How to Fix Palworld Server Crashes
Palworld server crashes fall into a few distinct categories — memory exhaustion, bad config, entity buildup, save corruption, and post-update failures. Here's how to diagnose and fix each one.
Identifying the Crash Type
Before you fix anything, figure out which type of crash you're dealing with. The pattern matters:
- Server runs fine for hours then dies → memory exhaustion
- Server won't start at all → bad config file
- Random crashes after the server has been running a while with lots of player activity → entity buildup
- Server crashes mid-save, or crashes on startup after a crash → save corruption
- Everything was fine until a game update → post-update incompatibility
Memory Exhaustion Crash
This is by far the most common crash type. Palworld has a known memory leak — RAM usage climbs continuously during operation and the server eventually runs out and dies.
Signs: Server runs fine, then after 12–48 hours it crashes or becomes completely unresponsive. RAM graph in your panel shows a steady climb before the crash.
Fix: Set up scheduled restarts. See How to Set Up Scheduled Restarts for the full setup. Restarts every 6–12 hours are standard on active servers.
Short-term mitigation while you set up restarts: Disable raid boss invasion events, which are a major RAM driver:
bEnableInvaderEnemy=False
Add or update this in your PalWorldSettings.ini OptionSettings block. It reduces the rate of memory growth significantly.
Invalid INI Crash (Server Won't Start)
If the server exits immediately on startup without ever accepting connections, your PalWorldSettings.ini is likely malformed.
Signs: Server process starts and stops within seconds. No crash after running — it just never gets going.
The entire OptionSettings=() block must be a single valid line with correctly paired parentheses and commas between every key-value pair.
Common mistakes:
# Missing comma between values — WRONG
OptionSettings=(ServerPlayerMaxNum=32 AdminPassword="secret")
# Correct
OptionSettings=(ServerPlayerMaxNum=32,AdminPassword="secret")
Fix: Open Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini in your panel's file editor and look for:
- Missing or extra commas
- Unmatched parentheses
- Stray quotes or invalid characters
- Values that aren't valid types for their setting (e.g., text where a number is expected)
If you can't identify the issue, restore the file from a backup or regenerate it using a community settings generator tool, then re-enter only the settings you changed.
Entity Buildup Crash
Palworld tracks every structure and object in the world. When structures never decay, they accumulate indefinitely. After enough time, the sheer number of tracked entities causes crashes or extreme performance degradation.
Signs: Random crashes on servers that have been running for weeks or months. Performance gets worse over time even with regular restarts.
Cause: BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate=0.000000 disables structure decay entirely. Abandoned structures from inactive players never despawn.
Fix:
BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate=0.100000
Set a non-zero decay rate so unattended structures eventually break down. This won't immediately remove existing accumulated structures but prevents further buildup. To clean up what's already there, you either need a server wipe or manual removal of specific player structures via admin tools.
Save Corruption Crash
If the server crashes during a save operation, the resulting .sav files can be written partially and become unreadable.
Signs: Server crashes, then on the next startup it crashes again immediately. Or the server loads but all progress is missing.
Fix: Restore from a backup that predates the corruption. Stop the server, replace the corrupted save files with your backup copies, restart.
This is why regular automated backups matter. Set them up in your control panel if you haven't already.
Post-Update Crash
After a Palworld game update, either the server binary needs updating, or (rarely) the save format has changed.
Signs: Everything worked fine until a Palworld patch dropped.
Fix: Update your server files through the control panel. Most hosts provide a one-click update button that pulls the latest server build from Steam. Save format migrations are typically automatic on first startup after an update.
If your server crashes immediately after updating, check the Palworld community channels for known issues with the new version — sometimes a patch ships with server-breaking bugs that get hotfixed within 24–48 hours.