Stormworks Save Location & How to Upload Your World

So you've been playing Stormworks solo or with a few friends and you've got a career save you actually care about. Maybe you've kitted out a rescue helicopter, built a small fleet of boats, and bought half the research tree. You don't want to lose any of that when you move to a dedicated server. The good news is you don't have to. You can copy your local save across.

This guide walks you through where Stormworks keeps saves on your PC, how to get them onto your LOW.MS server, and how to make the server actually load them.

Where Stormworks Saves Live on Your PC

On Windows 10 and 11, Stormworks stores saves in your AppData folder. The quickest way to get there is:

1. Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog.
2. Type %appdata%\Stormworks\saves and hit Enter.

That opens the saves folder directly. The full path is usually C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\Stormworks\saves. If you can't see AppData in File Explorer, you'll need to enable hidden folders first.

Each world you've played is a folder inside saves. Inside it you'll find scene.xml (the world data itself) along with a separate XML file for every vehicle you've spawned. Grab the whole folder for the save you want to move — not just the contents.

Before You Do Anything

Stop the server before you touch any files. If you upload on top of a running save, the server will happily overwrite your work the next time it autosaves.

1. Sign in to your control panel at control.low.ms.
2. Open your Stormworks service.
3. Click Stop and wait for the status to go offline.
4. Open Cloud Backup from the sidebar and run a backup of the current state. If anything goes wrong with the upload, Cloud Restore will put things back.

Only carry on once the service is stopped and the backup has finished.

Uploading via File Manager

For a single save folder, the panel's File Manager is the easiest option.

1. In control.low.ms, open your Stormworks service and click File Manager in the sidebar.
2. Navigate to the saves directory inside your server files.
3. Rename your local save folder to autosave_server before you upload it. The dedicated server looks for that name by default, and using it means the server will both load from it and save back to it.
4. Drag your renamed save folder into the File Manager window, or use the upload button.
5. Wait for every file inside the folder to finish — scene.xml and the vehicle files need to land before you start the server.

If the folder already exists on the server, delete the old one first so you're not mixing files from two saves.

Uploading via SFTP

For larger saves or if you prefer a dedicated client like FileZilla or WinSCP, use SFTP on port 8822.

1. In the panel, open Service Settings to find your SFTP host, username and password.
2. Connect using port 8822.
3. Browse to the saves folder on the server.
4. Upload your renamed autosave_server folder.

SFTP is also the sensible choice if the upload drops — most clients will resume a transfer, whereas a browser upload usually has to start over.

Pointing the Server at Your World

Stormworks dedicated servers pick which world to load from server_config.xml. The relevant attribute is save_name.

1. In File Manager, open server_config.xml at the root of your server files.
2. Find the save_name="" attribute.
3. Set it to autosave_server (or whatever you named the folder you uploaded). It must match the folder name in saves exactly.
4. Save the file.

If save_name is blank, the server will start a fresh world and won't load your upload at all. This is the step most people miss.

Starting Up

Back on the service page, click Start. Open Web Console from the sidebar and watch the log. You should see Stormworks load the save and list the vehicles it's spawning. If it starts a brand-new world instead, stop the server, double-check save_name matches the folder name, and try again.

Once players connect, ask an admin to run ?save in chat to confirm the server can write back to the same save. After that, autosaves will handle it.

A Few Things to Know

• The dedicated server ignores the separate autosave folder on load. It only reads the folder named in save_name, which is why renaming to autosave_server matters.
• Workshop vehicles referenced in your save need to be subscribed on the server owner's Steam account, or installed via Steam Update with the right mod IDs. Missing mods will cause vehicles to fail to spawn.
• Career progress, research, and money live inside the save file, so a clean upload carries all of it across.
• Back up before any big change. Cloud Backup runs in seconds, and Cloud Restore means a bad edit to server_config.xml isn't the end of the world.
• You can't edit server_config.xml while the server is running. Always stop first, edit, then start.

If the server loads but your save looks empty, the folder name in saves almost certainly doesn't match save_name. That's the first thing to check.