How to back up and restore your Palworld world

Your Palworld world is the thing you cannot get back if it is lost, so back it up before you change settings, change files or update.

Before you start: stop the server so the backup holds complete files. See How to start, stop, restart and force-stop your server.

Where the world is stored

Inside Files, in Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/, in a folder named with a long random hexadecimal ID (for example 4AEB3402A12947168D48B5343B180FF9, created on first boot). Typical contents are Level.sav, LevelMeta.sav and a Players folder with one .sav per character. On the standard Linux server type, server settings are in Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini, and the active world is the folder named by DedicatedServerName in Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini. The Proton type uses a different config folder.

Make a backup

1. Open your server in the panel and click Backups in the left menu.
2. Click Start backup with Files selected. The backup copies the whole server folder, so the world is included.
3. To keep a copy outside PlayNHost, open the ... menu of the backup and choose Download.

The server folder also holds the game's own files, which can be large, so check the size on the Backups page. If it does not fit your backup space, ask support what to leave out. Do not guess an ignore pattern, because a wrong one can leave your world out of the backup. See How to create, download and restore backups for scheduling, locking and limits.

What to make sure is included

Stop the server and wait until it shows Offline, then create a backup in the panel. The panel backup covers the whole server, including the world in Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/ and the settings in Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/, so the world and the DedicatedServerName line restore together.

Restore a backup

A restore replaces the current files with the backup, and anything changed since is lost. Take a fresh backup of the current state first if you may want it back.

Choose Restore to server from the backup's ... menu, confirm, and start the server when it finishes.

To bring a world from another computer instead, see How to upload your own Palworld world.