So you've grabbed a Hell Let Loose server from us and you want boots on the ground. This is the quick tour: order, log in, first boot, connect, hand out admin, and a few notes on seeding that will save you some pain later. We'll keep it tight and link out to the deeper stuff as we go.
If you haven't picked a plan yet, the Hell Let Loose hosting page has current slot options, regions and pricing – that's the source of truth, not this article.
Ordering
Pick a slot count on the hosting page, choose a region close to your players, and check out. Provisioning is automatic and usually takes a minute or two – the welcome email lands as soon as the server is ready with your panel login and your server's IP and port.
One note on regions: HLL is not forgiving of high ping, so pick the datacenter closest to where the bulk of your community actually lives, not where you wish they lived.
Logging in to the Panel
Your live panel is TCAdmin at control.low.ms. Username and password are in the welcome email. Click your Hell Let Loose service and you'll land on the service page with the sidebar on the left. The items you'll actually use day-to-day are:
- Service Settings – start/stop/restart, server name, the big knobs
- Configuration Files – the
.inifiles for admins, map rotation, server settings - Web Console – live log output while the server's running
- File Manager – for when you need to go poking around in the game directory
- Steam Update – click this after HLL pushes a patch
- Cloud Backup – scheduled backups of your server files, automatic on every plan
- Scheduled Tasks – restarts, recurring jobs
Mod Manager is in the sidebar too but it's not relevant here – Hell Let Loose doesn't support mods, so ignore it.
First Boot
Hit Start under Service Settings. The first launch is slower than subsequent ones because the server is pulling the game files down from Steam and doing its initial setup, so give it a few minutes before you start worrying. Open Web Console and watch the log scroll. Once it settles and you see the server reporting itself ready, you're live.
Default port layout on LOW.MS:
7777/UDP– game port7778/UDP– Steam query port7779/TCP– RCON
If your server happens to land on a different base port (we allocate in blocks of 10, so you might see 7787, 7797, etc.), the Service Settings page shows the exact values. Same offsets apply either way: game, query+1, rcon+2.
Naming Your Server and Setting a Password
Your server name is how people find you in the in-game browser, so make it obvious. A good template is region, community name, mode, language, any house rules:
[EU] My Community | Warfare | EN | Mic Required
Server name and a couple of the other top-level options live under Service Settings. The deeper stuff – admin lists, map rotation, game-side config – lives in Configuration Files. We cover all of that in Hell Let Loose server configuration, so we won't duplicate it here.
If you want a private clan server, set a password in the server settings. Leave it blank and you'll appear in the public community browser.
Finding Your Server In-Game
Launch HLL, go to Server Browser, and filter by name. New servers can take a few minutes to show up in the list after first boot – that's a Steam master-server thing, not us, and there's nothing you can do to speed it up. Grab a coffee, try again, it'll be there.
If you want to jump straight in while you wait for the browser to catch up, you can add the server as a Steam favourite via the Steam client (View → Servers → Favourites → Add a server), enter IP:7777 (or whatever your game port is), and connect from there. The IP and port are both in Service Settings.
Handing Out Admin
Admin on HLL is split across two files in Configuration Files:
AdminUsers.ini– who is an admin, and what rank they holdAdminPermissions.ini– what each rank is allowed to do
To add a person, open AdminUsers.ini, add a line with their SteamID64 and the rank you want to give them, save, and restart the server so it picks the change up. Ranks map to permission sets in AdminPermissions.ini, so if you want to carve out, say, a "senior admin" and a "junior mod" tier with different powers, that's where you do it.
Getting the SteamID64 right is the thing people trip on most often – it's the long 17-digit number, not the vanity URL. steamid.io or steamidfinder.com will convert for you.
If you're planning to run any kind of serious community, you'll probably outgrow the built-in admin tools pretty quickly and want to set up CRCON – it's the community-maintained web RCON for HLL with stats, Discord integration, audit logs, the lot. It talks to your server over the RCON port (7779/TCP by default) and you'll need the RCON password from Service Settings. We walk through it in the configuration guide.
A Word on Seeding
New HLL servers don't magically get full. Seeding – the process of getting from zero to the 40-or-so player threshold where the game actually takes off – is the hardest part of running a community server, and it's worth knowing what you're signing up for before you start.
A few things we see work:
- Publish seeding rules so the first people in know what to expect. The usual shape is "middle point only, no arty, no armour" until a certain count per side, then full rules kick in.
- Pick a smaller, popular map for the seed phase so action finds people faster.
- Put eyes on it. A Discord with an active "server's seeding, come help" ping is worth more than any in-game tool.
- There are community auto-seeder tools if you want to automate off-peak population nudges, but they're not a substitute for a real community.
Don't get discouraged if the first week is slow. That's normal for any HLL server.
When Things Go Sideways
If something doesn't come up, or players can't connect, or the server keeps crashing on launch, head to Hell Let Loose troubleshooting – we've collected the common ones there. If it's something weirder, open a ticket; support is 24/7 and we'd rather hear about it.
Good luck out there. Hold the point.