The short answer
Yes. RuneScape: Dragonwilds ships a free dedicated server client on Steam, separate from the game, and it can run on a rented host, on your own machine or on a cloud instance. Jagex's own how-to names one official third-party hosting partner, Shockbyte, and the official wiki lists Shockbyte's three plans with prices. Everything about a dedicated server needs someone to set it up: a server that has never been started does not appear in anyone's world list.
The three hosting options, as the official wiki compares them
Its own comparison table is short and worth reproducing exactly, because it makes the trade-off the whole decision rather than the price.
| Shockbyte | At Home | Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard | Hardest |
| Price | Set | Depends on electricity costs and RAM | Depends on capacity |
| Game updates | Secured | Manual backups | Manual backups |
The cloud row is not a product yet. The official wiki's own words are: "Cloud server providers are pending and will be scheduled for a later update." Jagex's how-to says the same thing in its own phrasing: "We're working with Cloud server providers to get accurate documentation and details - we'll be linking them here once we have them." So the cloud column above is a category, not a recommendation, and this page carries it that way. That sentence is this page's change trigger: when either source names cloud providers, this page is rewritten to match, and until then no provider is named here.
The official partner host, and what its plans cost
Shockbyte is the hosting partner Jagex's own post links to. The official wiki lists three plans. Prices are in US dollars per month, and the three columns are the billing periods the wiki prints:
| Plan | Players and RAM | Monthly | Quarterly | Annually |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashwood | 2 players — 3 GB RAM | $9.99 | $8.99 | $7.49 |
| Iron | 4 players — 4 GB RAM | $14.99 | $13.49 | $11.24 |
| Anima | 6 players — 5 GB RAM | $19.99 | $17.99 | $14.99 |
Swipe the table sideways to read every column
Three caveats belong with that table. The prices are the figures the official wiki publishes, read on 2026-09-17, and a host can change them at any time. The plan names describe player slots, not a hard cap on the game. And the plans are the official partner's, which is why they are the only ones on this page — this site names no other hosting provider anywhere, and lists no reseller.
What the server costs in resources if you run it yourself
The same page gives the sizing rule directly: dedicated servers only run on a 64-bit operating system, both Windows and Linux are supported, and the required memory is 2 GB plus 1 GB per player. The server supports up to 6 players, so a full six-player server needs 8 GB. Jagex's how-to states the same ceiling with its own framing: "The server can support up to 6 players as of 0.11 (March 2026). So, for 6 players, you'd need 8Gb. Two players would need 4Gb." Note the version stamp in that sentence — the player ceiling is stated as of version 0.11 in March 2026, and the official wiki's copy of the table carries no such stamp, so both are printed with the dates they were written.
Ports
Dedicated servers listen on 7777 by default, which the wiki calls the Game Port, and a second server on the same machine uses 7778, the Secondary Port. The ports have to be reachable directly: the wiki is explicit that the firewall, the router or routers and the ISP all have to forward UDP through them. The default can be changed by passing -port=1234 into the server's own launch script.
Three failure modes the same section names, kept in its own words rather than turned into a checklist: every router between the machine and the ISP needs port forwarding; some ISPs prevent port forwarding entirely, some provide admin tools for it and others require a support request; and "if your server appears in other players' server lists but is not joinable, then Port Forwarding likely failed somewhere". That last sentence is the single most useful diagnostic on the page, because it separates a forwarding problem from a server problem.
Installing it
The dedicated-server client is a free Steam product, separate from the game. It can be installed through Steam or from the command line, and the wiki gives the command verbatim:
steamcmd +force_install_dir C:\MyInstallFolder +login anonymous +app_update 4019830 +quitTwo operational notes come with it. The wiki strongly encourages the launch options -log -NewConsole, which open a console window that reports what the server is doing. And version mismatches are the normal cause of a server that has gone invisible: the client and the server have to be on the same version, a mismatch is likely after any update or hotfix, and the server's version is printed at the top of its logs while the client's is in the top-left corner. Shockbyte servers, the wiki notes separately, restart to the latest server version automatically.
Configuration
Almost every setting lives in one file, and the path differs by platform:
- Linux:
Files > RSDragonwilds > Saved > Config > Linux > DedicatedServer.ini - Windows: the same file has to be copied from Linux and created at
Files > RSDragonwilds > Saved > Config > WindowsServer > DedicatedServer.ini
Four values are mandatory: Owner ID, which is the owner's own RuneScape: Dragonwilds Player ID, found in-game at the bottom of the Settings Menu, and without which the server does not start; Server Name; Default World Name, which names the world the server creates on its first start; and Admin password, which grants access to the Server Management tab in the pause menu to anyone who knows it, until the password is changed. One value is optional: World password, which overrides any password stored in the world and can be left empty.
Changing a value while the server is running loses the change. That is stated twice in the official material — once in the wiki's configuration section and once in its known-issues list — and it is the most common way a configured server ends up back on its old settings.
Finding the server, and who can do what
A created server is found in the Public tab of the Worlds screen by searching for the world name, and the wiki notes that the search is case sensitive. If the server does not appear, the same section lists the checks in order: version match, whether the world is running, whether the mandatory values are set, and the console log for errors — with insufficient RAM called out as a specific cause on home-hosted machines.
Access comes in three levels, and the restrictions are asymmetric in a way that surprises people:
| Role | Who has it | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | The account whose Player ID is in the Owner ID field | Can ban and unban, whether the player is online or offline |
| Admin | Anyone who has entered the admin password | Can ban regular players who are online, but cannot unban |
| Regular user | Anyone who has the world name | Cannot ban or unban anyone, including admins and the owner |
Documented known issues
The official wiki keeps a known-issues list, and all three entries are worth reading before buying a plan, because none of them is a misconfiguration:
- Steam invites do not work as intended. "Inviting a player to your dedicated server via Steam Invites doesn't currently connect as intended." Jagex's own post carries the same entry.
- Live config edits are lost. "Changing dedicatedserver.ini values while the server is running will result in those changes being lost."
- The server binaries are not separate. "The server binaries are not available separately from the game."
A fourth, related detail belongs here rather than in the diagram: when searching for a world by name, the wiki says to search for the world file name rather than the server name — if the world file is Dragonwilds_World1.sav, the name to search for is Dragonwilds_World1.
What this page does not do
- It lists one hosting provider, the official partner, and no other. No reseller, no comparison site and no grey-market key channel appears anywhere on this site.
- It does not recommend a plan. The plan table is three rows of the host's own published pricing, not a sizing recommendation.
- It does not convert currencies or recompute prices, and it does not state a price without the date it was read.
- It does not claim the cloud option exists. Both official sources say providers are pending, and that is the state this page reports.