How to Reset Your Minecraft Server World and Start Over (or With a New Seed)

Before you touch anything: make a backup

In the panel, under “Backups”, create a backup of the server. You can have up to two of your own; if you already have two, delete the oldest to make room. There's also an automatic daily backup, but yesterday's doesn't have what you built today.

The backups you make yourself are never replaced automatically; the daily one is. If you want to keep the world from a daily backup forever, lock it (“Lock”): it becomes one of yours. The free server has no backups, so there always move the world aside as explained below.

Resetting the world step by step

1. Stop the server

   Only touch the world files with the server stopped. If you do it while it's running, the server may write over your changes or leave the world half-done.

2. Check what the world is called

   In “Files”, open server.properties and look at the level-name line. By default it's “world”: that's the world folder.

3. Move the folder aside, don't delete it

   Rename the “world” folder to something like “world-old-2026-10”. The server won't find it and will create a new world, but the old one is still there.

4. Move the Nether and the End aside too (if they exist)

   Since 26.1, Paper keeps the Nether and the End inside “world” (in world/dimensions/minecraft), so they go with the folder and there's nothing else to move. In older versions of Paper they were separate folders, “world_nether” and “world_the_end”: if you see them in “Files”, rename them the same way, or your new world would inherit those old dimensions.

5. Choose the seed (optional)

   If you want a specific one, put it in level-seed in server.properties. If you leave it empty, it will be random. The seed is only used when a world is generated, which is why you have to move the old one aside first.

6. Start it and wait

   The server creates the world when it starts and generates the terrain around the spawn point; the first time it takes a couple of minutes. You can watch the progress in the panel console. If you're going to explore far, pregenerate more terrain with Chunky.

What goes and what stays

With the new world, the builds, inventories and advancements of that world start from scratch, and so does the spawn point. Plugins and their configuration, the whitelist, operators and bans stay, because they live outside the world folder.

Watch out for plugins that store data tied to the world (land claims, homes, shops): they'll still point to coordinates on the old map. The usual thing is to clear or reset their data when you reset; check each plugin's documentation.

And if I want to go back to the old world

Stop the server, rename the new folder (“world”) to something else and give the old one its name back. Or, without moving folders, change level-name in server.properties to the name of the folder you want to use, matching capital letters and spaces exactly. If the name doesn't match any folder, the server will create a new, empty world with that name.

You can also restore the backup from “Backups”: it returns the server to the state it was in when that backup was made.

Two worlds on the same server

Changing level-name to a new name each season is a handy way to have a “season 1 world”, a “season 2 world” and so on, each in its own folder, and go back to any of them whenever you like. Only one is played at a time; to have several at once you need a worlds plugin like Multiverse.

Frequently asked questions