Enshrouded keeps your worlds in %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\enshrouded on PC, plus a second copy in Steam's own folder if Steam Cloud is on. That's the short answer. If you've sunk weeks into a world and now want it on a dedicated server, or a friend is taking over hosting, it'll survive the trip. The files are small, they're all in one folder, and your character isn't even part of them. What trips people up is the naming, because Enshrouded doesn't call your world by the name you gave it, and a server decides which copy of the world to load from a tiny index file that most guides never mention.
Where is the Enshrouded save location on PC?
Press Win+R, paste this and press Enter:
%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\enshrouded
That's where Keen Games put local saves, and it's the folder their own support pages point you at first.
If you play with Steam Cloud switched on, there's a second copy in Steam's own folder:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<your Steam ID>\1203620\remote
The Steam ID is the number Steam shows as your Friend Code, under Account in Steam's settings (1203620 is Enshrouded's App ID). Keen also link Steam's remote storage page for the game, where you can download the cloud copy straight from your browser, which is handy if the PC with the save on it isn't the one in front of you.
I'd check both folders every time and trust whichever has the newest modified dates. Copying the stale one is the most common way people end up "losing" a week of building that was never really lost.
Don't expect anything big. Keen put a world at anywhere between 1 MB and 100 MB, small at the start and growing as your bases do.
Enshrouded save files: what the codes mean
Open the folder and you won't see your world's name anywhere. Each world is a set of files with no extension, named with a fixed code that Keen hand out in the order you created your worlds:
| World | File code |
|---|---|
| 1 | 3ad85aea |
| 2 | 3bd85c7d |
| 3 | 38d857c4 |
| 4 | 39d85957 |
| 5 | 36d8549e |
| 6 | 37d85631 |
| 7 | 34d85178 |
| 8 | 35d8530b |
| 9 | 32d84e52 |
| 10 | 33d84fe5 |
So your second world is always 3bd85c7d, whatever you called it. For each world you'll find the main file, nine numbered copies (3bd85c7d-1 through to 3bd85c7d-9), a -index file and an _info file, which holds metadata such as the world's name. If you've made several worlds and can't remember which is which, sort by modified date: the one you played last night has files from last night.
Anything called characters is your character, and it stays on your PC. Keen are clear on this one: character progression is stored only on the player's machine, and world progression is stored on the server. When your group moves to a dedicated server, everyone brings their own character along without doing anything at all.
Rolling copies and the index file
Saving is automatic, and it's more careful than it looks. The game keeps ten copies of each world: the main file plus the nine numbered ones. Every so often it writes a fresh copy over the oldest, and it writes one when the game shuts down. How often is slightly murky, because Keen's save page says every ten minutes and their dedicated server FAQ says every five, so I'd just think of it as "every few minutes".
The -index file is what ties the set together. It's a small text file with a number under "latest", from 0 to 9, saying which of the ten copies is the current one. The game loads that copy and ignores the rest.
That's genuinely useful if something goes wrong. Keen's own rollback advice is to open the index in a text editor and change the number to point at an earlier copy, which is about as close to an official save editor as Enshrouded gets (Keen don't publish one, and I wouldn't trust a third-party editor with a world I cared about). Copy the whole folder somewhere safe before you edit anything, as Keen themselves recommend.
It's also the reason half-finished transfers go wrong, which I'll come back to.
Where a dedicated server keeps its world
A dedicated server keeps its world in a savegame folder, and where that folder sits is set by one line in enshrouded_server.json:
"saveDirectory": "./savegame",
On a server you run yourself, that's a folder next to enshrouded_server.exe. On a hosted server, it's wherever the host's config points it, so look for the line before you go hunting.
A dedicated server runs one world, and on every server we've looked at, that world uses World 1's code: 3ad85aea, the main file, -1 to -9 and -index. There's no _info file on the server side, and no characters either, because those stay with the players.
Moving your world to a dedicated server
The principle is the same whatever you're uploading to, and there are really only three rules.
The server's old world comes out completely. Stop the server first, because a running one writes a fresh copy every few minutes and will happily write straight over your upload. Then clear every 3ad85aea file out of its savegame folder. Leave one old numbered copy or the old index behind and the server can load that instead of your world.
Your world goes in completely, index and all. That's eleven files: the main file, -1 to -9, and -index. Leave the _info file behind. The servers we've checked run happily without one, so we don't expect it to matter, but we haven't seen Keen say so either way. Upload only the main file and the index will still point at one of the numbered copies, which are either missing or the old world's.
The code has to be 3ad85aea. If the world you want is your first world, it already is. If it's any other world, rename all eleven files so the code becomes 3ad85aea: 3bd85c7d becomes 3ad85aea, 3bd85c7d-4 becomes 3ad85aea-4, 3bd85c7d-index becomes 3ad85aea-index. Only the code changes, the endings stay exactly as they were. The index is safe to rename, since all it holds is the copy number, a timestamp and a deleted flag, nothing tied to the code.
To be straight with you: this rename is the standard trick and it follows from how the files work, but we haven't run a renamed World 2 (or later) set on one of our servers ourselves yet. So treat your desktop copy as the real thing until you've joined and seen your base.
I'd always do the renaming on a copy, in a new folder on your desktop. Rename the files in your real save folder and you've reshuffled the worlds on your own PC as well, which is a horrible thing to discover the night you wanted to play offline. Take a backup of the server's current world before you delete anything, too, even if you're sure you don't want it. You'd be surprised how often someone does.
One more thing before you start the server: if an Enshrouded update is waiting, install it first. A world last saved on a newer build than the server is running is asking for trouble, and with 1.0 landing on 15 October that's going to catch a lot of people (there's more on that in our Enshrouded 1.0 guide for server owners).
Tip: On LOW.MS the save folder is config/savegame/ on the Files tab, the Backups tab takes a copy of the old world in one click before you clear it out, and the full step-by-step for this upload is in the Guides tab of your server in the control panel.
Once it's running, join as normal (our joining guide covers finding it in the browser) and check your base, your chests and your farm are where you left them before anyone else logs in.
Taking a world back off a server
Going the other way should work on the same logic, though it's another one we haven't tested ourselves, so keep the server's original files until the world has loaded on your PC. Download the server's 3ad85aea set, rename it to the code of a world slot you aren't using on your PC (the table above), and put it in your Saved Games\enshrouded folder. Don't drop it in as 3ad85aea unless you're happy to replace your own first world, because that's exactly what it'll do.
If you use Steam Cloud, Keen's advice for getting local files into the cloud is to turn Steam Cloud off for Enshrouded, back up and then empty the remote folder, copy your Saved Games\enshrouded files into it, turn Steam Cloud back on, and pick retry or use local when the game says the cloud is out of sync.
Sharing a world with a friend is the same thing again: send them the whole set, and they rename it to a free slot on their end.
If the server loads the wrong world
None of these cost you the world, as long as you kept that desktop copy and the backup.
A brand new, empty world. Most likely the server couldn't find a 3ad85aea set and started a fresh one. Usually the files kept their old code somewhere in the name, or they landed in the wrong folder. Stop the server, clear out the new world it just made and upload your set again.
The server's old world. Some of the old files survived, almost always the old -index pointing at a numbered copy you didn't replace. Stop, clear the folder completely and upload the full set again.
Your world, but older than you remember. You copied from the folder that wasn't in use: Saved Games when Steam Cloud had the newer copy, or the other way round. Compare the modified dates and upload the newer set.
If it's still loading something odd on a LOW.MS server, open a support ticket and tell us which world you meant to upload. Please don't start and stop it ten more times first, because every run writes fresh rolling copies over the ones we'd want to look at. And if you're still deciding where your world should live, the Enshrouded hosting page has everything we offer.