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All DayZ server parameters

Every command line switch and every serverDZ.cfg setting, with defaults and what each one actually changes.

98 parameters

Command line

Passed to DayZServer_x64.exe on Windows or ./DayZServer on Linux. Order does not matter. Only -config and -profiles are needed to start; the rest is tuning.

Parameter Values Default What it does
-config file path - Which config file to read. Without it the server starts on defaults and ignores everything you wrote in serverDZ.cfg. The single most common reason a config "does not work".
-profiles folder path - Where logs, crash dumps and the BattlEye folder go. Point it at a folder you can reach: this is where .RPT ends up, and without it you are debugging blind.
-port number 2302 Game port. The Steam query port is set separately in the config; they are not the same thing and confusing them is why a running server stays invisible in the browser.
-mod paths separated by semicolons - Client-side mods. Players must have exactly the same set or they cannot join. Example: -mod=@CF;@BuilderItems.
-serverMod paths separated by semicolons - Server-only mods. Players do not download these and do not need them. Anti-cheat and admin tools usually belong here, not in -mod.
-mission mission path - Which mission to load, for example -mission=mpmissions/dayzOffline.chernarusplus. Usually set in the config instead, through the class Missions block.
-cpuCount core count all cores How many cores the server may use. Useful when several servers share one machine. Setting it higher than the machine has does nothing good.
-doLogs - - Enables logging at all. The logAverageFps, logMemory and logPlayers settings in the config do nothing without it.
-adminLog - - Writes the admin log: connections, deaths, hits and whatever the adminLog* settings turn on.
-netLog - - Logs network traffic. Heavy: turn it on to diagnose desync, then turn it off.
-freezeCheck - - Stops the server and writes a dump if it stays frozen for more than five minutes. Worth having on if you get unexplained silent hangs.
-filePatching - - Lets the engine load loose unpacked files instead of PBOs. For development only. Careful: the official wiki describes this one backwards, as if it forced PBOs only. That is the meaning of -noFilePatching, and the error is copied into a lot of guides.
-noFilePatching - - Forces PBOs only, no loose files. Redundant on current builds, where patching is already off unless you turn it on, but harmless and still seen in start scripts.
-limitFPS number - Caps server FPS. Set it. Without a cap DayZ will happily render thousands of frames a second and burn a whole core doing nothing useful. 100 is the usual choice and is plenty; the wiki caps the value at 200. Do not go much below 100: the server tick rate rides on this number, and a cap that is too tight makes the game feel worse for everyone.
-storage path - Moves the persistence folder somewhere else. Handy when you keep saves on a separate disk.
-scrAllowFileWrite obsolete - - Used to allow mod scripts to write files. It is from before 1.0 and is reported not to work any more, but it is still copied into start scripts everywhere. It is not in the official parameter list.
-BEpath path - Where the BattlEye folder lives. Needed when several servers on one machine would otherwise share one BattlEye config and overwrite each other.
-newErrorsAreWarnings obsolete 1 - Meant to turn fatal script errors into warnings. Widely repeated in guides, but it is not in the official parameter list and we found no source confirming it does anything in DayZ. Treat it as unconfirmed.

Name and access

Everything below lives in serverDZ.cfg. Syntax is name = value;, strings in double quotes, and the semicolon is not optional. One thing worth knowing: DayZ ships no reference config, so most of the values called defaults here are the documented example values, not what the engine falls back to when a line is missing.

Parameter Values Default What it does
hostname string "" The name in the server browser. Keep it short and put the useful words first: the list truncates long names, and nobody searches for your decorative brackets.
password string "" Password to join. Empty means public.
passwordAdmin string "" Password for the in-game #login command. Set it to something long, and never reuse the join password: this one gives control of the server.
description string "" Short text shown in the server details.
motd[] array of strings {} Message of the day, printed into chat. Written as motd[] = {"line one","line two"};.
motdInterval seconds 1 Delay between message lines. Sources differ on whether this is the gap between lines or between repeats of the whole message; treat it as the gap between lines.
enableWhitelist 0 / 1 - Only lets in Steam IDs listed in the whitelist file. Turning this on with an empty list locks everyone out, including you.
maxPlayers number 60 Slot count. Directly drives RAM use, so raising it on a small machine trades stability for numbers nobody will fill.
MaxPing milliseconds 300 Players above this ping get kicked. Note the capital letter, unlike almost every other setting. Set it too tight and you lose distant but perfectly playable players.
loginQueueConcurrentPlayers number 5 How many people are processed through login at once. Keeps the server from stalling when a crowd reconnects after a restart.
loginQueueMaxPlayers number 500 How long the waiting queue may get before new connections are refused.
respawnTime seconds 5 Delay before a dead player may start a new character.
disableBanlist true / false false Stops the server reading ban.txt.
disablePrioritylist true / false false Stops the server reading priority.txt, the file that lets certain players skip the login queue.
disableMultiAccountMitigation true / false false Consoles only: turns off multi-account protection. Does nothing on PC.
pingWarning milliseconds 200 Ping at which the player sees a yellow warning.
pingCritical milliseconds 250 Ping at which the warning turns red. Below the kick threshold, so the player gets a chance to notice before being dropped.

Rules of play

Parameter Values Default What it does
disable3rdPerson 0 / 1 - Set to 1 for first person only. This is a hard identity choice: 1PP and 3PP attract different players, and switching later loses you the ones you had.
disableCrosshair 0 / 1 - Removes the crosshair.
disablePersonalLight 0 / 1 1 Removes the faint glow that follows every character. Left on, nights stop being dark.
lightingConfig 0 / 1 / 2 - 0 is the brighter night, 1 is the dark one, 2 is the Sakhal variant. Pick 1 only if you actually want players to need light sources.
enableDebugMonitor 0 / 1 1 Shows a corner panel with character stats. It is on by default, so on a role-play server this is usually the first thing you turn off.
disableBaseDamage 0 / 1 - Set to 1 to make fences and watchtowers indestructible.
disableContainerDamage 0 / 1 - Set to 1 to make tents, barrels, crates and sea chests indestructible.
disableRespawnDialog 0 / 1 - Hides the respawn choice dialog. Mostly used on servers with a single fixed spawn scheme.
disableVoN 0 / 1 - Turns off in-game voice.
vonCodecQuality 0–20 20 Voice quality. Higher is clearer and costs more bandwidth. The official page caps it at 20, community configs go to 30.

Time and weather

Parameter Values Default What it does
serverTime "SystemTime" or "YYYY/M/D/H/M" "SystemTime" Starting in-game time. "SystemTime" takes the machine clock, or pin it: "2026/7/1/9/0".
serverTimeAcceleration 0.1–64 1 How much faster in-game time runs. At 12 a full day passes in two hours. The official wiki lists 1 as the default while the file shipped with the server sets 12, so check what yours actually says.
serverNightTimeAcceleration 0.1–64 1 Extra multiplier applied to night only. This is how you keep long days and short nights instead of speeding up everything.
serverTimePersistent 0 / 1 - Saves the clock across restarts, so the world does not jump back to morning every time.

Persistence

This is the part people break first. Get it wrong and players lose bases and tents, which is the one mistake a community does not forgive.

Parameter Values Default What it does
instanceId number 1 Which storage folder this server owns. Two servers sharing one id will fight over the same save files. Give every instance its own.
shardId string "" Groups servers that share characters on a private hive. Six characters. Setting any value takes the server out of the Community tab. The range 000 to 099 belongs to official servers: use one of those and your server refuses to start.
storageAutoFix 0 / 1 1 Checks save files on start and replaces corrupted ones with empty files. That is a repair, not a rescue: the corrupted data is gone. Keep backups anyway.
lootHistory number 1 How many persistence history files are kept per instance, cycled on each save. It has been dropped from the official documentation but still sits in the configs that circulate.
storeHouseStateDisabled true / false false Stops saving the state of house doors. A workaround for persistence trouble. It has been dropped from the official documentation, and sources disagree even about its default.

Integrity and visibility

Parameter Values Default What it does
steamQueryPort number 2305 The port Steam asks for server info on. If your server runs but never appears in the browser, this and the firewall are the first two things to check. Examples usually show 2305, but the conventional Steam value 27016 also appears: there is no single agreed default.
verifySignatures 2 2 Checks mod PBOs against their signature keys. Only value 2 is supported; do not set anything else.
forceSameBuild 0 / 1 1 Requires the client build to match the server build. Leave it on: mismatched builds produce bugs nobody can reproduce.
allowFilePatching 0 / 1 1 Lets clients started with -filePatching connect, meaning they may load loose files. The default is 1, that is, allowed. On a live server this is worth turning off deliberately.
shotValidation 0 / 1 1 Server-side checking of shots. Leave it on.
clientPort number 2304 Forces the port connecting clients use.
steamProtocolMaxDataSize 1.22 number - Allows bigger Steam protocol packets so a heavily modded server still shows up in the launcher. PC only.
guaranteedUpdates 1 1 Network protocol setting. Only 1 is valid; it exists for historical reasons.

Logs

The log* settings need -dologs on the command line, and the adminLog* ones need -adminlog. Without those the values are read and quietly ignored.

Parameter Values Default What it does
timeStampFormat "Full" / "Short" "Short" Timestamp format in the .RPT file.
logFile file name "server_console.log" Saves the console output to a file next to the other logs.
logAverageFps seconds 1 How often average server FPS is written. The single most useful number for spotting a server that is slowly dying.
logMemory seconds 1 How often memory use is written.
logPlayers seconds 1 How often the connected player count is written.
serverFpsWarning number, minimum 11 15 Server FPS below which a warning fires. Useful as an early sign that the server is drowning.
adminLogPlayerHitsOnly 0 / 1 - 1 logs only hits on players. 0 logs everything including animals and infected, which buries the interesting lines in noise.
adminLogPlacement 0 / 1 - Logs placing objects such as traps and tents.
adminLogBuildActions 0 / 1 - Logs base building: building, dismantling, destroying. Worth having on if you ever expect a raid dispute.
adminLogPlayerList 0 / 1 - Writes a player list with positions every few minutes.

Network and performance

The network range values decide how far around a player the server keeps things alive. Raising them raises CPU and traffic on every single client, so change one at a time and watch the FPS log.

Parameter Values Default What it does
networkRangeClose meters 20 Spawn distance for close objects that hold items, backpacks for example.
networkRangeNear meters 150 Spawn distance for nearby inventory items. Despawn happens about ten percent further out.
networkRangeFar meters 1000 Spawn distance for everything that is not an inventory item.
networkRangeDistantEffect meters 4000 Range for distant effects, currently sound. This is why gunshots carry as far as they do.
defaultVisibility meters 1375 Server ceiling for terrain view distance. A client asking for less gets less; a client asking for more is capped here.
defaultObjectViewDistance meters 1375 The same ceiling for objects.
simulatedPlayersBatch number 20 How many players are simulated per frame. Lowering it buys server FPS at the cost of responsiveness.
multithreadedReplication 0 / 1 1 Spreads replication across threads. Thread count comes from maxcores and reservedcores in dayzSettings.xml, not from here.
speedhackDetection 1–10 1 Speed hack detection sensitivity: 1 is strictest, 10 most lenient. Set it too strict and you kick players whose connection merely stuttered.

Object batching

Added in 1.25 to stop the server flooding a client with object creation the moment it enters a busy area. Defaults are sensible; touch these only if you are chasing a specific stutter and are ready to measure the result.

Parameter Values Default What it does
networkObjectBatchCompute 1.25 number 1000 How many objects from the create and delete lists are checked in one server frame.
networkObjectBatchSendCreate 1.25 number 10 Maximum objects sent for creation per frame. Replaced half of the old networkObjectBatchSend.
networkObjectBatchSendDelete 1.25 number 10 The same for deletion. The other half of the old parameter.
networkObjectBatchLogSlow seconds 5 How long a bubble may take to iterate before it gets logged as slow.
networkObjectBatchEnforceBandwidthLimits 1.25 0 / 1 - Turns on the bandwidth-based limiter for object creation. The patch notes say it is off by default, while the wiki example shows 1: check what your file actually has.
networkObjectBatchUseEstimatedBandwidth 1.25 0 / 1 - 0 uses what was actually sent since the last frame, 1 uses a rough estimate. 0 is the recommended one.
networkObjectBatchUseDynamicMaximumBandwidth 1.25 0 / 1 1 1 makes the limit a fraction of what can currently be sent, 0 makes it an absolute ceiling.
networkObjectBatchBandwidthLimit 1.25 decimal 0.8 The limit itself. A fraction between 0 and 1 when the dynamic mode is on, otherwise an absolute number in the thousands.

Parameters that are not real

These turn up in configs handed around on forums and in hosting panels. Some were real once, some never were. None of them do what the comment next to them promises, and a line that does nothing is worse than no line: you think a thing is configured when it is not.

Parameter Values Default What it does
networkObjectBatchSend obsolete number - Was real until 1.25, then split into networkObjectBatchSendCreate and networkObjectBatchSendDelete. Configs older than that still carry it, and the server ignores it.
steamport obsolete number - Not a DayZ parameter, though it is in a lot of configs with a comment promising it puts the server in the Steam list. The one that actually does that is steamQueryPort.
BattlEye obsolete 0 / 1 - Not in the official list. BattlEye is controlled by the -BEpath launch parameter and BEServer_x64.cfg, not from here. Setting BattlEye = 0 does not turn it off.
disableThirdPerson obsolete 0 / 1 - A misspelling that circulates on at least one popular reference site. The real name is disable3rdPerson, and the misspelled line is silently ignored, so your first-person server quietly stays third-person.
MaxBandwidth obsolete number - From the Arma 2 basic.cfg, back in the DayZ Mod days. Standalone has no such setting. The same goes for MinBandwidth, MaxMsgSend, MaxSizeGuaranteed, MaxSizeNonguaranteed, MinErrorToSend and MinErrorToSendNear: they are all one family and none of them belong in serverDZ.cfg.
storageAutoDestroyFlags obsolete - - Along with storageAutoDestroyInterval, comes from a single machine-written guide and nothing else. No official source, no other confirmation. Do not put it in your config.
enableMouseAndKeyboard obsolete - - Named in one hosting provider's marketing copy as a console crossplay toggle. Not in the official list and not confirmed anywhere else.

Mission

Parameter Values Default What it does
class Missions block - Which mission folder to run, written as a block at the end of the file: class Missions { class DayZ { template="dayzOffline.chernarusplus"; }; };. The template name must match a folder in mpmissions exactly, and a typo here is why the server starts and then sits doing nothing.
enableCfgGameplayFile 0 / 1 - Turns on cfggameplay.json, where stamina, building rules and a lot of other gameplay knobs live. Without it that file is ignored entirely.

Nothing matches that. Try a shorter word, the filter also searches the descriptions.

A config you can copy

Save this as serverDZ.cfg next to the server executable and start it with -config=serverDZ.cfg -profiles=profiles. It launches Chernarus as is. Do add -limitFPS=100 to the start line: without a cap the server burns a core rendering frames nobody looks at. Change the name and the admin password first: the name is ours because we wrote the file, and the password below is a placeholder, not a password.

serverDZ.cfg
hostname = "dz.arbat16.com";     // Server name. Change this to yours
password = "";                       // Join password. Empty means public
passwordAdmin = "CHANGE_ME";         // Admin password for #login. Change this before you start
description = "";                    // Short text in the server details

maxPlayers = 60;                     // Slots. Raising this raises RAM use
enableWhitelist = 0;                 // 1 only lets in IDs from whitelist.txt

// --- Integrity ---------------------------------------------------------
verifySignatures = 2;                // Only 2 is supported
forceSameBuild = 1;                  // Client build must match the server
allowFilePatching = 0;               // 0 keeps loose-file clients out
shotValidation = 1;                  // Server-side shot checking
speedhackDetection = 1;              // 1 strictest, 10 most lenient

// --- Rules of play -----------------------------------------------------
disable3rdPerson = 0;                // 1 makes the server first person only
disableCrosshair = 0;
disablePersonalLight = 1;            // Without this nights are never dark
lightingConfig = 0;                  // 0 brighter night, 1 dark, 2 Sakhal
enableDebugMonitor = 0;              // The corner stats panel
disableBaseDamage = 0;               // 1 makes fences indestructible
disableContainerDamage = 0;          // 1 makes tents and barrels indestructible
disableRespawnDialog = 0;

disableVoN = 0;                      // In-game voice
vonCodecQuality = 20;                // 0 to 20, higher is clearer

// --- Time --------------------------------------------------------------
serverTime = "SystemTime";           // Or pin it: "2026/7/1/9/0"
serverTimeAcceleration = 6;          // A full day in four hours
serverNightTimeAcceleration = 4;     // Nights pass faster still
serverTimePersistent = 1;            // Keep the clock across restarts

// --- Persistence -------------------------------------------------------
instanceId = 1;                      // Each server on the box needs its own
storageAutoFix = 1;                  // Replaces corrupted saves with empty ones
respawnTime = 5;

// --- Ports -------------------------------------------------------------
steamQueryPort = 2305;               // Server browser visibility depends on this

// --- Ping and load -----------------------------------------------------
pingWarning = 200;
pingCritical = 250;
MaxPing = 300;                       // Above this the player is kicked
serverFpsWarning = 15;

loginQueueConcurrentPlayers = 5;
loginQueueMaxPlayers = 500;
simulatedPlayersBatch = 20;
multithreadedReplication = 1;

// --- Messages ----------------------------------------------------------
motd[] = {"Welcome.","Rules are in Discord."};
motdInterval = 300;

// --- Logs --------------------------------------------------------------
timeStampFormat = "Short";
logFile = "server_console.log";
logAverageFps = 60;                  // Needs -doLogs on the command line
logMemory = 60;
logPlayers = 60;

adminLogPlayerHitsOnly = 0;          // Needs -adminLog on the command line
adminLogPlacement = 1;
adminLogBuildActions = 1;
adminLogPlayerList = 0;

// --- Network bubbles ---------------------------------------------------
networkRangeClose = 20;
networkRangeNear = 150;
networkRangeFar = 1000;
networkRangeDistantEffect = 4000;

defaultVisibility = 1375;
defaultObjectViewDistance = 1375;

// --- Which map to run --------------------------------------------------
// Without this block the server starts and then does nothing
class Missions
{
    class DayZ
    {
        template = "dayzOffline.chernarusplus";
    };
};

And the line that starts it

command line
DayZServer_x64.exe -config=serverDZ.cfg -profiles=profiles -port=2302 -limitFPS=100 -doLogs -adminLog -freezeCheck