How to host a The Isle Evrima server in 10 simple steps

The Evrima update for The Isle is a new branch of the popular open-world dinosaur game. Since the game is ex­clu­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er, it’s worth setting up your own server. This can be done in just a few steps with Linux.

What are the system re­quire­ments for an Evrima server?

In order to set up a The Isle Evrima server, your system has to meet a few minimum re­quire­ments so that the server setup runs as smoothly as possible. You should pay special attention to the amount of memory you have available.

• CPU: Make sure your processor has at least four cores.
• RAM: For your The Isle Evrima server, you’ll need at least 8 GB of RAM.
• Hard disk space: A suf­fi­cient amount of free disk space is required for the server. For Ubuntu about 30 GB is enough, and for a Windows server, you should plan at least 70 GB.
• Internet con­nec­tion: A stable internet con­nec­tion with a bandwidth of about 10 Mbps ensures that lagging won’t neg­a­tive­ly affect your gaming ex­pe­ri­ence. If you go with a pro­fes­sion­al provider, this won’t be a problem.
• Operating system: We recommend using a Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion as the server operating system. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll be using Ubuntu. You can also use Windows Server, but the setup will be different from the one shown here.

Which server is best for Evrima?

There are different server types you can choose from when hosting your The Isle Evrima server. Taking in­di­vid­ual needs into account is crucial to choosing the right server. The following types of servers are suitable:

• Cloud server: A cloud server uses vir­tu­al­ized resources and can also be scaled up or down at any time.
• vServer: VServers also rely on the use of vir­tu­al­ized resources.
• Dedicated server: In the world of server hosting, dedicated servers are a high-end product. Only you and your ap­pli­ca­tions have access to the resources you purchase.

Five gaming scenarios for The Isle Evrima and their most suitable servers

The server that is most suitable for you depends on your gaming behavior and the number of players that will be using the server. To make the decision easier for you, we have provided various scenarios along with cor­re­spond­ing servers:

Our server tip for getting started with hosting

For starters, the value for money that cloud servers provide is prac­ti­cal­ly un­beat­able. Due to their excellent scal­a­bil­i­ty, there’s not much that can go wrong when using cloud server hosting. In the event that you have more players than pre­vi­ous­ly intended or are online for longer than you had planned on, there’s no need to worry. Cloud servers are flexible, allowing you to adjust your plan as needed.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions for setting up your The Isle Evrima server

It takes just ten steps to set up your server and the process is similar to our in­struc­tions on hosting a dedicated The Isle server.

Step 1: Connect to your server

First, you need to establish a con­nec­tion with your server. Normally the SSH protocol is used here.

With the various IONOS solutions, you have access to an in­te­grat­ed KVM console, which you can operate with the following quick start guide:

1. Log in to IONOS using your unique login details.
2. Click on Server & Cloud and go to the server menu.
3. Select your server product from the list.
4. Click on the correct server and select the subitem Access KVM Console in the Actions drop-down menu.
5. Log in with the server login cre­den­tials. You can find these in the Cloud Panel under Access data.

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Step 2: Create a new user

Once a con­nec­tion to your server has been es­tab­lished, the second step is to create a user. We have used isle as the name for the user that we created because it fits to the game. You can choose any username you like but remember to adapt the commands shown here ac­cord­ing­ly by replacing isle with the username you have chosen.

sudo adduser isle
sudo usermod -aG sudo isle
su – isle

Step 3: Install SteamCMD

SteamCMD is the command line edition of the Steam client and makes setting up your server a lot easier. Before in­stalling SteamCMD, make sure that any existing system updates have been carried out:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

You then need to download the SteamCMD libraries. The following terminal commands can be used to download the libraries and create folders that are necessary for setting up your game server:

sudo add-apt-repository multiverse 
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 
sudo apt update 
sudo apt install lib32gcc1 lib32stdc++6 libc6-i386 libcurl4-gnutls-dev:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 
cd ~ 
mkdir steamcmd 
mkdir isle 
curl -sSL -o steamcmd.tar.gz https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz 
tar -xzvf steamcmd.tar.gz -C steamcmd 
cd steamcmd

Step 4: Start SteamCMD

The Steam command line version should now be suc­cess­ful­ly installed on your system, which means that the following command can now be used to start SteamCMD:

sudo chmod +x steamcmd.sh
./steamcmd.sh

Step 5: Install The Isle Evrima

In the next step, you can start in­stalling The Isle Evrima. To do this, run the following commands:

Steam>force_install_dir /home/isle/isle
Steam>login anonymous
Steam>app_update 412680 -beta evrima +quit
Steam>exit

Step 6: Place the Steam client in a suitable folder

The Isle Evrima server will look for the Steam client in a specific folder. This means you’ll need to move it there first. To do this, create the directory and then move the file to the new folder:

mkdir /home/isle/.steam/sdk64
mv /home/isle/steamcmd/linux64/steamclient.so /home/theisle/.steam/sdk64/steamclient.so

Step 7: Download the con­fig­u­ra­tion files

To configure your server, you’ll need specific con­fig­u­ra­tion files, which you can easily download from GitHub. However, you should first create a few folders where you can store the con­fig­u­ra­tion files in a way that’s easy for you to find them:

mkdir /home/isle/isle /TheIsle/Saved
mkdir /home/isle/isle/TheIsle/Saved/Config
mkdir /home/isle/isle/TheIsle/Saved/Config/LinuxServer

After creating the folder, go to the one named Lin­uxServ­er. Now download the necessary con­fig­u­ra­tion files into this folder using the following commands:

cd /home/isle/isle/TheIsle/Saved/Config/LinuxServer
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modernham/The-Isle-Evrima-Server-Tools/main/Engine.ini
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modernham/The-Isle-Evrima-Server-Tools/main/Game.ini

Step 8: Edit the con­fig­u­ra­tion files

To edit the con­fig­u­ra­tion files and adapt them to your pref­er­ences, you can use a text editor of your choice. We decided to use vim, because the text editor is already pre-installed and can be called directly in the terminal, meaning that the operation is simply done from the command line. The file that you need to edit is called Game.ini and contains important con­fig­u­ra­tion settings. It can be opened and edited with vim by using the following command:

vim Game.ini

Now, it’s time to specify the number of players that will be using your The Isle Evrima server. You can enter this in­for­ma­tion next to your SteamID, which you can find in your Steam account by clicking on your display name in the upper right corner and then on Account details. You can also specify the RCON password in the Game.ini or al­ter­na­tive­ly, choose not to use the password by entering Rco­nEn­abled:false.

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Step 9: Start The Isle Evrima server

Now you can finally start your own The Isle Evrima server. To do this, you have to find the correct folder:

cd /home/isle/isle

You can start your server by entering the command shown here into your terminal. Be sure to replace the place­hold­er [ip-address] with your own IP address.

./TheIsleServer.sh MultiHome=[ip-adresse]?Port=7777?QueryPort=7778 -log

Step 10: Connect to your server

After the server has been suc­cess­ful­ly set up, you and your fellow players can connect to it. To do this, simply open the game and enter the details of the The Isle Evrima server you just created. It’s best to check be­fore­hand whether the Evrima branch has been suc­cess­ful­ly installed on Steam. Let the dinosaur fun begin!