Terraria (TShock) server RAM: how much do you need?
World size sets Terraria's requirement, and moving up a world size is a much bigger step than adding players.
Recommendation
You need a server with at least
3GB
- Engine / Base OS:
- 2 GB
- Player Overhead:
- +0.4 GB
- Estimated Raw Usage:
- 2.4 GB
- Suggested cores:
- 2
- Disk to allow:
- 5 GB+
Very light. World size drives memory, not CPU.
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What uses the memory in Terraria (TShock)
The whole world sits in memory, so a large world costs several times a small one before anybody connects. Thirty-two players in a small world are cheaper than four in a large one. Big content mods make the world more complex and add new entities, lifting the floor again.
Terraria (TShock) server RAM by player count
The calculator above, run for 3 common sizes. Each figure is rounded up to a plan size people actually sell.
| Players | Vanilla / Small Map | Large Map / Calamity Mod |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | 3 GB | 6 GB |
| 16 | 3 GB | 6 GB |
| 32 | 4 GB | 6 GB |
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Where people get it wrong
Going for the largest world by habit. Pick the size for the playthrough you actually want, because world size is the biggest single factor in both memory and how long world generation takes.
How big each world size is
The three sizes are 4200 by 1200 tiles for small, 6400 by 1800 for medium and 8400 by 2400 for large. That makes a medium world about 2.3 times the area of a small one, and a large world exactly four times. The server holds all of it, which is why moving up a size costs far more than any number of extra players.
Modded servers
tModLoader runs its own server program with the mods loaded at startup, and large content mods such as Calamity add items, enemies and bosses the server has to keep track of. Expect a modded large world to need clearly more than the vanilla figure above, and give it a little more again for the extra startup work of loading every mod.
Bandwidth before CPU
A Terraria server rarely runs short of processor. What a busy world does use is bandwidth, much of it NPC position updates sent to every player. npcstream in serverconfig.txt limits how often those go out; lowering it eases a slow upload at the cost of slightly jumpier enemies.