So you've got a Hell Let Loose server running on LOW.MS and now you want to actually configure it – map rotation, admins, RCON, the lot. This is the guide that walks you through where the knobs live and which community tools are worth your time.
If the server isn't running yet, start with the Hell Let Loose getting started guide and come back here when you've got a running instance.
Where the config lives
All the settings files for a Hell Let Loose dedicated server live in Configuration Files on the sidebar of your service in the LOW.MS Control Panel. That's the one place you need. The main two files you'll touch are the server settings file and the map rotation file – HLL keeps things fairly straightforward compared to most Unreal-based games.
One thing worth saying up front: HLL reads these files at startup. If you edit something and nothing changes, restart the service from Service Settings. We see this on support tickets a lot.
Map rotation
Hell Let Loose ships with a dedicated map rotation file – it's just a plain text list, one map/mode entry per line, read top to bottom. Each line is a map identifier combined with a game mode and a time-of-day variant (Day, Night, Dawn, etc.). There's also an optional shuffle toggle at the top of the file if you'd rather the server randomise the order instead of cycling in sequence.
Rather than repeat a specific entry list here – the identifiers change between updates and Team17 have renamed a few over the years – pull the current list from the in-panel file itself, or check the community-maintained rotation reference in the CRCON documentation which tracks them release-to-release.
A few things we've learned from running these for customers:
- Alternate map sizes and theatres so your rotation doesn't feel samey. Back-to-back night maps will bleed players.
- Warfare is the bread and butter. Sprinkle Offensive in for flavour – it plays very differently.
- If you're running Skirmish (the smaller, shorter mode) consider a dedicated Skirmish rotation rather than mixing it with full 100-player Warfare maps – the pacing is totally different.
Hell Let Loose currently supports three game modes: Warfare (the standard 100-player symmetric sector capture), Offensive (asymmetric attack/defend, 30 minutes per sector) and Skirmish (a smaller, faster mode focused on a single contested point). That's it – if you see a guide online mentioning a "Conquest" mode, it's either outdated or made up.
RCON
RCON is Hell Let Loose's remote admin protocol. It's how any external tool – the official HLL admin client, CRCON, a Discord bot, whatever – talks to your server. Your RCON connection details come from your LOW.MS service:
- IP: your server's public IP (shown in Service Settings)
- RCON port: TCP, offset +2 from your game port. If your game port is 7777, RCON is 7779. If you've got a second slot and it's on 7787, RCON is 7789.
- RCON password: set in the server settings file under Configuration Files. Change it from the default before you hand it out to anyone.
You can technically drive RCON from the command line, but nobody actually does that day-to-day. The community has converged on one tool for a reason.
Community RCON (CRCON)
CRCON – maintained by MarechJ – is the de facto standard for serious HLL server admins. It's a self-hosted web app (Docker-based) that connects to your server over RCON and gives you:
- A live player list with Steam IDs, session time, team and squad
- Ban and VIP management with expiry dates, notes and Discord audit logs
- Automated moderation – auto-kick for TKs, AFK, level gates, profanity filters
- Historical stats, kill feeds and chat logs searchable per player
- Discord integration for broadcasting admin actions, map changes and kills
- A map vote system and map rotation management
You can run CRCON on a small VPS, or on a spare box at home – it doesn't need to live on the same machine as the game server, it just needs to be able to reach the RCON port. The README on the CRCON GitHub walks through the Docker Compose setup; it's a 10-15 minute job if you've touched Docker before.
Honestly, if you're running a public community server with more than a handful of regulars, CRCON is what you want. The official HLL admin tools are fine for solo tinkering but they don't scale.
Admins
HLL uses a rank-based admin system: you define permission ranks, then assign player Steam IDs to those ranks. Both bits are edited as plain text files in Configuration Files – the admin users file holds Steam IDs mapped to a rank name, and the permissions file defines what each rank can actually do.
Each admin entry is a SteamID64 (the 17-digit number you'll find on a player's Steam profile via steamid.io or steamdb) alongside a rank. Don't use Steam vanity URLs or the legacy STEAM_0 format – HLL wants the numeric ID.
A couple of practical notes:
- Restart the service after editing admin files. HLL doesn't hot-reload them.
- If you're running CRCON, you can manage admins entirely through its web interface – much nicer than hand-editing files and it keeps an audit trail.
- If admin commands work for you but not for someone else, it's almost always a typo in the Steam ID or the wrong rank name. See the troubleshooting guide for the usual suspects.
VIP slots
Hell Let Loose supports a VIP whitelist – players on it can skip the queue when the server is full, which is worth its weight in gold for a popular community server. VIPs are managed via a dedicated list file in Configuration Files, one SteamID64 per line.
If you're running CRCON (sensing a theme yet?), VIP management is much easier through the web UI – you can set expiry dates, bulk-import lists from a CSV, and tie it into a Patreon or Discord role without editing files by hand.
Game rules and server settings
The main server settings file is where you'll find the high-level knobs: server name, passwords, max players, the welcome message, idle kick timeout, team-kill handling, and so on. Most of these are self-explanatory once you open the file – just read the comments HLL ships in the default.
A few we get asked about:
- Idle kick – set this to something reasonable (a few minutes) on populated servers so AFK players don't hog slots. On a quieter server you can relax it.
- Team kill handling – the built-in options are fairly blunt. If you want nuanced TK rules (warn → kick → ban with different thresholds), that's CRCON territory.
- Max queue size – worth setting so players who join a full server actually get a queue spot rather than bouncing off.
We don't recommend cranking every setting on day one. Ship a sensible default, play on it for a weekend, then tune from there.
When changes don't stick
If you've edited a file and the server still behaves like nothing happened:
- Did you restart the service? HLL reads config at startup, not live.
- Check Log Viewer for parse errors – a stray character or wrong map identifier will make HLL silently skip that line.
- Make sure you're editing the file for the right service. If you've got two HLL servers on the account it's easy to open the wrong one.
- Map identifiers are case-sensitive and the naming shifts between updates – if a map stops appearing in rotation after a game update, that's the first place to look.
Full troubleshooting rundown for the stuff that comes up repeatedly – admin commands not working, server not showing in the browser, crashes on map change – is in the Hell Let Loose troubleshooting guide.
Pricing, slot counts and regions for our HLL plans are all on the Hell Let Loose hosting page if you're sizing up a new server or thinking about a second instance.