How to Host a Primal Apocalypse Server (Forge 1.20.1 Guide)

Start with at least 6 GB of RAM. Primal Apocalypse runs on Forge 1.20.1 and stacks dinosaur AI, modern firearm mechanics, and the usual Forge overhead on top of vanilla, so 6 GB is the realistic floor rather than a guess — don't try to squeeze it onto a 3-4 GB plan built for a vanilla or lightly-modded server.

Import the modpack directly instead of guessing at the mod list from a client export. CoalHost's modpack installer pulls the exact Primal Apocalypse version and loader build server-side, which avoids the classic mismatch where a player's client mods don't line up with what the server actually has installed.

Watch the console through first boot. Because this pack layers dinosaur spawning and firearm/military-tech mods on the same world generation pass, the first startup takes longer than a plain survival pack — let it finish loading cleanly, with no repeated mod-loading errors, before you consider the server ready.

Only invite players after that first clean startup completes. Letting people join mid-load on a pack this dense is the fastest way to get players stuck in a half-initialized world with missing entities or broken firearm registries.

Take a backup before importing an existing world, updating the modpack version, or changing any config. If the firearm/dinosaur balance gets knocked out of sync by a bad config edit or a loader update, you don't want to be rebuilding a base that survived both dinosaurs and gunfire from scratch.