How to Host The Ancient Dawn Server (Forge 1.20.1)

Start with at least 6 GB of RAM. The Ancient Dawn runs on Forge 1.20.1 and layers in rideable and tameable dinosaurs plus dedicated prehistoric biomes on top of vanilla world generation, so 6 GB is the floor that keeps chunk generation and creature spawning stable — not a guess carried over from a different pack.

Import the modpack directly instead of guessing from a client export. Point the installer at The Ancient Dawn's own server files so every dinosaur-related mod, config, and biome dependency matches what your players have installed, rather than rebuilding the pack by hand from a zipped client folder.

Watch the first boot all the way through. Prehistoric biome generation and the dinosaur spawn tables take longer to initialize than a normal Forge world — let the console settle on a clean "Done" with no repeating mod errors before you consider the server ready.

Only invite players once that first clean startup is confirmed. Letting people connect mid-generation is the most common cause of corrupted chunks in prehistoric biomes and dinosaurs spawning in broken states.

Take a backup before any world import, loader update, or config change. A failed update after your group has spent hours taming and breeding rare dinosaur species means losing that progress outright, not just a restart.