How to Move Your RuneScape: Dragonwilds World to a Dedicated Server
One .sav file and a rule about its name: the Windows save path, the server’s Savegames folder, why you must not rename the file, and why world rules travel in the save rather than the INI.
September 28, 20267 min read
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Most RuneScape: Dragonwilds worlds started on somebody's PC, hosted from the game, alive only while that person was playing. Moving that world to a dedicated server means it stays up when they log off, and the group stops depending on one person's evenings. The move is one file and a rule about its name. Here is the exact procedure from Jagex's dedicated-server guide, the traps around it, and why the world you built locally is also the way you set difficulty on a server.
What you are moving
A Dragonwilds world is a single .sav file. That file holds the terrain changes, the buildings, the progress, and — this matters — the world's rules. Jagex's guide says that to run a custom world on a dedicated server you should create the world locally with the settings you want and transfer the .sav. There is no difficulty or rules setting in DedicatedServer.ini; the INI holds five things (Owner ID, Server Name, Default World Name, Admin Password, World Password) and nothing about how the world plays.
So the world file is not just your progress. It is the only way world rules reach a dedicated server.
One boundary to know: Jagex's transfer procedure moves the world file and nothing else — its guide never mentions character data as part of the move, so plan around the world, not the characters.
Paste that path into File Explorer's address bar, replacing <your name> with your Windows user name. AppData is a hidden folder, which is why browsing to it by clicking does not work; the address bar does.
Inside, you will find a .sav for each world you have created. If you have several and are not sure which is the live one, sort by date modified — the most recently written file is the world you last played.
Close the game first. A file copied while the game is writing it can be incomplete.
Step 2: do not rename the file
This is the rule that catches people. The community wiki's instruction on world transfer is capitalised: do not change the file name. Keep the .sav exactly as the game wrote it — same name, same extension, same case.
The reason is in how players find the server. Jagex's guide says players search Worlds → Public for the exact, case-sensitive world name. Host guides report that for an uploaded world, the name players search is the original save file's name rather than the Default World Name from the INI. Rename the file and you have changed the name people need to search for, or broken the link between the file and the world it holds.
Step 3: put the file on the server
Jagex's guide gives the server-side folder:
RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames
Copy the .sav into that folder on the server, with the server stopped.
On a self-hosted machine that means whatever remote copy tool you use. On a Connect server the folder is reachable from the Files tab in the dashboard and over SFTP — our upload a world guide covers both routes.
Step 4: start the server and find the world
Start the server with your .sav in place. In the game, open Worlds → Public and search for the world's exact, case-sensitive name — the save file's name, per host guides, for an imported world. If you set a World Password in the INI, players are asked for it; Jagex's guide says the INI password supersedes any password stored in the world, so the one you set locally no longer applies.
Things that go wrong
The world does not appear in the browser. Before anything else, check the server build matches your game: the version at the top of RSDragonwilds/Saved/Logs/RSDragonwilds.log must equal the one in the game's top-left corner. A mismatch removes the server from the browser with no error. The full checklist is in server not showing in the world browser.
You copied a stale file. If several .sav files exist, the newest by modified time is the live one.
You renamed it. Put the original name back.
The rules are wrong. Difficulty and world settings live in the save. If the server world plays on the wrong rules, the rules were wrong in the local world you copied. Create the world again locally with the settings you want, then transfer that .sav.
You edited the INI while the server ran. Jagex lists it as a known issue: the change is lost. Stop, edit, start.
Your INI reset after an update. Steam Community threads from April 2026 report that a SteamCMD update can replace DedicatedServer.ini with a default template. Check your five settings after each update on a self-hosted server. On Connect the INI is backed up before each update and restored if the update changed it.
Going the other way: taking a backup home
The same folder works in reverse. Jagex's guide documents no automatic backup; it says to copy a world save from RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames to somewhere else on the drive, to your own PC, or to the cloud. Do that before every update, and before anyone with the admin password gets creative. A copy of the .sav in your local SaveGames folder is also a world you can host from the game again if you ever stop running the server.
Console-hosted worlds
The paths above are Windows paths from Jagex's guide, and the server itself runs only on Windows or Linux. Jagex has not published a way to export a world from a console. If your group's world lives on a PlayStation 5, Switch 2 or Xbox, we cannot give you a move procedure, and we are not going to invent one.
On a Connect server
RuneScape: Dragonwilds server hosting at Connect puts RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames in your file manager and over SFTP, so the move is Steps 1 to 4 above with a browser upload in the middle. The five INI fields are on the Server Settings tab, the INI survives updates, and the server checks Steam for the current build on every restart so a patch does not strand the world you just moved. The self-hosted version of all of this is in the dedicated server setup guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where are Dragonwilds saves on PC?
Per Jagex's guide, C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Local\RSDragonwilds\Saved\SaveGames. Each world is a .sav file.
Where do I put the world on a dedicated server?
In RSDragonwilds/Saved/Savegames on the server, per Jagex's guide. Copy it with the server stopped.
Can I rename the save file?
No. The community wiki's rule is not to change the file name, and host guides report the file's name is what players search for on an uploaded world. Keep it exactly as the game wrote it.
How do I set difficulty on a dedicated server?
Create the world locally with the settings you want and transfer its .sav, per Jagex's guide. World rules live in the save, not in DedicatedServer.ini.
Do players lose their characters when the world moves?
Jagex documents nothing about character storage. Its transfer procedure moves the world file only and lists nothing else to copy — so there is nothing character-shaped to move, or to lose, in the transfer itself.
Can I move a world from a PS5, Switch 2 or Xbox?
Jagex has published no way to export a console world, so we cannot give a procedure.