How to Host a Desertopolis Server (Forge 1.20.1)
Desertopolis locks the world to desert and badlands biomes on Forge 1.20.1, so water is scarce and heat mechanics punish poor preparation. MineColonies handles the town-building side while Create automates resource production, which means your server needs to boot cleanly before anyone starts relying on either system. Here's how to get it running correctly the first time.
Start with 7 GB of RAM — that's the catalog's own recommended floor for Desertopolis, not a guess. Forge 1.20.1 plus MineColonies and Create pushes memory use up fast once colonists and machines are running, so undersizing the plan here is the most common way this pack ends up with lag later on.
Import Desertopolis through a clean modpack install instead of uploading a client export. A proper import pulls the matching Forge 1.20.1 version and mod set directly, so you're not guessing which files a client pack actually needs on the server side.
Watch the first boot through to the end before touching anything. Desertopolis has to finish applying its desert and badlands biome restriction and initializing MineColonies and Create — if either throws a config error, it shows up in the logs during this window, not after players are already in the world.
Only invite players once that first startup completes cleanly. A half-loaded world with the biome restriction or MineColonies not fully initialized is where corrupted colony data and broken Create setups start.
Take a backup before any world import, loader update, or config change. Desertopolis settlements and colonies are built against a genuinely hostile desert environment — losing that progress to an avoidable mistake costs more here than on a pack where the world isn't actively trying to kill you.
Use a cleaner Desertopolis path
CoalHost is built around modpack hosting, which makes Desertopolis much less annoying to launch correctly.
Deploy Desertopolis now →