Changing the Server Category on your Eco Server

This guide will show you how to list your server in Eco's in-game public server listings. The public server listings can help you attract new players to play on your server, so that you can build a healthy, thriving community.

Currently the game offers 4 different pages of public server listings:

• New Beginnings - Servers intended for new players, often on brand new undeveloped worlds.

• Cities Upon a Hill -Servers with very well developed cities and economies, for both experienced and new players.

• Brave Frontiers - Servers with undeveloped worlds, but being played at a much higher difficulty level. Better suited to veteran players who are very familiar with the game.

• Strange Worlds - Modded Eco servers, with special settings. In addition to modded gameplay, these server can also offer custom disaster other then the standard meteor strike. These can include things like melting icecaps causing water levels to rise, severely polluted worlds requiring clean-up, etc.

Requirements for Listing Your Eco Server In-Game

In order for a server to show in the public in-game server listings, two things must be done:

• The server must be set to "public" listings.

• There must be no password set on the server (there are other server listings for servers with passwords).

You can control both of these from the "Game Settings" page of the Nodecraft control panel.

• Click on the small check box next to public server.

• Leave the "Server Password" field empty.

Change the Server Category in the Network.eco Config File

The actual server category is controlled by a setting found in the config file called Network.eco.

This config file is normally found in the Configs folder, in the main directory of the server.

If you need some help using the Nodecraft file manager, we have a guide located here: File Manager Tutorial, and another guide on how to edit files located here: How to use the File Editor in the Nodecraft File Manager

Once you have the Network.eco config file open in the file editor, it should look like the following screenshot:

On the ServerCategory line, change the text from "None" to one of the following 4 settings, depending on which server category you want the server to show under:

Beginner
Established
BeginnerHard
Strange

You may have noticed these settings are a little different then the names of the server categories listed at the start of this guide. This is how they correspond to those names:

• Beginner = New Beginnings

• Established = Cities Upon a Hill

• BeginnerHard = Brave Frontiers

• Strange = Strange Worlds

Save your changes to the config file when you are done editing it.

Check Syntax

The config file Network.eco is in JSON (.json) format so the syntax is very important. The overall format, quotes, brackets, and commas are all required for the config file to work correctly. So, please be careful when editing the config file. If you think you might have erased something by accident while editing a file, just hit "Cancel" on the editor to back out without changing anything. Then, you can start over again.

The server category settings listed above are also case sensitive (upper and lower case letters are important), for example "BeginnerHard" needs an upper case "B", and an upper case "H" or the game won't recognize the setting correctly.

If the Network.eco config is damaged or the settings are messed up, there's a backup copy of the config file called Network.eco.template in the game Configs folder. This backup copy contains all the same settings as the original Network.eco config file. You can just make a copy and be back in business in minutes.

Restart Your Server

Once the server is restarted, it should show the server name on the correct page of the in-game public server listings!