There's no PVP in survival game Enshrouded, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to hurt other players. Despite the 100% co-op nature of player interaction, there have been reports of some dastardly deeds being done in multiplayer sessions. No one's died yet, but friendly co-op vibes have definitely been hacked to death.
Enshrouded works a lot like Valhiem, where the characters you create aren't tied to servers you created them on. You can take your character and their belongings to any server or world you like, and whatever you collect there—weapons, gear, resources, even skills—all comes with you when you disconnect.
This sort of system is useful if you decide to take all your stuff and play somewhere else, like a friend's server, or if you choose to leave a multiplayer server and play somewhere else. The problems begin when people start abusing the system by taking stuff that doesn't belong to them and vanishing forever.
It's just like Michael Corleone said in The Godfather: Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, and keep your multiplayer servers password-protected.
"Just had two f*cks come into me and my partners world and take everything from our chests," said JakD987 on Reddit. "Remember to put a password for your servers!"
Jak isn't alone. In the same thread and a few others, players are sharing stories of invaders taking advantage of unpassworded servers.
"This happened to us day one because our server host's password setting wasn't working!" said Renegade_Python. "But we wanted to play so bad.. it happened like 3 times before the server host fixed it for us."
"Someone took every single item I had collected and stored in chests. Hundreds of items and hours of work," said R3d_P3nguin. "I entered my compound and watched him exit my main house. We stopped and stared at each other for a moment before he disconnected."
2 assholes came out of nowhere and started putting explosive barrels all over my room
RedWerFur
"I had some guys jump on and take all my stuff, new to the game so this was disappointing as it took me a while to get used to everything, then to grind and have stuff taken from the chests," said Deaths_Kaos.
Stealing isn't the only nefarious activity, either.
"2 assholes came out of nowhere and started putting explosive barrels all over my room," said RedWerFur. "I hit escape, didn’t see a party option to kick them, then I just quit to main menu. Loaded back in with a password. They had placed around 20 explosive barrels all around my crafters and chests."
Luckily the interlopers didn't have time to detonate the base, though they did steal from some of RedWerFur's chests, too.
Another player, evensteventyler, was also the victim of some base vandalism. "A few random people joined, not causing any havoc. I was like wtf? Thought it was my friends trolling me. Then I went further away from my base and some douchebag was busy removing all of my house that I built. Spent a couple hours messing around and making a pretty cool 2 story house that I liked. Now I have a small shack and a password on my server that works properly. Lol"
it was just chaos with a few players griefing bases
MysteriousElephant15
"I played on public server when the game released and it was just chaos with a few players griefing bases," said MysteriousElephant15. "If you could prevent them from teleporting to your base and engage pvp, maybe it would be interesting but, no, you can't do anything against it."
What can you do to avoid being pillaged or vandalized? For now, just password any online sessions you have and only let your most trusted pals play with you.
But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a more official solution in the future. Valheim has a Ward, a placeable item that prevents other players from altering your base and opening chests. I expect Keen Games might add something like it in the future to make it a bit safer to play Enshrouded online with strangers.
