Arma Reforger Save Location & How to Upload Your World

Arma Reforger is multiplayer-only, so there is no singleplayer world to move across. What you do have, after running a Reforger server from your own PC for a while, is a carefully tuned config.json, a pile of downloaded Workshop addons, and — if your scenario uses the persistence system — session save data you would rather not throw away. This guide walks you through taking all of that off your home machine and onto a LOW.MS Arma Reforger dedicated server without starting from zero.

Where Arma Reforger Server Files Live on Your PC

On Windows, a self-hosted Reforger server keeps almost everything under your user profile.

The main config file sits at:

C:\Users\<YourName>\Documents\My Games\ArmaReforger\profile\config.json

The profile folder next to it is where the server writes its runtime data. Inside you will typically find:

• logs/ — per-session console.log, script.log, and error.log files
• addons/ — downloaded Workshop mods, each in a folder named after its mod ID, containing a ServerData.json with the id, name, and version you need in config.json
• profile/ subfiles for the server's own state
• Any persistence database files if your scenario uses the Enfusion persistence system (hive data referenced by hiveId in your config)

Addons sometimes land in Documents\My Games\ArmaReforger\addons\ rather than the profile folder, depending on how you launched the server and whether you set -addonDownloadDir. Check both paths before you start copying.

Before You Do Anything

Stop both servers first. On your LOW.MS server, open control.low.ms, pick the Reforger service, and hit Stop. On your home machine, close the ArmaReforgerServer.exe process and make sure nothing is still writing to the profile folder — Reforger does not like having its log files or persistence database yanked mid-write.

Take a Cloud Backup of the LOW.MS server from the panel before you overwrite anything. Even on a fresh server, a backup gives you a clean rollback point if an uploaded config refuses to parse.

Uploading via File Manager

For smaller jobs — the config.json plus a handful of mods — File Manager in the panel is the quickest route.

1. In control.low.ms, open your Reforger service and click File Manager.
2. Navigate to the profile directory (the folder your server is started with via -profile). On LOW.MS this is the Reforger service root.
3. Drag your local config.json onto the window to upload it. Confirm overwrite.
4. Open the addons folder (create it if it does not exist) and upload each mod folder from your PC's addons directory. Keep the folder names (mod IDs) exactly as they were locally.
5. If you are migrating persistence data, upload the entire profile/ contents, including any .db files produced by the persistence system.

File Manager has a per-upload size ceiling, so if any single mod is very large or you are moving a big persistence database, switch to SFTP.

Uploading via SFTP

SFTP is faster, resumable, and handles large batches cleanly.

Grab your SFTP credentials from the panel (Service Settings → FTP/SFTP). The port is 8822. Point an SFTP client — FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck — at your server using those details.

Once connected:

1. On the remote side, browse to the Reforger profile root.
2. On the local side, open C:\Users\<YourName>\Documents\My Games\ArmaReforger\.
3. Transfer profile\config.json to the remote profile root.
4. Transfer the full addons\ tree (or profile\addons\ if that is where yours lives) to the matching remote folder.
5. Transfer any persistence database files.

Let the client finish and verify no transfers are listed as failed.

Pointing the Server at Your Config

Your uploaded config.json may reference paths, mod IDs, or a hiveId that need a second look before the server will boot cleanly.

In the panel, open Service Settings and check that the scenario and mod list match what is in your uploaded config. If LOW.MS exposes fields like scenario ID, port, or public name through the settings UI, those values take precedence over the file, so keep them aligned. Every mod under mods in config.json needs modId, name, and version matching the ServerData.json inside the corresponding addon folder.

If your scenario uses persistence, confirm the hiveId in the uploaded config is the same one that produced the database files you copied — a mismatch creates a new empty hive and your old data will sit there ignored.

Starting Up

Back in control.low.ms, press Start and open the Web Console. Watch for the mod load list, the scenario ID being accepted, and — if you are using persistence — a line confirming the hive loaded. Errors here usually point to a missing addon folder, a mod version that does not match the one in config.json, or a JSON syntax error introduced during editing.

If the console shows a boot failure, run Cloud Restore from the backup you took earlier, fix the offending field locally, and re-upload just that file.

A Few Things to Know

Workshop mods can also be pulled fresh on the LOW.MS server instead of uploaded — once the mod IDs are listed in config.json, Steam Update (or the first server start) will download them. Uploading is only worth it when you want to skip the download or preserve a specific pinned version.

Reforger does not have traditional singleplayer saves, so if your scenario is not persistence-enabled there is nothing session-state to migrate; your config.json and mod list are the whole move. And keep a local copy of your old config.json somewhere safe — it is the single most annoying file to rebuild from scratch.