsing can walk into your world. Don’t.

If you want a genuinely closed server regardless of the password, use the allow-list file instead: only the SteamID64s you list may join, no matter what. That’s the stronger control, and it’s covered in How to Whitelist Players on a Valheim Server.

Changing the world instead

People often set out to “rename the server” when what they mean is “start a different world”. Those are separate settings: the name is a label, the world argument selects a save file. Point the world argument at a name that doesn’t exist yet and the server generates a fresh world on next launch — your old world is untouched on disk and you can switch back by changing the argument again.

To rename an existing world, stop the server, rename both files in worlds_local — the .db and its matching .fwl — to the same new base name, then update the launch argument to match. Renaming one and not the other gives you a world the server can’t load.

Checklist for any change

  1. Edit the value where the server is launched, not anywhere else.
  2. Verify the password is five or more characters and not contained in the name.
  3. Restart the service (or recreate the container).
  4. Read the startup log to the end and confirm the world loaded.
  5. Test-join yourself before telling the group.
  6. Post the new details once in your group chat, and have everyone re-favourite the server if the name changed enough to confuse people.

Both settings are cheap to change and impossible to lose data with — the whole risk surface is the five-character rule and the substring rule. Get those right and it’s a thirty-second job. Everything else you might want to adjust at launch is in Valheim Server Configuration: Every Setting That Matters.

configurationadmin