Valheim Backups & Saves: Protecting and Moving Your World

A Valheim world is your group's whole history — every base, every boss, every wrongly placed portal. Here's how saving works on your server, what the Backups tab protects, and how to bring a world you already have.

Where your world lives

The server keeps its saves in the saves/ folder, which you can browse on the Files tab or over SFTP:

• saves/worlds_local/<WorldName>.db — the world itself
• saves/worlds_local/<WorldName>.fwl — the world's header (seed and name)
• saves/adminlist.txt, permittedlist.txt, bannedlist.txt — who may join and who may admin

Both world files travel together. One without the other is not a world.

How your world saves

• Periodically — every 30 minutes by default.
• On clean shutdown — the Stop button and scheduled restarts save before exiting.
• Rolling backups — the game keeps its own short-term copies next to the world files.

What it does not do is save on a crash. That's the gap dashboard backups exist to close.

What the Backups tab covers

The Backups tab snapshots the whole server, saves and lists included. Your plan includes a set number of backup slots; taking a new backup beyond the limit replaces the oldest. Restoring returns the whole server to that snapshot — do it with the server stopped, and expect anything that happened after the snapshot to be gone.

Take a manual backup before: a game update, a mod experiment, or changing the World Name.

Bringing a world you already have

Valheim 1.0 keeps pre-1.0 worlds, and the Deep North generates in any part of the map nobody has explored yet. To move a world onto your server:

1. Find it on the machine that hosted it. Default locations:
   • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local\
   • Linux/Mac: ~/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/
   • Steam Cloud copies live under the Steam userdata folder for app 892970.
2. Stop your server.
3. Upload both <WorldName>.db and <WorldName>.fwl into saves/worlds_local/ on the Files tab (drag and drop) or over SFTP. Large worlds are easier over SFTP.
4. On the Server Settings tab, set World Name to exactly <WorldName> — the file name without the extension.
5. Start the server and watch the console for Load world: <WorldName>.

Characters are not part of the world. Each player brings their own character file, so everyone keeps their skills and inventory automatically.

Starting a fresh world instead

Set a new World Name and restart. The old world files stay on disk untouched, so you can switch back at any time by setting the name again.

Restoring: the clean sequence

1. Stop the server.
2. Backups tab → choose the snapshot → Restore.
3. Start the server and wait for registered with join code in the console.
4. Have one player join and confirm the world is what you expected before announcing it.

If the world is already damaged

A world that crashes on load, or loads empty, usually follows a hard crash mid-save. Don't keep restarting into it: stop the server and restore the most recent good backup. If you're unsure which snapshot predates the damage, open a ticket and we'll help you identify the last healthy one before anything is overwritten.