How to stop and save your Project Zomboid server safely

A normal Stop in the panel sends the game its quit command, which saves the world and shuts the server down. To save without stopping, run the Save World task. Use Kill only when the server is stuck, because it ends the game without a save.

Save now

1. Open Quick Tasks in the left menu.
2. Under All tasks, find Save World: "Writes the world to disk now, without waiting for the next autosave." Click Run.
3. The Console prints the game's answer. The same command typed in the Console is save.

Pin it to the Overview with Pin to overview in the task menu if you use it often.

Stop the server

1. Open the Console tab or the Overview and click Stop.
2. The Console shows Quit, then Shutdown handling started, then Saving players, Saving worldgen params, Saving GlobalModData and Saving finish. This takes about ten seconds on a small world and longer on a big one.
3. The badge turns Offline when the game has finished.

A Restart does the same, then starts again. Players are disconnected.

Kill

Kill, under Additional power actions, ends the game at once. The panel warns that it "could result in irreversible data loss". Use it only if the server is unresponsive or cannot stop by itself in a reasonable time. Whatever the game had not saved yet is lost.

Make saving automatic

• The game saves on its own when players leave an area. Save the world every (minutes) in the World group of Server Settings changes that: How to change the world settings of your Project Zomboid server.
• The nightly Automatic backup runs save first, then takes a backup: How to schedule restarts and backups for your Project Zomboid server.

If progress was lost anyway, see Your Project Zomboid progress was lost after a crash or a stop. General power controls: How to start, stop, restart and force-stop your server.