Prevent Palworld inactivity cleanup from removing an absent guild
A Palworld player returning from a holiday should know whether their guild's buildings and base Pals will still exist. Review inactivity cleanup before you enable it on a long-running friends server. This setting can remove gameplay state; increasing storage or restarting the process will not recover items that the game has already removed.
Understand the two linked controls
Pocketpair documents bAutoResetGuildNoOnlinePlayers as the switch for deleting structures and base Pals after a guild remains inactive. AutoResetGuildTimeNoOnlinePlayers controls the offline period and has no effect while that switch is false. Check the documentation for your installed version before selecting a duration. Do not assume the unit from a similarly named setting or an old forum post.
Record the current switch and timer from the active configuration, then ask whether your panel regenerates those values. Keep this task separate from decay, raids and death penalties. If players report missing structures, collect the affected guild, approximate last login and earliest known disappearance before concluding that inactivity cleanup caused it.
Choose a policy that fits the group
- Ask guild owners about expected absences and publish a proposed retention rule. Include whether an entire guild must be absent and how players can request help before a long break.
- Download the current configuration and make a recoverable save checkpoint. Preserve existing archives while you investigate any reported disappearance.
- Stop the server through the normal panel control. To prevent this specific automatic guild reset, set
bAutoResetGuildNoOnlinePlayers=Falsein the existing options record, preserving its surrounding syntax. - Retain the recorded timer for reference unless you have a separate reason to change it. Changing both fields makes a later investigation harder and does not help verify the disabled switch.
- Start the server and check that the active file still contains the chosen value. Ask a guild owner to inspect a known base and confirm existing Pals and structures.
Verify without sacrificing a guild
Do not shorten the live inactivity timer to force a destructive test. Check the effective configuration and use a disposable test world if you need behavioural confirmation for a particular build. Record the test guild, intended timing and outcome. Keep real players out of that test so a login does not invalidate the absence condition.
Watch disk usage and base growth after disabling cleanup. You may need a documented manual review process for abandoned communities, but that does not justify silently enabling deletion later. Agree a notice period and keep player communication with your server rules. A world checkpoint from before a policy change provides a recovery option; it does not make automatic deletion harmless.
Respond to a suspected earlier cleanup
Turning the setting off prevents future use of this rule; it does not reconstruct a removed base. Stop unnecessary changes, preserve current saves and logs, and ask support to help assess a dated backup. Restoring an older world can roll back other guilds' progress. Obtain a clear recovery decision before replacing live state, and keep a copy of the present world in case the older checkpoint does not contain the expected base.