V Rising Server Hosted, but Can't Connect?

A short journy through letting people connect to my V Rising server.

tl;dr - if you change the server name after a save has been created,
the server name stored in the save needs to be changed as well (or just create
a new save).

This server is hosted using AMP - so default configuration for a server hosted
by AMP is present. Mainly, the game port is UDP 9876 and the steam query port is UDP 9877. Port forwarding is setup correctly (and VLAN firewall rules, etc.).

The main problem lies in the fact that AMP, when creating a new instance of V Rising, will automatically start the server if you leave the settings at the default. Which I did. Most probably would.

The server then creates the save data, and in the save data gets written the server name. If you're like me, one of the first things you do is change the server name, fiddle with some other settings, then restart the server and prompty ignore any warnings in the console because "those aren't errors they can't be that important." Spoiler, they were. The server is now present in V Rising's server list, with a ping, game rules, the works.

But if you try to connect to it, it gets stuck and eventully fails. Looking at my router connection logs shows nothing on the game port (UDP 9876) but it does have some outbound traffic on the steam query port (UDP 9877) which I assume is why it's listed in the server list.

So I assume I failed to port forward something. Or messed up a firewall rule. Hell if I know, so I do the obvious thing when encountering a problem and go ask the internet. What I get is... pretty useless. A bunch of people who don't know what port forwarding is, a few articles from VPN provider blogs that want me to use their VPN to connect (each with a different set of ports listed that needs to be port forwarded), and a few things that look reasonable (like port forwarding access to the steam server ports for use in additonal games commuincation). None of them work.

Until, after a night of sleep, I get on a different computer that does not have my history of searching a bunch of platforms for tech answers, and while waiting for a work meeting, try once more to find a solution. And I landed here.

Turns out, if you rename the server after a save has already been created, the names wont match.

And those warnings I ignored earlier? Those warnings were some internal problems due to that mismatch that prevented the server from listening to either of the UDP ports. No ammount of fiddling with port forwarding will fix the server itself not listening to incoming connections.

So I wasted a day when the solution was to simply create a new save. Or, if you don't want to loose the data (which I didn't care about, it was a fresh server that no one had ever logged into), rename the server name in the save .bat. At least, that's where a steam user says the data is stored, but I haven't actually gone that route. I did look around though - that file may just be inside a compressed save archive.

I can now connect to my server, and fiddiling with port forwarding has been undone so only then ecissary stuff is exposed.

I'll remember this for next time... or wont. Thats why I wrote it down.