Curious about what you can do as a server owner to best protect your Sons of the Forest game when offline? Here's a breakdown of server owner best practices explaining Kelvin, Virginia, cannibals, and your base behaviour on a dedicated server while you and your friends are away.

What Happens When You’re Offline?

When no players are online, most of the game world enters "idle mode", but depending on your server settings some mechanics will still be running if not properly addressed.

However, if enemies were already aggroed when the last player disconnects, they may continue attacking briefly, as idle mode can take a few seconds to activate.

As a best practice we recommend logging out away from your base during peacetime.

Do Kelvin and Virginia Keep Working?

When idle mode is active, NPCs like Kelvin and Virginia pause and are effectively frozen in place until a player joins the server. This means that they won’t gather logs, defend camp or patrol as all NPC and AI on the server become idle.

Will Time Keep Passing?

By default, DNSworld servers are configured to pause in-game time when no players are online. In Server Configuration set IdleDayCycleSpeed=0.0to ensure time is paused when the server is idle. Ensure you press Save Content and restart your server when making changes to the files.

This freezes your server and can be changed anytime in the Files tab under /home/container/serverconfig/dedicatedserver.cfg

Server Settings to Protect Your World and Progress

IdleDayCycleSpeed

As discussed above, this setting determines how quickly the in-game day and night cycle progresses when no players are connected to the server. In Server Configuration, ensure you set: IdleDayCycleSpeed=0.0 to pause the game during idle periods. This prevents crops from growing, seasons from changing, and ensures you and friends don’t miss any time-based events from progressing until a player logs in.

This is the recommended setting if you want to preserve your server during long periods of inactivity.

The server configuration file can be found in Files tab under /home/container/serverconfig/dedicatedserver.cfg and does require a full server restart in the Console to take effect.

Automatic Saves with DNSworld

By using our DNSworld dashboard, you can automate saves to protect your progress without needing to remember to save manually. This is ideal for community servers or with friends to prevent griefing, etc.

How to Set Up a Daily Automatic Server Backup (Every 24 Hours)

Create a New Schedule

Click on the Schedules tab in the top ribbon

Select Create Schedule.

Enter a name like Daily Auto-Save (24h) in the Schedule Name field.

Set the time to run once a day at a quiet hour, such as at 3AM every day. An example can be shown below.

Minute: 0

Hour: 3

Day of Month: *

Month: *

Day of Week: *

Turn on Only When Server is Online to avoid running the backup while the server is offline.

Then, toggle Schedule Enabled to make sure it runs automatically.

Once complete, click Create Schedule.

Add a Backup Task

Once the schedule is created, click onto your new schedule and then select New Task.

On the Action dropdown, select Create backup.

If no delay is needed, leave the Time Offset at 0 seconds.

As an optional step you can specify folders to exclude under Ignored Files.

Once complete, click Create Task to save the backup task.

Confirm Settings and Run Test

You should now see the task Create Backup at the bottom of the Schedules menu. Your next server run time will be shown (e.g., "Next run at: Aug 7th at 3:00AM").

To ensure a successful task creation, we recommend pressing Run Now which will create your backup in the Backups tab in the top ribbon.

Please note: By default, the server only has a 1-backup limit, which will be overridden with each scheduled backup. To reload a previous backup in the Backups tab press on the three dots (…) where you can press Restore. In this section you can also download, lock and delete your backup.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can Kelvin or Virginia die permanently?

Yes. If they die, they stay dead for all players unless you manually revive them with admin commands.

How do I check if idle mode is working?

Look at your logs in Files. If time is indeed frozen and the log shows 1 FPS, your server is in idle state. Ensure no one is logged into the server, as the server only enters an idle state if there is no player activity.

Why do seasons change even when no one plays?

Your IdleDayCycleSpeed might be set above 0.0. Check your config file to confirm in the Files tab.

Quick Summary Table of Server State When Idle

How to Contact Support

If you need any extra assistance while reading our knowledge board, feel free to email us at [email protected] or open a ticket in our Discord (opens in a new tab) and a staff member will try their best to answer your questions!