Where Valheim saves stand today
Valheim 1.0 left early access on 9 September 2026, and the current stable version as of 2026-10-01 is patch 1.0.16, published 25 September 2026. The part that matters to a move is the save system: since 1.0, "worlds will no longer be saved with a .db and a .fwl file, but will instead be saved and stored in separate folders, with the .db file broken down into smaller pieces. Backups will also have their own separate folders." The 1.0 launch notes describe the same change from the performance side: the new save system "splits world data across chunks to reduce how much data is serialized and written to improve performance, and is designed to be resilient against mid-write failures."
Two boundaries on that change are official and worth knowing before you touch any files. First, "the new save system only affects world saves, character saves remain the same." Second, updating does nothing to your saves by itself: the official 1.0 FAQ answers "What happens to my saves at the 1.0 launch?" with "Nothing. Your old saves will still be where you last left them, and you can continue to play with them if you like." Nothing is converted until a world is loaded, and neither patch 1.0.14 nor patch 1.0.16 mentions any further save-format change.
Step 1: back the world up before anything else
Make a full copy of the world before you update, before you load it in the current version, and again before you copy it to the server - three moments, one habit. Iron Gate's own motto for its public-test branch is the beta access code "yesimadebackups", and the same post says "please ensure to create backups of your save files before playing." It also carries a warning that applies to any manual file moving: "if you intend to switch between the PTB and the Live branch of the game, it is not advisory to move your files around manually." Copying a world to a dedicated server is exactly the kind of manual file handling that motto is about.
In practice: copy the world's whole save entry - the world's folder on a current install, or both files of the old pair on a pre-1.0 install - to somewhere nothing can touch it, like a different drive. A whole-folder copy protects both formats, and it is what you restore from if anything downstream goes wrong.
If your world is still a .db and .fwl pair
Before 1.0, a Valheim world was saved as a .db and a .fwl file - Iron Gate's patch notes name both when describing the change. On a current version that pair is the legacy input format: "when loading a world that is not chunked, a backup is made first so no data is lost in case of potential new bugs." In other words, you do not convert anything by hand - the game performs the conversion the first time it loads the world, and it makes its own backup before doing so.
That is why the order of operations below starts with updating: the 1.0-era converter had a bug worth knowing about. Patch 1.0.15 (18 September 2026) describes item-stand and armour-stand levels and variants being lost in conversion, "due to the updated save format introduced in 1.0, and sadly this data is lost in the conversion... This was fixed in Patch 1.0.12, so any world converted from now on will convert correctly," with the published workaround being "the backup which was made when you first loaded the new save format." A world first loaded on the current version never passes through the buggy converter at all.
One more rule for the old format: keep the pair together. Patch 0.215.2 (7 April 2023) is the fix for "a bug where backups couldn't be restored if the main save file was missing its .fwl file" - a world separated from its .fwl is a world that could not be restored from backup until that fix existed. When you copy an old-format world, copy both files.
Step 2: update to the current version and load the world once
Update the game to the current version (1.0.16 as of today), then start it and load the world once, on the machine where the world lives. That single load is the conversion step: the game makes its pre-conversion backup, writes the world in the folder format, and shows you the world still plays. Do this before the move so the version that hands files to the server is the version the server will run, and so any surprise appears on your machine, where your own backup sits, rather than on a fresh server.
The same procedure covers both starting points this guide is about. A world from solo play and a world from hosting for friends on your own machine are the same thing on disk - a world in your local saves - so both move to a dedicated server the same way: find it locally, convert it if it is old, then place it under the server's save path.
Where your local world lives
The official dedicated-server guide documents the default save path where worlds and permission files are stored: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim on Windows and ~/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim on Linux, overridable with the -savedir [PATH] argument. Your local saves live in that same IronGate/Valheim area: since patch 0.209.8 (20 June 2022), "local files will now be stored in 'worlds_local' and 'characters_local' under AppData and no longer be synced to cloud to avoid sync conflicts and dataloss when using multiple accounts on the same machine, and when using dedicated servers."
So the current local folder for worlds is worlds_local, with characters alongside it in characters_local - and note that this split long predates 1.0: it dates from mid-2022, and Iron Gate was still maintaining worlds_local in an April 2024 patch ("fixed worlds_local not being created correctly for cloud file sources"). A folder simply named worlds is what Iron Gate calls "the now legacy 'worlds/' directory" - if you find one from an old install, treat it as history, not as the place the current game writes to. Inside the save area, official notes say only that worlds are "saved and stored in separate folders"; no official document spells out the folder layout beyond that, so what you copy is the world's own save entry, whatever form it takes on your install.
Steam Cloud: not where your world lives
Since that same 0.209.8 patch, your local world and character saves are deliberately not synced to Steam Cloud - the quote above is Iron Gate's reason, sync conflicts and data loss. The practical consequence for a move: copying world files between machines does not fight the Steam Cloud over them.
Valheim's store page still lists Steam Cloud among its features, and other game data may use it, so if you want to see the state of the setting, Valve documents the two switches: per game, in each game's properties in your library, and globally, in Steam's settings under Cloud ("Enable Steam Cloud synchronization for applications which support it"), which Valve says syncs supported files "before and after every session." Checking those is harmless; it just will not find your worlds there.
Step 3: put the world on the dedicated server
On the server side, worlds live under the server's own save path - the same default locations quoted above, overridable with -savedir - in the server's worlds_local folder. The permission files adminlist.txt, bannedlist.txt and permittedlist.txt live in that same default save path, which is worth knowing when you go looking for the right directory. (If you run the server in Docker, the game data - worlds plus those three list files - lives in the valheim_server_data volume, configurable via DOCKER_DATA_VOLUME.)
The argument that loads your world is -world "Name". The official guide is explicit about how it behaves: "a world with the name entered will be created. You may also choose an already existing World by entering its name." Read that carefully, because it is the one way this step silently goes wrong: if the name you pass does not match a world that exists under the server's save path, the server does not fail - it creates a new, empty world with that name on first start. The world you copy across has to be findable under the name the server is told to load, which is also why this guide gives no rename procedure: none is documented, and names have a bug history (an April 2024 patch "fixed issue where new world uses seed from a previous world with the same name").
The launch arguments live on line 7 of the startup script - start_headless_server.bat on Windows, start_server.sh on Linux - and Iron Gate recommends editing a copy of the script, because "the original file will be reset each time it is updated in Steam." For stopping the server, the official instruction is CTRL+C in the command window: "it is important that you close it by pressing CTRL+C in the Command-window. If you close it by clicking the X in the window frame the Server may keep running in the background."
No official page documents a replace-the-world-files procedure, so treat this as the standard operator routine rather than a documented requirement: stop the server with CTRL+C (never the window's X), copy the world's save entry into the server's worlds_local under its save path, confirm -world carries that world's name, and start the server again. Keep your own backup from step 1 until the world has loaded and you have walked around in it. A server that starts and immediately shuts down is telling you something official patch notes describe: "dedicated servers will shut down if the world is corrupt" (the client-side equivalent: "world save gets disabled if it's a corrupted world file or if it's an incompatible world version and the game will return to the main menu") - at which point the answer is your backup, copied again.
When it is up, the server announces readiness in its window with "Game server connected". From there, keep the server doing its own backups: -saveinterval 1800 sets the seconds between saves (the default is 30 minutes), and the backup arguments are -backups 4 with the documented default of 1 backup 2 hours old plus 3 backups 12 hours apart, tuned by -backupshort 7200 and -backuplong 43200. A server that backs itself up on a schedule is the safety net for every future move, in either direction.
What -crossplay does and does not touch
The -crossplay launch argument is documented as a network-backend switch and nothing else: "runs the Server on the Crossplay backend (PlayFab), which lets users from any platform join. If you do not include this argument, the Steam backend is used, which means only Steam users can see and join the Server." Official documentation assigns crossplay no role in how worlds are stored - the dedicated-server guide describes it purely as a networking choice, and the official Crossplay FAQ says nothing about world files or save format at all. Turning it on or off changes nothing about your save files as far as official documentation describes; it changes who can reach the server and how.
One neighbouring fact that is official and often confused with crossplay: there is no cross-platform save sync. The 1.0 FAQ states that if you play on an Xbox you can access your saves from a PC "provided that you launch the game from the Microsoft store. Beyond this, there will be no cross platform sync for your save files." Moving a Valheim world between machines is, and stays, a file copy you make yourself.
Where to read next
Moving the world is one step of running a Valheim server. How to set up a Valheim dedicated server walks the full install and start script, the crossplay guide covers join codes and which platforms can connect, the backup checklist turns step 1 into a habit for every game you host, and Valheim server hosting availability shows the current plans and whether orders for them are open.
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