Connecting to a private server
Four things have to line up. Most connection failures are one of them being wrong, and the error messages rarely say which.
What you need before you start
- The game client, at a version the server supports. This is the one people get wrong most often — see below.
- The server's address, which the server operator publishes.
- An account on that server, which is usually created on its website rather than in the game.
- A way to redirect the client, which is either a proxy tool or an edited configuration file depending on the server.
Version matching is not optional
The network protocol changes with almost every game update. A server built for one version will reject or silently fail against a client from another, and the symptom is almost never "wrong version" — it is a hang at the loading screen, or a disconnect a few seconds after login.
Check the version the server states, and match it exactly. If your client has auto-updated past it, that is the problem, and no amount of retrying will fix it.
What the redirect is actually doing
The client resolves a hostname and opens a connection. A proxy tool sits in between, notices requests aimed at the official hostnames, and answers them itself or forwards them to the private server instead.
This is why a proxy needs to install a certificate: it is terminating a TLS connection the client believed was going somewhere else. If the certificate is not trusted, the client refuses the connection, and you see a login failure rather than a certificate warning.
The four failures that cover almost everything
- Stuck at the loading screen — version mismatch, nearly always.
- Login rejected — wrong account details, or the account was created on a different server than the one you are connecting to.
- Connects then disconnects after a few seconds — the proxy is handling login but not the game traffic, usually a certificate or port problem.
- Nothing happens at all — the redirect is not active; the client is talking to the official servers and failing normally.
Going back to the official game
Stop the proxy and remove the certificate it installed. Nothing in the game files was changed, so there is nothing to undo there. If you edited a configuration file, restore it.
Leaving a proxy certificate installed on a phone is a genuine security problem — it lets that tool read traffic from every app on the device, not just the game. Remove it when you are done.