How to Set Up an Abiotic Factor Dedicated Server

Abiotic Factor drops your team of scientists in a secret underground facility with no easy way out, and like most co-op survival-crafting games it's much more playable as a dedicated server than as one player's game hosting everyone else. A dedicated server keeps the facility simulating, keeps loot spawns and hazards ticking, and doesn't drop everyone the moment the host needs to step away.

What you'll need

• A Docker-capable Linux VPS.
• 6 GB RAM minimum for a small team; 8–12 GB for a full 6–8 player crew.
• 25–45 GB of disk depending on team size — Abiotic Factor's save data and facility state grow as you explore more of the map.

Step 1: Install Docker and prep the mounts

Abiotic Factor's dedicated server is a Windows-only build, so the community image wraps it in Wine. Set up two mounts — one for the game binaries, one for save data:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
mkdir -p /opt/abioticfactor/gamefiles /opt/abioticfactor/data

Step 2: Launch the server

docker run -d --name abioticfactor --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 7777:7777/udp -p 27015:27015/udp \
  -e MaxServerPlayers='6' \
  -e Port='7777' \
  -e QueryPort='27015' \
  -e ServerPassword='changeme12' \
  -e SteamServerName='My Abiotic Factor Server' \
  -e WorldSaveName='Cascade' \
  -v /opt/abioticfactor/gamefiles:/server \
  -v /opt/abioticfactor/data:/server/AbioticFactor/Saved \
  ghcr.io/pleut/abiotic-factor-linux-docker:latest

WorldSaveName is the identifier for your save — keep it consistent across restarts or you'll generate a fresh facility instead of reloading your existing one.

Step 3: Open the ports

sudo ufw allow 7777/udp
sudo ufw allow 27015/udp

Port 7777 handles gameplay traffic; 27015 is the query port that lets the in-game server browser and friends' "join" buttons find your server.

Step 4: Set a real ServerPassword

Unless you want your facility open to the public server browser, set ServerPassword to something real and share it directly with your team rather than leaving it as the placeholder.

Understanding the difficulty and hazard settings

Abiotic Factor's facility hazards — chemical spills, escaped creatures, environmental dangers — scale in intensity with the game's difficulty setting rather than with player count directly, so a 4-player team on a harder difficulty can genuinely need more headroom than the RAM figures below suggest for a larger group on easier settings. If your team is finding a tier feels tight, check the difficulty setting before assuming you need to size up — it's the more common cause than raw player count alone.

Sizing your server

• 6 GB RAM / 4 players — a small research team.
• 8 GB RAM / 6 players — the tier most groups settle on (our most-picked option).
• 12 GB RAM / 8 players — a full crew exploring multiple facility zones at once.

A note on mods

Abiotic Factor doesn't have official Steam Workshop support yet — the developers, Deep Field Games, have said they want to add it but haven't shipped a date. In the meantime there's a genuine, if unofficial, modding scene on Nexus Mods (60+ mods as of mid-2025) built on UE4SS, a script-injection framework for Unreal Engine games. Installing UE4SS mods means manually copying files into the server's ue4ss/Mods folder rather than subscribing through a Workshop UI, so it's a more hands-on process — worth knowing about, but not something we're pretending is a mature "best mods" ecosystem yet.

Backing up your facility

Your entire save lives under /opt/abioticfactor/data. Back that directory up before any Abiotic Factor content update — Early Access patches occasionally change save formats, and having yesterday's copy on hand is cheap insurance against a broken load.

Keeping the server online

--restart unless-stopped in the launch command means the container comes back automatically after a crash or host reboot without any manual intervention. Use docker logs -f abioticfactor to watch the console in real time — useful right after any restart to confirm the facility loaded your existing WorldSaveName rather than generating a new one — and docker stats abioticfactor to check actual RAM/CPU use against your chosen tier.

Troubleshooting common issues

• Team can't connect but the container is running: confirm both 7777/udp and 27015/udp are open on the host firewall, not just the Docker port mapping — a cloud provider's separate network firewall is a common thing to miss.
• Server loads a fresh facility instead of your save: WorldSaveName must match exactly, character-for-character, between restarts — it's case-sensitive and has no fuzzy matching.
• Container restarts in a loop: check docker logs abioticfactor first; on a Wine-wrapped Windows build like this one, a loop usually means the underlying game files are corrupted or mid-download and just need a few more minutes, not a configuration change.

Nxeon's Abiotic Factor server hosting runs this exact container configuration on NVMe VPS instances with the ports, save volumes and RAM tiers above ready to go — order a plan and your facility is live in minutes.