Why is my Palworld server crashing? Palworld, at least during its initial stages, appears to be a giant memory hog when it comes to players, including eating into host swap space. We've conducted testing, as well as heard from other hosts on this issue - more players = more RAM required, and even then if you leave the server on for too long, it'll eat all your RAM on your machine! Unfortunately this seems to be due to a memory leak that, over time, will cause the server to hit its allocation no matter how high it is. This sucks, but it's how the game is - insert the sad shrug emoji here, we persist because we love the games we play!
A result of this memory issue is that the Palworld server can run out of memory at an inconvenient time (middle of a raid for example) and end up crashing, So lets look at the following steps to minimise this occuring for Games hosted with Southnode.
How to setup a server restart to keep memory usage down to a reasonable and performant level
We have a dedicated KB article for getting to know the The "Scheduler" available here, and based on that setup we highly recommend setting a 4-6 hourly restart for your application so lets look at the steps for that from within the Scheduler module.
Step 1 - Start by clicking Schedule and Add new trigger.
Step 2 - Lets start with a Simple Time Interval Trigger.
Step 3 - Access the first drop down box and go with "Every X hours" and then select Every "4" or "6" Hours followed by Add Trigger.
Step 4 - Now that we have a Trigger enabled let's start by selecting "Add new task".
Step 5 - Here's the following "tasks" that we want to add. "Stop the application" > "Wait Seconds 30" > "Take a backup" > Start the application.
Note: We want to use the Stop, Wait, Start process as this is more efficient with the game instance control vs the "Restart the application" task
Success! Now make sure the Trigger is enabled and you are good to keep adventuring with frequent server restarts!
Further Reading
How much RAM do I need for my Palworld Dedicated Server?
How to transfer your Palworld Save to Southnode
How to connect to your Palworld Dedicated Server
Southnode Game Server Control Panel
