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Map Maintenance: Soft Resets

A Soft Reset is a diagnostic and maintenance process for long-running Project Zomboid servers. It clears away temporary world data (blood splatters, corpse piles, and items left on the ground) to reduce lag and file bloat, without deleting player characters, their stats, or their custom-built safehouses.
Reading TimeDifficultyLast Updated
5 minutesIntermediateJanuary 2026

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The Safe Reset Procedure

You should never manually delete binary files from your world folder unless you are an expert. Instead, use the official built-in flag.
  1. Stop the Server: Ensure the game process is completely offline.
  2. Launch Arguments: Navigate to the Startup tab in your FREAKHOSTING panel.
  3. Add Flag: Locate the “Additional Arguments” field and type: -Dsoftreset.
  4. Boot Up: Start the server. You will see “Soft-Resetting Map…” in the console.
  5. Finalize: Once the server finishes booting, Stop it again immediately.
  6. Cleanup: CRITICAL: Remove the -Dsoftreset flag from your arguments.
  7. Normal Start: Start the server again to resume normal gameplay.

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Last Updated: January 2026 | Project Zomboid: World state refreshed.