The short manual. Everything here is also built into the app — ask the OverWarden ✦ assistant anything and it knows this and more.
Run the installer, open the dashboard, set your password. Creating a server is: name it, pick the game (Minecraft, ARK: Survival Ascended, or Palworld), pick a version, drag the RAM slider, accept the game's EULA — it's running about a minute later. You never deal with ports, Java versions, or config files unless you want to.
Add a server → Adopt. Browse to its folder (folders that contain a server get a badge). Scanning is read-only, and adoption never moves or rewrites your files — Minecraft adoption detects the flavor, version, and mods; ARK and Palworld adoption read your existing settings field-for-field so rates and passwords are kept exactly.
Three ways, all on the server's Overview tab. Same Wi-Fi: friends use the LAN address shown there. Outside the house: the "Friends outside your home?" panel sets up a free tunnel and gives you a public address friends paste into Minecraft — no router changes. With the whitelist on, create an invite link: your friend opens it, enters their Minecraft name, you approve, and they're whitelisted automatically.
Your server appears in ARK's in-game Unofficial list automatically.
Click-joining from that list from outside your house needs UDP port 7777
forwarded on your router (the Overview panel shows how). A tunnel works
without router changes, but tunnel users join by opening ARK's console and
typing open <address> — the exact address is on the
Overview tab.
The Overview tab shows the join address for each situation (same Wi-Fi, router, or tunnel) and can test reachability for you.
Snapshots are automatic safety copies OverWarden takes before anything risky — mod installs, config changes, upgrades, restores. Backups are the manual and scheduled ones (a nightly 4 AM backup is created for every server by default). To roll back: stop the server, pick a backup, restore. OverWarden snapshots the current world first, so a restore can itself be undone. Minecraft backups cover the world and configs; ARK and Palworld backups cover the save data — not the 30 GB game install — so they're small and restore in seconds.
With an Anthropic API key (pasted once in Settings → OverWarden AI), OverWarden gets an assistant that knows your fleet: ask it anything in plain words and it can also do almost anything the dashboard can — change settings, manage players, install mods, restore backups, schedule tasks, and more.
It never changes anything on its own. The AI proposes; you get a card saying exactly what it wants to do and whether it's reversible, and nothing happens until you approve. Every applied change is snapshotted first. It also watches for you: crash diagnosis in plain language, a morning fleet report, and nudges when something needs attention (a server never backed up, a crash overnight). Budgets cap daily AI spending, and repeated questions reuse cached answers for free.
Two levels. Quick: paste a Discord webhook in Settings → Notifications
and alerts post there. Full bot: any server's Discord tab walks you
through it once, then you get two-way chat relay, slash commands
(/status, /start, /backup…, each with
its own permission level), an auto-updating status embed, player
join/leave posts, and account linking — friends link their Discord to
their in-game name, can get a role automatically, and Minecraft servers
can optionally require linking to join. The bot can join your friends'
Discords too, so each game server posts to whichever community it belongs
to.
Install OverWarden on the other PC, press "⊕ Link another PC" on your main one, and enter the short code it shows. One dashboard then shows both PCs' servers: start, stop, restart, back up, and watch the console of a server on the other PC — and create new servers on whichever PC has room. Your password works on both; a paid license on your main PC covers linked PCs. Moving a Minecraft server between PCs is built in (snapshot, copy, verify — never startable in two places at once).
A crashed server restarts automatically, with a halt after three quick strikes so nothing flaps forever. Known crash patterns get a plain-language diagnosis with the actual fix ("ran out of memory — raise its RAM"). After a power cut, everything self-heals: OverWarden starts with Windows, reattaches to servers that survived, and restarts the ones that didn't. And if something ever feels wrong, the fleet page's Panic button stops everything, snapshots everything, and blocks all starts until you lift it.
Something not covered here? Email support@overwarden.com — a person answers.