Conan Exiles dedicated server on a machine of your own

Linux or Windows: what changed with Enhanced

For most of its life the Conan Exiles server was a Windows program, and Linux hosts ran it under Wine, a community-made compatibility layer that Funcom did not ship. The Enhanced patch notes (5 May 2026) changed that: Funcom now ships a Linux server, and Steam installs whichever build matches the host OS. The Enhanced technical documentation (written by Inflexion Games and linked from Funcom's forums) adds that the Linux binary should run the same as the Windows one, with one catch: file names are case sensitive, so the save database name must be lower case.

Windows remains a sound choice if you want Funcom's Dedicated Server Launcher, a Windows tool that drives SteamCMD, fetches Workshop mods and exposes the core settings in a form (version 1.10.0 was released on 14 October 2026). Windows Server is a priced licence billed monthly on top of the machine; which systems you can pick depends on the line, and no ARM machine runs Windows. The rest of this page uses Ubuntu.

Ports, straight from Funcom's table

Enhanced launched for owners of the Steam version, with no Epic Games Store release announced, so the mod-download port only matters on a Legacy server that Epic players join. Funcom notes that the [OnlineSubsystemSteam] section is deprecated and should be removed, because the server no longer uses Steam for queries. If you move the game port, the pinger moves with it. Every one of our dedicated servers comes with its own IPv4 address, so the default ports are free to use as listed.

Install on Ubuntu with SteamCMD

Valve's SteamCMD guide calls running it as root a security risk; the commands below create an unprivileged conan user instead. Enable ufw before the first launch, and allow SSH ahead of everything else to keep your own session reachable. Replace 203.0.113.10 with the address you administer from.

sudo add-apt-repository multiverse
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update && sudo apt install steamcmd
sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash conan

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 7777/udp
sudo ufw allow 7778/udp
sudo ufw allow 27015/udp
sudo ufw allow from 203.0.113.10 to any port 25575 proto tcp
sudo ufw enable

sudo -u conan bash -c 'cd /home/conan && /usr/games/steamcmd +force_install_dir /home/conan/server +login anonymous +app_update 443030 validate +quit'

SteamCMD pulls app 443030 as user anonymous, without any Steam account. Updates are a stop, the identical download command, and a start. Valve warns that validate overwrites changed files that ship with the app, so keep your own edits in the Saved folder rather than in the install tree.

Run it as a service

The official wiki starts the Linux server with ConanSandboxServer.sh -log and stops it with Ctrl+C, and the first run writes the config files to ConanSandbox/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/. A systemd unit does the same thing at boot. The whole unit is our choice, not Funcom's: KillSignal=SIGINT sends the same signal as Ctrl+C on stop, and the timeout and restart policy are ours too.

# /etc/systemd/system/conan.service
[Unit]
Description=Conan Exiles dedicated server
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=conan
WorkingDirectory=/home/conan/server
ExecStart=/home/conan/server/ConanSandboxServer.sh -log
KillSignal=SIGINT
TimeoutStopSec=120
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable it with sudo systemctl enable --now conan, then read the log with journalctl -u conan -f until the server has finished loading.

The settings that hold secrets

• ServerPassword: what players type to join. Funcom's dedicated-servers page puts it in Engine.ini under [OnlineSubsystem], next to ServerName, while the official wiki's Linux guide lists it in ServerSettings.ini. Pick one file; if the password does not apply, check the other for a competing ServerPassword line. Since Enhanced, the patch notes say connections are encrypted using this password.
• AdminPassword in ServerSettings.ini: grants administration rights in game. Anyone who has it can change every setting.
• RconPassword in Game.ini under [RconPlugin], with RconEnabled=1: full remote console access over TCP 25575.
• ServerName shares that Engine.ini section and is public: players see it in the server list.

Set passwords in the files, not as -RconPassword= style launch flags: command-line arguments show up in ps output and in shell history. Once the files exist, sudo chmod 600 on Engine.ini, ServerSettings.ini and Game.ini, every file that holds a password, keeps them readable by the conan user only. The Enhanced settings reference lists which keys need a restart; PVPEnabled does, AdminPassword and ServerPassword do not.

Never paste a real admin or RCON password into a support ticket, a screenshot or a Discord channel. If one leaks, change it in the file and restart.

Memory, saves and upgrades

Enhanced merges the Exiled Lands and the Isle of Siptah into one map split into regions. The technical documentation shows how to switch a region off in Engine.ini, with [Regions] and ExcludedRegions=IsleOfSiptah, and says this can lower RAM use on dedicated servers. The save file is now game_0.db rather than Game.db; on first start the game copies Game.db across if game_0.db is missing, so backup scripts should point at the new name.

• Back up ConanSandbox/Saved (save and config) and ConanSandbox/Mods before every update.
• To stay on the old UE4 build, the Enhanced migration notes point to the conan-exiles-legacy beta branch.
• If clients cannot connect after an in-place upgrade, delete the bUseBuildIdOverride and BuildIdOverride lines from Engine.ini.
• If you bind to one address with -MULTIHOME, add -MULTIHOMEHTTP with the same address or the server may not register in the browser.

Picking the hardware

Older community tables predate Enhanced and the move to Unreal Engine 5, so treat them as history rather than a sizing guide; Funcom has not published a new table in the docs we checked. Our advice, not Funcom's: favour high single-core clocks and leave generous RAM headroom, and test with your own mod list before opening the doors.

Our game server hosting runs on HPE enterprise hardware in five regions: New York, Miami, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Bucharest. A racked machine from the dedicated server range is live about 30 minutes after the order is approved, and every server has an unmetered port with nothing counting the traffic. See the data centers page to choose a region close to your players, and the Valheim and Enshrouded guides if your group plays more than one survival game.