How to Enable Experimental Gameplay on Your Minecraft Bedrock Server
Enable experimental features on your Bedrock dedicated server by configuring a world locally and uploading it, since BDS has no server.properties toggle for experiments.
Experimental features let you test upcoming Minecraft content before it's officially released. On Bedrock Dedicated Server, experiments are per-world settings stored in level.dat — there's no server.properties toggle for them.
Warning: Once experiments are enabled on a world and the world is loaded, they cannot be turned off for that world. Enabling experiments also disables achievements permanently. Always create a backup first.
Current Experiments (as of 2026)
| Experiment | Description |
|---|---|
| Villager Trade Rebalancing | Overhauled villager trade tables with location-based trades |
| Furnace Recipe Book | Recipe book UI inside furnace interfaces |
| Upcoming Creator Features | Unreleased addon APIs for content creators |
| Beta APIs | Enables -beta Script API modules for behavior packs |
| Experimental Creator Camera | Custom camera presets and "over the shoulder" view |
Available experiments change with each game version.
How to Enable Experiments
Since BDS doesn't expose experiment toggles, you need to configure a world locally and upload it.
Create a backup
In the XGamingServer Panel, go to Backups in the sidebar and create a backup of your current server.
Create or edit a world locally
Launch Minecraft Bedrock Edition on your PC. Click Play, then either:
- Create New: Click Create New World
- Edit Existing: Download your server world first (see Download World), then import it
Enable experiments
In the world settings, scroll down to the Experiments section. Toggle on the experiments you want.
Accept the warning prompt that appears.
Match your server settings
While in world settings, also set:
- Game Mode to match your server's
gamemode - Difficulty to match your server's
difficulty - Any other settings you want to preserve
Export the world
Still in world settings, scroll down to Game section and tap Export World. Save the .mcworld file.
Upload to your server
Follow the Upload World guide to upload the exported world to your server.
Start the server
Start from Console. The experimental features are now active.
Verifying Experiments Are Active
After joining the server, you can verify experiments are working by:
- Checking for experimental content in-game (e.g., rebalanced villager trades)
- Looking for the experimental tag next to the world name in the server list
- Checking the console output at startup for experiment-related messages
Why Not Just Edit level.dat?
The level.dat file uses Bedrock's little-endian NBT format (different from Java's big-endian). While technically possible to edit with tools like NBT Studio, it's error-prone. The local world method is more reliable and lets you preview the settings before uploading.
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