How to backup your Valheim server

How to backup your Valheim server

Time required: 5 minutes.

Are you afraid of losing the world you're playing in and want to know how to backup your Valheim server? Good news: on a nitroserv server, there are already three safety nets. You just need to know which ones you control.

I'll rent one and follow the rest of the tutorial right after!

Quick answer

• the game saves your world automatically every 30 minutes ;
• nitroserv automatically takes complete backups of your server, viewable and restorable from the Backups page of the nitroserv Manager ;
• for your own copy, download your world folder from the Files tab, server stopped.

1. Game backup: every 30 minutes

The Valheim server writes your world to disk itself every 30 minutes. You can see this in the Manager console with lines "World save … done". This is the version that is reloaded when the server starts.

The game also keeps two backup copies in the worlds_local folder, named MyWorld_backup_auto-<date>. They renew themselves automatically.

2. nitroserv backups: the Backups page in the Manager

nitroserv automatically takes a complete copy of your server files: world, characters, configuration, mods. You'll find them in Backups, in your server's sidebar, sorted by day in a calendar.

The backup frequency is 3 hours by default, and you can configure it down to 1 hour in the Manager!

A nitroserv backup takes a snapshot of what's on disk at that moment. If the game hasn't written your progress yet (see point 1), it won't be there either.

There's no "backup now" button. Before a risky operation (mods, version change, world import), make a manual copy as explained in point 3.

3. Your manual copy: your world folder

Since Valheim 1.0, a world is a complete folder, no longer just a simple pair of .db and .fwl files as it was during Early Access.

1. Stop your server from the Manager.
2. Open the Files tab (or your SFTP client, credentials in SFTP Access) and navigate to .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/. The folder is hidden on Filezilla: enable display of hidden files if you don't see it.
3. Download the MyWorld folder in its entirety, with all its .chunk and _main.N.* files. Without the .chunk files, your copy is an empty world.
4. Keep this copy on your computer, a USB drive, or a floppy disk.

To put it back in place someday, same path in the other direction, server stopped, then verify that the Map / World field on the Dashboard contains the folder name. The details are in our guide Import a map to a Valheim server.

Never modify the worlds_local folder while the server is running.

Restore a nitroserv backup

From the Backups page, choose a day in the calendar, then a time, and click Restore.

• The restoration replaces all server content with that of the backup: world, characters, configuration, mods. Anything done after the chosen date is lost.
• The server is stopped during the operation, which takes from a few minutes to an hour depending on size. Wait for the "intervention" status to disappear before restarting it.
• After restoration, verify that Map / World contains your world name, then start.

What about backups from an old server?

Backups from an expired server are kept for 6 months. The Manager offers you the option to restart from them when ordering a new server.

Need help?

A question about your backups? We're available on our Discord or via our Twitter account, and you can contact us by ticket directly from your Manager.

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