Valheim Seeds – Making Custom Valheim Worlds

Every Valheim world begins from a seed, and picking one yourself puts you in charge of where the starting island, biomes, and bosses land before your longship ever leaves the beach. A seed only shapes brand new worlds, though, so bringing your chosen layout onto your server takes one extra step: build it locally first, then move the files across.

In this Nitrado guide, we’ll show you how to generate a custom Valheim world with a seed of your choice and get it running on your server.

Can You Set a Custom Seed Directly on a Server?

Valheim servers support worlds generated from a custom seed, but there’s no field for entering one directly on a dedicated server. Instead, you create the world in single-player using the seed you want, then upload the finished world files to your server afterward.

A seed only reproduces the same layout for the world-generator version it was created under, and Iron Gate has changed generation with major updates before. With the 1.0 launch, a world you create fresh generates all the newest content right away; an existing world only grows new content into the areas you haven’t explored yet.

Create Your Custom World in Single-Player

1. Open Valheim, select Start Game, then choose or create a character.
2. On the Select World screen, select New.

1. Enter a world name and type in your chosen seed, a short combination of letters and numbers, then select Done.

1. Select your new world from the list, then select Move to Local so the files save to your PC.
2. Select Start to load in and confirm the world looks the way you want.

If it doesn’t, back out to the main menu and repeat these steps with a different seed.

A world’s seed shows on the Select World screen next to its name, so you can note down ones worth trying again later. Community seed-preview tools also exist that let you browse a layout before you commit, as long as you tell them which world-generator version the seed was created under.

Upload Your Custom World to the Server

1. On your PC, open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local and find the .db and .fwl files for the world you built. Copy both together; uploading the .fwl file on its own generates a fresh, unexplored copy of the world instead of the one you played.

1. Open Tools > File Browser in your Nitrado Web Interface and navigate to valheim > savedata > worlds_local, then upload both files there. You can also upload them with an external client through your Nitrado server’s FTP.
2. Open Settings > General in your Web Interface and enter the world’s name into the World name field exactly as it appears in the file names, without the extension.

1. Select Save changes, then restart the server. It loads your custom world on the next startup.

Set Sail for New Shores

Your server now boots into the exact world you built, seed, starting island, and all. To move a world you’ve already played, buildings included, see our guide on uploading an existing world to Valheim. Invite your friends in and explore the biomes and bosses from the spot you picked together! ⚔️