How to Transfer Your Enshrouded World to Your Dedicated Server

Yes — the world you started in singleplayer or hosted co-op runs on a dedicated server. Enshrouded worlds are a small set of files in your Saved Games folder, and the move is a copy, one rename, and an upload. Your character is not part of it, and Keen Games 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.

The upload happens in the File Manager of your Enshrouded game server panel, into the savegame/ folder the server already uses. 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. Alongside it sit an <id>_info file, which holds metadata including the world's name, and two -index files. Enshrouded keeps ten numbered rolling copies of every world — a new copy every ten minutes and one on shutdown, overwriting the oldest — and the -index files are what record which copy is current, under a latest key.

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\, collect all four files that start with your world's ID: the base file, <id>_info, <id>-index and <id>_info-index. The index files are not optional — they carry the latest pointer to the newest of the ten rolling copies, and leaving them behind is how a server ends up loading a stale one.

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 all four copied files by swapping the ID stem:

Only the ID stem changes — keep the suffixes exactly as they are.

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:

[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 writes a save every five minutes from here on, and that interval is fixed — there is no key for it in enshrouded_server.json.

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 an older of the ten rolling copies. Re-copy from your PC after quitting the game cleanly, and bring both -index files along with the base file and its _info.
• 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

Made with 💜 by GameServerKings