Enshrouded Save File Location (and How to Move Your World to a Server)

Enshrouded keeps its save files in one of three places, depending on where the world runs:

Keen Games list all three in their Save Game Management guide. For a dedicated server, Keen say the files are "either located under the same path as your server exe or in the top level of the providers file manager", and on your Enshrouded game server that is the savegame/ folder in the panel's File Manager.

The rest of this guide moves a world from your PC onto a server. The world you started in singleplayer or hosted co-op runs on a dedicated server, and the move is a copy, a rename and an upload. Your character is not part of it, and Keen are explicit about why: "Character progression is stored only on clients. The world progression is stored on the dedicated servers." Levels, skills and inventory follow the player to any server automatically. Plan for ten minutes, and take a backup of the server's current world first if anyone has played on it.

Where Enshrouded Stores Local Saves

Local saves live at:

%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Enshrouded\

Each world is a set of files named after a fixed hex ID, not after the world's name. Keen Games publish the list: "The file names of world saves are static hexadecimals, given to each world in order of creation." The first ten are:

The base file has no extension, and it is only one of several files that share the world's ID. Enshrouded keeps ten numbered rolling copies of every world — a new copy every ten minutes and one on shutdown, overwriting the oldest — so the folder also holds numbered files such as 3ad85aea-1, and an -index file that records which copy is current, under a latest key. On a PC you will also see _info files, which Keen say "contain meta data such as world name". On our dedicated servers, savegame/ holds the base file, the numbered copies and one -index file, with no _info files.

Playing with Steam Cloud on?

Your newest save may live in Steam\userdata\<your id>\1203620\remote instead of Saved Games. Quit the game fully before copying, and if the two locations disagree, the remote copy is usually the newer one.

Step 1: Identify and Copy Your World's Files

Quit Enshrouded to desktop first — the game writes a fresh save copy on shutdown, so what you copy is current.

In Saved Games\Enshrouded, copy every file that starts with your world's ID: the base file, its numbered copies, its -index file and anything else sharing the ID. Don't pick and choose. The -index file is not optional — it carries the latest pointer to the newest of the ten rolling copies, and the copy it points to may be a numbered file rather than the base file. Leaving the -index file or the numbered copies behind is how a server ends up loading a stale world.

To confirm which ID is which world, open the <id>_info file in a text editor. It is a binary save file rather than plain text, but the world's name is legible as a string among the noise.

Step 2: Rename the Files to the Server's World ID

A fresh dedicated server generates exactly one world, so by the order-of-creation rule above that world is World 1 — ID 3ad85aea. If your local world was also the first you created, the names already match. If not, rename every copied file: swap the ID stem and keep the suffix. For a world saved as 3bd85c7d:

Only the ID stem changes — keep every suffix exactly as it is. The same rename works for a world save downloaded from Nexus, which is the one kind of Enshrouded mod that always runs on a dedicated server.

Step 3: Stop the Server and Clear Its Old World

Click Stop on the Console tab. In the File Manager, open savegame/. If the server has generated its own world, take a snapshot via the Backups tab (or rename the old files) before deleting the existing 3ad85aea* files — this is the state you would roll back to if the transfer goes wrong.

Step 4: Upload

Still in savegame/, upload your renamed files. For a large, long-running world, SFTP into the same folder is faster and resumes interrupted transfers.

Step 5: Start and Verify

Hit Start and watch the Console. The server is up when it prints its session transition and the deserialize timing (Keen give these as an example, so your own timing will differ):

[Session] 'HostOnline' (up)!
[Session] finished transition from 'Lobby' to 'Host_Online' (current='Host_Online')!
[server] Load deserialization took 2.77 s

Join the server: you should spawn into your world with your bases, altars and shroud progress intact — and your character exactly as they were, because characters never left your machine.

Once confirmed, take a fresh snapshot from the Backups tab so the migrated world is your new restore point. The server saves on its own from here on, and the interval is not configurable — there is no key for it in enshrouded_server.json. Keen's own two pages disagree on the figure (the Dedicated Server FAQ says every 5 minutes, Save Game Management says a new rolling copy every 10), so assume the pessimistic end and plan for up to ten minutes of loss on an unclean stop.

Common Issues

• The server loaded a fresh world: The uploaded files are not named 3ad85aea, or they landed outside savegame/. Check both in the File Manager.
• The world loaded, but progress is hours old: The latest pointer in the -index files is naming one of the ten rolling copies that you did not bring across. Those copies are separate files — 3ad85aea-1 through 3ad85aea-9, and the same again for _info. Re-copy from your PC after quitting the game cleanly, and bring everything matching the stem, not just the base file and its -index file. See Enshrouded server backups and restoring a world for the full file layout.
• My save on the PC looks older than my last session: Steam Cloud holds the newer copy. Check userdata\<your id>\1203620\remote for the same file names.
• Version mismatch when players join: Client and server must be on the same game build. The server updates automatically on restart; make sure your own game is updated too.
• Characters reset: They shouldn't — characters are stored client-side. A player whose character is missing is on a different PC or Steam account than usual.

What to Read Next

• Getting started with your Enshrouded server for first boot, and where savegame/ fits in the wider file layout
• Enshrouded Server Settings and Config File for enshrouded_server.json — difficulty presets and slot count for the world you just moved
• Enshrouded Admin Commands, Roles and Server Settings for the user-group passwords that gate who can build in it
• Enshrouded server backups and restoring a world for what a world actually consists of on disk, and how to roll one back
• Enshrouded server connection troubleshooting if nobody can find or join the server once the world is in place
• How to play Enshrouded with friends for getting your group onto the world you just moved

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