Fix Palworld server update wiping player progress

With the early access release of Palworld, the Nodecraft team has seen widespread reports of Server owners losing player progress when they update their servers.

After some initial research, the Nodecraft Support team may have found a fix, depending on how you updated your Palworld server.

Restoring the PalWorldSettings.ini File

You will not be able to restore the PalWorldSettings.ini file without a backup. As of January 20th, 2024 the Palworld SteamCMD flags set by the developers will have this file be wiped by SteamCMD.

If you have a backup, simply replace the file and you're good to go!

Stop your server

The first step is to stop your server before making further changes to the files.

Checking to see if your data is still on your server

Next, check the folder where the Palworld dedicated server stores player and world data. That folder is located at /Pal/Saved/SaveGames .

We're still connecting information, so this could be slightly different for your server. If you see a folder with named 0 (the number zero) it likely holds server files. Please reach out to the Nodecraft Support team if you see other folders here, we want to know. You may also see a banlist.txt file here, if you've issued bans.

Open the folder at /Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0 . If you've got more folders here, there is good news: previous server files are still on your Palworld server. It should look like this, if you open one of those folders:

You'll need to take note of the random string of characters in the folder name for the "ID" of the server version. If you've started your server, you may have two folders, each with a different random ID. Check the last modified dates of the folders to identify which one you want to restore and move on to the next step.

For this example, we're restoring the server for id: 52DA415EB13645E5BD7BDCD1D512B022

Restoring the Save Data Reference

Next, open up the GameUserSettings.ini file. For Palworld servers hosted at Nodecraft or on Linux, that is located at /Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini

Edit the entry on this file for DedicatedServerName and set it to the ID from the folder in the step above. If you already see the ID from the previous step in this line, you likely need a different ID from a different folder.

When you've finished editing this file, it should look like this:

Restart Your Server and Check

At this point you should just need to restart your server. If it didn't work, just retry the steps above until you find your server's save data.

Still not working?

While this step works for many users, there are still some circumstances where your server won't recognize your player and server data. No worries, as there is one final step you can attempt, which has reportedly worked for many players:

• Stop your server.

• Open /Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini and remove the map ID from the above step so that the setting file shows DedicatedServerName=.

• Start your Palworld server.

• Join the server, it should prompt you to create a new character. Create a new character and join the Palworld server.

• Stop your Palworld server, again.

• Put the map ID from the above step back as you completed it in the previous step, for example: DedicatedServerName=52DA415EB13645E5BD7BDCD1D512B022

• Start your server, you should now be able to join from you other previous character.

Kudos and thanks to /u/AvocadoTwist on Reddit for identifying this workaround based on our article.

Did we get something wrong?

With any game in Early Access, the likelihood of us getting details wrong or having them change shortly after publishing an article is highly likely. Please let us know by reaching out to us and we'd be thrilled to learn more about your Palworld Server or how we can improve this article.