Managing your Palworld world and save files

World Save Location

All world and player data is stored in /home/container/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/. Each world save is in its own folder with a randomly generated name. Inside that folder are the world data files and a Players/ subfolder containing individual player save files.

Backing Up Your World

World saves are the most important thing to protect on a rented Palworld server. The GSK Panel Backups tab creates a full snapshot of all server files.

1. Go to the Backups tab in the GSK Panel.

2. Click Create Backup.

3. Name the backup something descriptive and click Start Backup.

Note: Schedule automatic daily backups using the Schedules tab. Set up a Backup task on a cron schedule such as 0 4 * * * for 4 AM daily.

Warning: Palworld saves are not instantly written. Always run /Save in-game or from RCON before stopping the server or creating a backup to ensure all recent progress is captured.

Resetting the World

1. Stop the server from the Console tab.

2. In the Files tab navigate to /home/container/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/.

3. Delete the world save folder inside.

4. Start the server. A fresh world is generated automatically.

Warning: Deleting the world folder is permanent. Always create a backup first.

Resetting a Single Player Save

If you need to reset only one player's progress while keeping the rest of the world intact:

1. Stop the server.

2. Navigate to /home/container/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/WORLDID/Players/.

3. Find the file named after the player's Steam64 ID (it will be a .sav file).

4. Delete that file.

5. Start the server. The player will start fresh when they next connect.

Transferring a Save to a New Server

1. Create a backup of your current server from the Backups tab.

2. On the new server, stop it and navigate to /home/container/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/.

3. Upload your old world save folder into the same location.

4. Start the server. The world loads from the uploaded save.

Note: After transferring a save the world ID folder name stays the same. The server picks up whichever save folder exists in the SaveGames directory.

Moving a Local Co-op World to Your Dedicated Server

The section above covers moving a save between two servers. Moving the world you started in-game — singleplayer or co-op, where your machine was the host — is the same upload with two extra wrinkles: pointing the server at the uploaded folder, and the host's own character.

On Windows (Steam), local Palworld worlds live at %LocalAppData%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames\<your SteamID64>\. Each world is a folder with a 32-character hex name containing Level.sav, LevelMeta.sav, WorldOption.sav, LocalData.sav and a Players/ subfolder. If you have several, the one with the newest modified date is your current world. Xbox and Game Pass saves are stored differently — they sit in an opaque WGS container of GUID-named files under %LocalAppData%\Packages\PocketpairInc.Palworld_ad4psfrxyesvt\SystemAppData\wgs, so there is no world folder to copy by hand; you need a converter that reads WGS saves.

1. Stop the server from the Console tab.

2. Upload your entire world folder into /home/container/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/, keeping its hex name. Level.sav alone can run hundreds of MB — for big worlds, SFTP into the same path is faster and resumes interrupted transfers.

3. Delete WorldOption.sav inside the uploaded folder on the server. It carries your co-op session's settings and overrides PalWorldSettings.ini; while it exists the INI is ignored, and with it gone the server's own settings apply. Expect players to be asked to choose a start location again on their next join.

4. Open Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini in the Files tab and set DedicatedServerName= to your uploaded folder's name. This key — and it is this file, not PalWorldSettings.ini — is how the server chooses which folder in SaveGames/0/ to load. Copy the 32-character name character for character, capitalisation included: get it wrong and the server does not error, it quietly generates a brand-new world.

5. Start the server and watch the console for the world to finish loading, then join and verify your bases and Pals are where you left them.

Warning: The co-op host's character needs a save fix. Palworld stores the host's player file under the internal ID 00000000000000000000000000000001, but a dedicated server assigns the host a real ID on first join — so everyone else keeps their character and the host spawns as a brand-new one. The fix is remapping the host's player file to the new ID with a save-fix tool. As of August 2026 no official patch has changed this, 1.0 included.

To apply the host fix: have the host join the server once (creating the new ID under Players/), stop the server, download the world folder, run it through a currently maintained save tool — the Physgun and TCNO Palworld save converters were both updated in July 2026 for the current format, and PalworldSaveTools is the most actively developed of the community options — then re-upload the fixed Players/ files. The original palworld-host-save-fix script pioneered this remap but has not been touched since 2024. It cannot read current saves at all: Palworld switched its save compression from PlZ to Oodle-compressed PlM containers, and the old script stops with not a compressed Palworld save, found b'PlM' instead of b'PlZ'.

Note: The server must run the same Palworld version as the game that wrote the save, or newer. Any world created since the Crossplay Update (v0.5.0, March 2025) also carries Dimensional Pal Storage data in a sidecar file, which current converter tools rename and rebind along with the rest of the save — abandoned tools do not. If the world loads but seems oddly empty, check the version first.

WorldOption.sav

Some settings cannot be reliably applied through PalWorldSettings.ini alone. The most notable example is BaseCampWorkerMaxNum, which often requires the WorldOption.sav file to take effect.

For everything that does belong in the INI, build it with our Palworld server settings generator — sliders and toggles for XP, capture rate, PvP and death penalty, with a ready-to-paste PalWorldSettings.ini at the end.

To generate a WorldOption.sav with your settings:

1. Open the Palworld server settings generator and use Import existing .ini to paste in your current PalWorldSettings.ini (Files → Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/ in your panel). This step matters: the generated .sav replaces your whole settings block, so it has to start from your real values or it will wipe things like your admin password.

2. Adjust the settings you want, then choose Download .sav.

3. Stop the server.

4. Navigate to /home/container/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/WORLDID/.

5. Upload the WorldOption.sav file. Replace the existing one if present.

6. Start the server.

Warning: WorldOption.sav overrides PalWorldSettings.ini. If both exist the WorldOption.sav values take priority. Make sure both files are consistent to avoid confusion.