Your Valheim Character: Where It's Saved, How to Recover It and Take It to Another Server

What belongs to the character and what belongs to the world

Your character is a file with your name and the .fch extension. It holds your appearance, your skills, the inventory you're carrying, the recipes you know and your trophies. It also holds, world by world, the map you've discovered and where you respawn (your bed).

The world is something else: the buildings, chests, whatever is lying on the ground, defeated bosses and animals. That's saved by whoever acts as the server (where, and how to recover it).

Two surprising things follow from that. What you store in a chest stays in that world, but what you carry in your inventory travels with you to any other. And the map isn't shared automatically: each character only sees what they've explored themselves.

Where the character is saved

On Windows, with the Steam version: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\characters_local (paste it into the File Explorer address bar). On Linux and Steam Deck, in .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/characters_local inside your home folder (on the Deck, inside the game's Proton prefix).

If you save to Steam Cloud, the character isn't in characters_local but in the Steam folder: Steam\userdata\<your Steam number>\892970\remote. To find yours without searching, the game tells you: on the character select screen, “Manage Saves” shows your characters and whether each one is in the cloud or local.

Each character has its .fch and, next to it, a .fch.old: the previous save. The game also keeps automatic backups with “_backup_auto” and the date in their name.

Version 1.0 changed how worlds are saved (they're folders now), but not characters: a character from before 1.0 joins just the same.

My character has disappeared

First of all, close the game and make a copy of the whole characters_local folder (and the cloud one if you use it). That way, nothing you touch afterwards makes things worse.

1. Look in “Manage Saves”

   On the character select screen, “Manage Saves” shows the characters and their backups with the date. Pick yours, the most recent backup that's fine, and restore it. It's the safest way: you don't touch files by hand.

2. If it isn't there, find the .fch.old

   In the characters folder, if Viking.fch.old is there but Viking.fch is missing (or broken), copy the .old and remove “.old” from the copy. It's the save before the last one.

3. Or a “_backup_auto” copy

   Do the same with the backup from the date you want: copy the file and, in the name, remove everything from “_backup_auto” up to the .fch (Viking_backup_auto-20261020-1830.fch becomes Viking.fch).

4. Open the game and check it

   It should appear with its skills and inventory. If it was in the cloud and the game puts the broken one back, the cloud is overwriting it: move it to local from “Manage Saves” or briefly turn off Steam Cloud for Valheim.

Taking your character to another PC

If it's in Steam Cloud, you don't need to do anything: log in with your account on the other PC and it'll be there.

If it's local, copy the .fch from characters_local to the same folder on the other PC, with the game closed on both. If a character with the same name already exists on that PC, it gets overwritten: make a backup first.

On consoles (Xbox, PlayStation 5, Switch 2) and the Microsoft Store version there's no folder to hand: the platform saves the character, with its own cloud.

Your character on a dedicated server

A Valheim dedicated server doesn't store characters: each player joins with their own. That's why you can join your friends' server with the character from your solo game, with everything you're carrying, and later go back to your world with whatever you earned there.

What does change from one world to another is the map and the bed: in a new world you start with a blank map and spawn at the starting point until you sleep in a bed of your own.

Anyone being able to bring items from another world is part of the normal game. If on your server you want everyone to start equal, you ask people to join with a new character; and if you really need to prevent it, there are mods that store characters on the server (check they're up to date with 1.0 and that every player runs them: how mods work on a server).

If you can't get into a server, it isn't the character: it's almost always the password, the version or the mods (the errors when joining).

Sharing the map with your friends

Since the map is stored in each character, everyone only sees their own. The game solves it with the cartography table: one player records what they've explored on it and the others, by reading it, add it to their map. Put one in your base and stop by it when you come back from exploring.

And since the map is in your .fch, if you lose the character you also lose the map of that world: another reason to keep a backup.

Backing up your character so you don't lose it

Every so often (and always before installing mods or a big update), copy the characters_local folder somewhere else: a USB stick, another cloud folder you use. It's just a few small files.

The server's backups don't help with this: they save the world, not your character. On a NapNodes plan, “Backups” saves the whole server every night, with its worlds and settings; your character stays on your PC.

If you don't have a server yet, NapNodes' one can be tried for free: each of you joins with your usual character.

Frequently asked questions