Valheim Backups: How to Restore a Lost or Broken World

First: is it lost, or just not loading?

If a new, empty world appears when you join, your world is most likely still there and the server is loading a different one. The server loads the world whose name matches its world name setting: if that name changes (or has a different capital letter), it creates a new one and leaves yours untouched next to it. On NapNodes, check “World” in “Settings” and compare it with what's in the worlds folder; fix the name, restart, and your world is back.

The server's worlds folder is worlds_local, inside .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim (a hidden folder). On your PC, it's %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local. Since 1.0 each world is a folder with its name; older ones are a .db and a .fwl (what changed with 1.0). If you hosted it yourself with Steam Cloud, your world may only be there: in the game, “Manage Saves” shows your worlds and their backups.

The backups the game makes itself

Valheim saves the world every 30 minutes and, on top of that, keeps 4 automatic backups: a recent one (from about 2 hours earlier) and others 12 hours apart. They're in the same worlds_local folder, named after the world followed by “_backup_auto” and the date. Worlds from before version 1.0 also have a .db.old and a .fwl.old: the previous save.

On a dedicated server this is set with launch options (-saveinterval, -backups, -backupshort and -backuplong). On NapNodes you'll find them in “Settings” → “Saving and the game's backups”: “Save the world every (seconds)”, “World backups the game keeps”, “First backup after (seconds)” and “Later backups every (seconds)”. Saving more often means losing less progress if something fails, at the cost of a small stutter on each save.

These backups live on the same disk as the world: they're good for a broken save or a mistake, not for everything. That's what the panel backups are for.

Going back to one of the game's automatic backups

1. Stop the server

   With the server running, the next save would overwrite whatever you change.

2. Save how it is now

   Create a backup in “Backups” before touching anything: if you pick the wrong one, you can come back here.

3. Move the broken world aside

   In “Files”, inside worlds_local, rename your world's folder (for example, from Vikings to Vikings-broken). Don't delete it yet.

4. Put the backup in its place

   Pick the “_backup_auto” backup from the date you want and rename it to the exact name of the world (Vikings). For a world from before 1.0, the equivalent is removing the “.old” from Vikings.db.old and Vikings.fwl.old, always both: a .db and a .fwl from different dates cause problems.

5. Start it and check

   Watch the console: it has to load the world, not create a new one. Join and check it's as you expected. Once you're sure, delete the “-broken” folder.

Restoring a panel backup

On NapNodes, “Backups” saves the whole server (world, mods and settings), outside the game. Every night an automatic daily backup is made by itself, replacing the previous day's, and you can create up to two of your own whenever you like. If you want to keep a daily backup, protect it with the lock: it becomes one of your two.

To go back, choose “Restore” on that backup. The server stops and everything goes back to how it was at that moment; if you tick “Delete all files before restoring backup”, nothing from after it is left. You can also download it and keep it on your PC.

What you lose is whatever you've done since that backup, so choose the most recent one that's fine. The free server has no panel backups: there, what counts are the game's own backups and the ones you download yourself from “Files”.

So it doesn't happen again

Create your own backup before the things that tend to break worlds: installing or updating mods, a big game update (like 1.0) or changing the world name. If you use mods and something stops loading after an update, remove the last mod you installed from “Installed” before restoring: sometimes the world is fine and it's the mod that fails. With 1.0 many mods were left behind: how to tell if one is up to date.

Keep the server up to date: patch 1.0.17 fixed a rare bug that could wipe the objects in parts of the world when splitting a large save file.

Frequently asked questions