World width, length and seed can only be set before a world is generated. Changing them on an existing world doesn’t resize it — it only moves the border, leaving the actual terrain untouched. If you want a genuinely different size, you need to generate a fresh world, which means your current one is gone unless you back it up first.
Also: never edit serverconfig.json while the server is running. Vintage Story writes its current config back to disk on shutdown, which silently overwrites any changes you made while it was live. Always stop the server first.
Setting a new map size
data/Saves folder now — regenerating a world with a new size deletes it. If you’re bringing this world elsewhere instead of resizing it, see our guide to uploading an existing world to a server instead — you don’t need to resize anything for that.WorldConfiguration section and set both values in blocks:“worldWidth”: “100000”,
“worldLength”: “100000”,
“Seed”: “”
}
MapSizeX / MapSizeZ rather than worldWidth/worldLength — same setting, different naming depending on the panel. Leave Seed blank for a random world, or set your own to generate a specific one.data/Saves and start the server — it generates a fresh world using your new size on first boot./worldconfig worldWidth [number] command during the “world create” stage, rather than editing the file directly.Smaller than the default, almost always
The default 1,024,000 × 1,024,000 blocks is enormous — designed to never realistically be fully explored. For a normal group, a smaller world isn’t a compromise, it’s usually the better choice: less total terrain for the server to ever need to generate or hold in memory, and it stops players wandering off into effectively infinite empty space. This connects directly to the chunk-loading behaviour covered in our server settings guide — a smaller world and a sensible MaxChunkRadius work together, not separately.
| Group size | Suggested world size | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 2–4 players | 25,000 × 25,000 | Plenty of room without empty overhead |
| 5–10 players | 50,000 × 50,000 | Space to spread bases out comfortably |
| Larger community | 100,000 × 100,000 | Still a small fraction of the default, but genuinely vast in practice |
| Default (not recommended) | 1,024,000 × 1,024,000 | Far more than almost any server will use |
