Your Project Zomboid progress was lost after a crash or a stop

The game saves the world on its own, when players leave an area and when the server stops cleanly. If the server crashes or you press Kill, whatever was not yet saved is lost. A normal Stop saves first. To lose less next time, use Save World before risky changes and keep the nightly backup.

What was lost, and how to get it back

1. Look at Backups. Find the newest backup before the problem: How to back up and restore your Project Zomboid world.
2. Restore it: How to restore your Project Zomboid world from a backup. The nightly Automatic backup runs save first, so it holds the world as of that time.
3. Tell your players the time of the backup. They lose what happened after it.

If you changed settings and want only the old settings back, restore only those files: How to restore only the settings or players of your Project Zomboid server.

Why it happens

• Kill. It ends the game at once without a save. Use it only when the server is stuck: How to stop and save your Project Zomboid server safely.
• A crash. The server stopped by itself, for example out of memory. Look at the Console and the Usage card: How much RAM does a Project Zomboid server need.
• A restore or a change of Server Name that went back to an older world: Your Project Zomboid world seems to have vanished.

Lose less next time

• Run the Save World task before you change settings, add mods or restart.
• Set Save the world every (minutes) in the World group of Server Settings to a few minutes: How to change the world settings of your Project Zomboid server. The default of 0 saves only when players leave an area.
• Keep the nightly Automatic backup on, and make a backup before a big change.
• The game's own copies are also an option: How to change the game backup settings of your Project Zomboid server.