Does Icarus Progress Save on a Dedicated Server?

Short answer: yes, and none of it is stored on the server. Your character, its level, its talents, your Ren, your Exotics and every Workshop item you own live in a file on your own PC. The dedicated server holds the world and nothing else. Wipe the server, rebuild it, move host — your character is untouched.

That split is unusual enough that it catches out most people arriving from other survival games, so this page covers exactly what sits where.

Checked against Icarus 3.0.27.157242-rel-DangerousHorizons

Week 249, released 10 September 2026. The local-data model dates from the Week 53 decentralization patch of 9 December 2022 and has not changed since.

What lives where

RocketWerkz made this explicit when they shipped it:

"Going forward, all player data will be stored locally - on your PC. Previously, save files and player data were saved in the cloud, while everything else (including your Outposts and Open World games) was saved locally. Now, all data will be saved locally, shifting data ownership to the players."

They listed what "player data" covers in the same announcement: "loadouts, inventories, exotics, ren and skill refund tokens", plus mission progress and Workshop talents.

The consequences for a server owner

You cannot wipe your players. There is no server-side character database to clear. A fresh Open World is a fresh world — everyone arrives at it with the level, talents and orbital gear they already had.

You cannot level anyone up, either. Icarus's admin command set is limited to moderation — no item spawning, no XP grants, nothing that touches a character. If you have not read it yet, Icarus Console Commands: What Actually Works covers exactly what the seven commands do.

Backups are asymmetric. Backing up the server — which is what a hosted Icarus server does for you — protects the world. It does nothing for your players' characters, and their characters are the part they would actually grieve. Icarus has Steam Cloud enabled, which covers most people across machines, and RocketWerkz added local file backups in the Week 60 update: "Backups for Character data, Profile data and active Prospects are now created at 30-minute intervals and stored alongside the original file with a '.backup' extension."

Gear disparity is not yours to fix. A level 60 player with a full Workshop loadout and a fresh level 1 can join the same server, and nothing in ServerSettings.ini narrows that gap. Difficulty is set per world; character power is not.

Characters are not locked to a session

The same patch removed the constraint that used to make this confusing:

"Characters are no longer 'locked' to one Mission or session and can be used on multiple active sessions simultaneously. You can select any character from the character select screen for any session at any time."

So one character can be on your dedicated server, in a friend's peer-to-peer game and in a solo Outpost, all at once. Progress earned in any of them accrues to the same character.

Open World tracks loadouts per character, which is worth knowing if you bring two. Each character's gear on that world is tracked separately — they do not share a stash in orbit.

Talents, and the ceiling

Talents are the part players ask about most, because they are permanent and they are capped.

• 465 talents exist in total, across Survival, Adventure, Habitation, Combat and Solo trees.
• A character accrues 90 talent points and 30 solo points by level 60, which is the cutoff for earning new points from levelling.
• A further 7 points come from specific content: 2 from Olympus's Nightfall: Survey, 2 from Styx's Ironclad: Research, and 3 from Prometheus's Null Sector.
• Points are refundable. Respec points cost 150 Ren each, and talents are refunded individually.

Two server-side levers change how fast that happens. Difficulty adjusts experience gain — easy runs at −25% XP and hard at +25% — and Outpost maps grant only 25% of normal experience. If your community is levelling on an Outpost and wondering why it feels slow, that is why.

Workshop gear crosses the gap

The Workshop is the one system that connects a character to your server's world, so it is worth being precise about.

Workshop items are researched and crafted in orbit with Ren and Exotics, and Exotics convert to Ren at 5 to 1. Crafted items sit in your loadout, and up to 15 of them can be loaded into the dropship cargo and brought down to the planet.

What happens to them afterwards is where gear gets lost:

• Leaving an Open World by dropship destroys every crafted and gathered item on your person, but returns your Workshop items to your loadout.
• Items left on the planet stay there. RocketWerkz: "If you do not bring your items up with you in a dropship, they stay on planet until returned."
• Insurance is the recovery path — insured items can be reclaimed from the orbital menu after five real-time days. It costs you a third of the prospect's rewards.

None of that is a server setting. It is a player decision made before the drop.

Tell new joiners to insure before their first drop

On a long-running Open World, the most common way somebody loses Workshop gear is logging out on the planet and never coming back to that world. Insurance is the only thing that gets it back, and it has to be bought beforehand.

Common Questions

If I reset my Icarus server, do players lose their characters?

No. Characters, levels, talents, Ren, Exotics and Workshop items are stored on each player's own PC. Resetting the server only destroys the world.

Can I transfer a character to my dedicated server?

There is nothing to transfer. Players select any character they own from the character select screen when they join. What you can move is a world — copy the prospect .json into the server's prospects folder.

Does my progress carry over between prospects?

Yes. Level, talents and Workshop unlocks belong to the character, not the world. Bases and storage do not — those belong to the prospect.

Can an admin grant levels, talents or items?

No. Icarus's admin commands cover kicking, banning, broadcasting and returning to lobby. There is no grant or spawn command of any kind.

Where is my character file?

Under %LocalAppData%\Icarus\Saved\PlayerData\ on the machine you play on, alongside your local prospects. Steam Cloud syncs it between your own machines.

Do I keep XP earned on someone else's server?

Yes. Experience and talent points go to your character, which is yours. If that server disappears tomorrow, the levels stay.

What to Read Next

• Icarus Console Commands: What Actually Works — what admins can and cannot do
• Icarus Prospects on a Dedicated Server — what the server actually stores
• How to Play Icarus With Friends — bringing characters into a shared world
• Icarus Server Settings Explained — the options that do exist

---

Made with 💜 by GameServerKings