Bring your own Minecraft world

Already have a Minecraft world you love — a single‑player save, or a world from another server? Upload it and Lanzinha turns it into a hosted multiplayer server. Your terrain, builds, chests, and player data come along; your Nether and End are preserved.

What you'll learn

• What you can import, and how to prepare your files
• The step‑by‑step upload flow
• What the import brings, and what you attach separately (plugins, mods, resource packs)
• Size limits and how to fix common errors

What you can import

Lanzinha accepts a compressed archive of either kind of Minecraft world:

• A single‑player save — the folder from your game's saves/ directory (the one containing level.dat). Lanzinha automatically splits the Nether (DIM-1) and End (DIM1) out of it so they're preserved as separate dimensions on the server.
• A multiplayer server world — either a single world/ folder, or the classic three‑folder layout (world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/) from an existing server.

Supported archive formats: .zip, .tar.gz (.tgz), and .tar.zst — including the .tar.zst files Lanzinha itself produces when you export a world.

Prepare your files

From a single‑player world

1. Open .minecraft/saves/ (Windows: %appdata%\.minecraft\saves; macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves).
2. Find your world folder — it contains level.dat, a region/ folder, and usually DIM-1/ and DIM1/.
3. Compress that folder into a .zip. (Zip the world folder itself, so level.dat sits at or near the top of the archive.)

From an existing server

Compress your world/ folder — or all three of world/, world_nether/, and world_the_end/ together — into a .zip or .tar.gz.

tip

Make sure the world has been saved and the server fully stopped before you zip it, so the region files aren't mid‑write.

Import it, step by step

1. Go to Worlds → Import world.
2. Name the world and pick the Minecraft version to host it on. The version is pinned to the world (see versions), so choose the one your save was last played on.
3. Choose your archive and start the upload — you'll see a live progress percentage. Keep the tab open until it finishes.
4. Lanzinha unpacks and converts the archive into its canonical server layout and sets it as the world's current snapshot.
5. Done — your world appears in Worlds, ready to host. Open a room against it like any other.

Under the hood this is a safe two‑step flow: the browser uploads straight to storage with a short‑lived signed link, then Lanzinha normalizes the archive server‑side. You never hand us broad access to your files, and one account can never finalize an import into another's world.

What transfers — and what doesn't

Importing brings your terrain and player data — and any datapacks that live inside the world. Plugins, mods, and resource packs aren't pulled out of the archive; you attach those separately by uploading them to the world (see below).

Comes from the import ✅	Attach separately afterwards 🔧
Overworld, Nether, and End terrain and builds	Plugins (Paper)
Chests, blocks, entities, player data	Mods (Fabric / Forge)
Datapacks inside the world	Resource packs
Your seed and world settings in level.dat	Server .jar (Lanzinha supplies the engine)

Server settings (difficulty, MOTD, whitelist, ops, …) aren't taken from your upload — you set those when you open a room, and they apply fresh on each boot.

Modded worlds: import the terrain, attach the mods

A heavily modded world imports its terrain cleanly. To make mod‑added blocks and items work again, create the world on a Fabric or Forge engine (matching what the world used) and attach the matching mods — the import won't pull them out of the archive for you. For Bukkit/Spigot servers, create a Paper world and attach your plugins. Loader compatibility applies: plugins need Paper, mods need Fabric or Forge, and you can't mix the two on one world (see engine). Plain survival/creative and datapack worlds import cleanly with no extra content.

Limits and troubleshooting

• Size: the uploaded archive can be up to 1 GiB. Larger saves are rejected — prune unused, far‑flung chunks or remove backups from the folder before zipping.
• One world per import: the archive must contain exactly one world. If you zipped your whole saves/ folder with several worlds, the import is refused — zip a single world folder instead.
• It must be a real world: the archive needs a valid level.dat. If Lanzinha can't find one, double‑check you zipped the world folder (not its parent, and not the region/ folder alone).

If you see…	It means…	Fix
"File exceeds the 1 GiB limit"	The archive is too big	Shrink the world or remove extra files, then re‑zip
No world found	No level.dat in the archive	Zip the world folder itself
Multiple worlds	Several saves at the same level	Zip just one world
Invalid level.dat	The save looks corrupt	Re‑zip from a clean copy of the save
Unsupported format	Not a .zip / .tar.gz / .tar.zst	Re‑compress in a supported format

After importing

Your imported world behaves like any other Lanzinha world:

• Open rooms against it; settings are chosen per room.
• Every time a room stops, Lanzinha takes a fresh snapshot, so multiplayer progress carries over.
• You can export it at any time to keep your own backup, give it a custom address, or delete it.

→ Related: Minecraft servers · Plugins · Mods · Resource packs · Worlds · Snapshots & rollback