How to Enable PvE on Your Rust Server

How to Enable PvE on Your Rust Server

Want a Rust server without raiding and PvP drama? You can turn on PvE with a couple of simple changes.

1. Vanilla PvE (built-in convar)

Rust has a built-in convar that disables all player-vs-player damage:

1. Open Console in the control panel, or edit your server.cfg under Files.
2. Add or insert the following line:

server.pve true

3. Save the change and restart the server if you edited the file directly.

Note that the built-in convar is fairly blunt — it removes all PvP damage but doesn't give you fine-grained control over things like raiding, looting other players' boxes, or safe zones.

2. Recommended method: Oxide + TruePVE

For more control, we recommend installing Oxide and the TruePVE plugin:

1. Switch to the Oxide version of the server under the Startup tab, and restart.
2. Upload TruePVE.cs to oxide/plugins via the file manager.
3. Restart the server again so the plugin loads. A config file is generated at oxide/config/TruePVE.json.
4. Open the config file and set "Default ruleset" to "default" for full PvE, or "peacekeeper" if you want to limit raiding while still allowing some PvP.

3. Verify it works

Join the server and have another player hit you — no damage should occur. You can also type server.pve in the console to confirm the value is set to true.

Tips

• Always let your players know the PvE rules via the server's motd to avoid confusion.
• Combine TruePVE with plugins like Zone Manager if you want mixed PvP/PvE zones on the same server.
• Test changes on a copy of the server if you have a large playerbase, so you don't disrupt an active wipe.