How to Create a Backup of Your Hytale Server

Regular backups of your Hytale server protect you from data loss – whether due to a failed update, a faulty configuration or an accidentally deleted save.

When should you create a backup?

• Before updating the server version
• Before installing or removing mods, plugins or add-ons
• Before major changes to the world or configuration
• At regular intervals so you always have a safe state to return to

Create a backup

You can find the exact process for creating, managing and restoring a backup in the general guide: Create Backup.

How to Enable the Automatic Backups of the Hytale Server

In addition to the backups in the dashboard, the Hytale server itself can create backups of your worlds at regular intervals.

1. Open dashboard
   Open the dashboard of your server.

2. Open settings
   Navigate to the Settings.

3. Configure automatic backups
   Adjust the following fields:

   Field	Description	Default
   Enable Auto Server Backup	1 turns automatic backups on, 0 turns them off	0
   Backup Folder	Folder in the root directory where the server stores the backups	backups
   Backup Interval	Time between two backups in minutes	30

4. Restart the server
   Save the settings and restart your server. The server creates the first automatic backup once it has been running for the time set in the Backup Interval field.

You can find the backups via SFTP in the /backups/ folder, or in the folder you entered in the Backup Folder field. Each backup is a ZIP file named after the time it was created: the server created 2026-09-27_18-30-00.zip on 27.09.2026 at 18:30:00. The time is based on the server's system time and may therefore differ from your local time.

Before the server creates a new backup, it cleans up the backup folder: by default, it keeps the 5 newest backups and adds the new one. Of the older backups, it moves at most one every 12 hours to the archive subfolder, which keeps up to 5 backups by default. It deletes all others. The backups take up storage space on your server.

How to Change the Number of Backups Kept

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard.

2. Open the configuration file
   Connect to your server via SFTP and open the config.json file in the root directory.

3. Set the number
   Enter the desired values in the Backup block. MaxCount sets how many of the newest backups the server keeps in the backup folder when cleaning up (the new backup is added to them), ArchiveMaxCount how many backups it keeps in the archive subfolder. Both values must be at least 1:

   "Backup": {
     "MaxCount": 10,
     "ArchiveMaxCount": 5
   }
   

4. Start the server
   Start your server for the changes to take effect.

How to Restore an Automatic Backup

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard.

2. Back up the current state
   Create a backup via the dashboard so you can restore the current state if needed.

3. Download the backup
   Connect to your server via SFTP, download the desired ZIP file from the /backups/ folder (or /backups/archive/) and extract it on your PC. Among other things, it contains the folders worlds and resources.

4. Rename the current state
   Rename the universe folder in the root directory, for example to universe_old.

5. Upload the backup
   Create a new, empty universe folder in the root directory and upload the extracted contents of the ZIP file into it. Afterwards, the folder /universe/worlds/ must exist.

6. Start the server
   Start your server and check in-game whether the desired state has been loaded.