Project Zomboid: Your Players Get the Mods Automatically

1. You add mods to your server in the Mods panel.

2. A player connects to your server like normal.

3. The game shows a Steam Workshop prompt listing any mods they are missing. One click accepts, Steam downloads them, and the game loads them in.

4. They spawn in with everything active. Next time they join, the mods are already on their PC.

The first join on a big mod list takes a few minutes. That is normal.

Mod versions have to match between the server and each player. When a mod author publishes an update, your players' games update automatically through Steam. The server needs that same update too, or joining players get kicked with a checksum or version mismatch error.

Haptic watches the Workshop and downloads updates to your server automatically, but your server keeps running the old copy until its next restart. Until then your dashboard shows a notice and the mod is marked as waiting in the Mods panel.

So if joins worked yesterday and fail today, restart your server. That fixes almost every case.

On a small screen like a Steam Deck the join error can be hard to read. You can work it out from your side instead: open the Mods panel and check the icon on each mod's row.

Still turned away with no clocks showing? Follow the tip above: wait for the mod-update notice, then restart once more.

You can let the server restart itself when we download a mod update. In your server's settings, next to Auto Restart, set Restart on mod updates to one of:

• Off, just notify me: the default. You get the dashboard notice and restart when it suits you.

• When the server is empty: the restart waits until nobody is online.

• After a 5-minute warning: players get in-game warnings 5 minutes and 1 minute ahead, then the server restarts.

Project Zomboid has no console version, so nobody gets left out: everyone who owns the game on PC can join.

One broken mod can stop the whole server from starting. If your server fails to start right after you added something:

1. Open the Mods panel, click the most recently added mod, and turn off its Enabled toggle.

2. Start the server again.

3. If you added several mods at once, disable them all, then re-enable them one at a time, starting the server in between, until you find the one that breaks it.

Disabling a mod does not delete anything from your world. It stays installed with its settings, and you can re-enable it any time, for example once the author ships a fix.

Some Workshop items hold more than one mod. A hairstyle pack can ship one version for Cute Skins and one for the vanilla look, and a body mod can ship two textures to pick from. When a mod like that is installed, its details show Which parts load:

1. Open the Mods panel and click the mod.

2. Under Which parts load, tick the parts you want and untick the ones you don't. Each part says what it needs, and ticking a part also ticks the parts it depends on.

3. Restart your server. The change applies at the next start.

When you untick the only part that needs another mod, Haptic stops adding that mod for it. If that other mod is switched off on your Mods panel, it then stops loading too. A switched-off mod that still loads because another mod needs it says so in its details and names that mod. Use the default puts the parts back to what the mod loads normally. To stop loading a mod completely, turn its Enabled toggle off instead.

• Players reinstalling the game or the mod: their copy is already current, Steam keeps it updated. The server is the side that needs a restart.

• Removing and re-adding the mod on the server: a plain restart already loads the updated version.

• Turning off Verify Mod Files: that setting exists for the rare mod that asks for it. Leave it on; the real fix is a restart.

Message us in Discord or email support@haptic.gg. Include your server name, a screenshot or photo of the error your player sees if they can get one, and the name of any mod you added recently.