Return to Moria Save Location & How to Upload Your World

You have been digging through Moria on your own PC, the hoard is building up, and now you want to move that world onto a proper dedicated server so your friends can join without you being online. Good news: Return to Moria stores your saves as plain .sav files, so moving a world over is a matter of copying two files into the right folder and pointing the server config at them. This guide walks through where those files sit, how to upload them to your LOW.MS server, and how to get the server to actually load your world instead of spinning up a fresh one.

Where Return to Moria Saves Live on Your PC

Your local saves are stored under your Windows user profile, inside %LOCALAPPDATA%\Moria\Saved\. The quickest way to get there is to press Win + R, paste that path in, and hit Enter.

Inside Saved you will find one of two subfolders depending on how you bought the game:

• Steam: SaveGamesSteam
• Epic Games: SaveGamesEpic

Each world is made up of two files that share a matching ID:

• MW_<ID>.sav — the world itself (and its rolling backups)
• MC_<ID>.sav — your character data

You only need the MW_ world file to move a world to the server. Characters stay on whichever machine or account they were created on; players will spawn in fresh-bodied on the dedicated server and any gear they had locally does not carry over.

Before You Do Anything

A few quick precautions save a lot of grief later:

1. Stop the game on your PC before copying anything. If Moria is still running, the .sav file may be locked or mid-write.
2. Copy your local MW_ and MC_ files to a safe folder on your desktop as a personal backup.
3. In your LOW.MS panel at control.low.ms, stop the server, then open Cloud Backup and take a fresh snapshot. If anything goes sideways, Cloud Restore puts you back where you started.
4. Make sure the server has been started at least once so the SaveGamesDedicated folder exists.

Uploading via File Manager

For a single world file, the built-in File Manager in your LOW.MS panel is the simplest option.

1. In control.low.ms, open your Return to Moria server.
2. Stop the server from Web Console.
3. Open File Manager and navigate to Moria/Saved/SaveGamesDedicated/.
4. Click Upload and select your MW_<ID>.sav file from your PC.
5. Wait for the upload to finish; the file should appear in the directory listing with its full size.

If you do not see a SaveGamesDedicated folder at all, start the server once, let it sit for 30 seconds, then stop it again. The server creates the folder on first boot.

Uploading via SFTP

For larger transfers or if you want a proper client, use SFTP. LOW.MS runs SFTP on port 8822.

1. In the panel, open Service Settings and copy your SFTP username and password.
2. In your SFTP client (FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck), create a new connection:
   • Protocol: SFTP
   • Host: the IP shown in Service Settings
   • Port: 8822
   • Username / Password: from Service Settings
3. Once connected, browse to Moria/Saved/SaveGamesDedicated/.
4. Drag your MW_<ID>.sav file from the local pane into that folder.

SFTP is also the easy way to pull a server-side world back down to your PC if you ever want to play it solo again.

Pointing the Server at Your World

Uploading the file is only half the job — the server still needs to be told to load it. Return to Moria uses MoriaServerConfig.ini for this, and the key setting is OptionalWorldFilename.

1. In File Manager, open Moria/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/MoriaServerConfig.ini (self-hosted Linux installs use LinuxServer/ instead).

2. Find the [/Script/Moria.MoriaServerSettings] section.

3. Set OptionalWorldFilename to your save file's name, including the .sav extension. For example:

   OptionalWorldFilename=MW_A7BB8D3B4F9E5F00A664EE86E4B889AD.sav
   

4. Save the file.

If OptionalWorldFilename is blank, the server falls back to the World/Name setting and creates a new world with that name if none exists. Setting OptionalWorldFilename forces it to load your exact file, which is what you want when migrating.

Starting Up

Back in Web Console, start the server and watch the log output. You are looking for a line mentioning the world filename being loaded. The first boot after a migration can take a minute longer than usual while the server ingests the world.

Once it says the session is ready, connect from the game's server browser or via Join by IP and confirm your base, chests, and terrain are exactly where you left them. If something looks off, stop the server and use Cloud Restore to roll back to the snapshot you took earlier.

A Few Things to Know

• Your local character file (MC_) is not used by the dedicated server. Everyone connects with their Epic/Steam account and gets a server-side character.
• Keep Cloud Backup enabled so the server takes rolling snapshots of the new world; the game's own .sav backups are limited.
• After a game update, let the server run Steam Update before players connect. Loading a world on a mismatched build is the most common cause of crashes right after a migration.
• If you have multiple MW_ files in SaveGamesDedicated, only the one referenced by OptionalWorldFilename will load. The others are ignored but take up disk.