Move a Singleplayer World to your Valheim Server

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Already have a world you’ve put a hundred hours into? You can move it onto your server. It’s a folder copy, and the whole job is five steps.

Your character isn’t part of this

Tip

Only the world moves. Your character stays on your own PC.

Valheim keeps your character — skills, inventory, appearance — in a file on your computer, and it comes with you to every server you join automatically. There’s nothing to upload, and no character folder on the server at all.

So when you connect to your server after the import, you’re the same Viking you always were, standing in the world you just uploaded.

This catches out nearly everyone who imports a world, so it’s worth saying plainly: if your character looks wrong after joining, you picked the wrong character at the menu. Nothing was lost.

1. Find your world on your PC

Valheim keeps singleplayer worlds in a worlds_local folder:

OS	Where to look
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local\
Linux	~/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/

Paste the Windows path straight into the File Explorer address bar — AppData is hidden, so browsing to it by hand doesn’t work unless you’ve turned hidden folders on.

Inside, each world is a folder named after the world.

Caution

Can’t see your world on disk, but it’s there in game? It’s a Steam Cloud save that hasn’t come down yet. Launch Valheim, load the world once, quit properly, and check again — or turn off Steam Cloud for Valheim in its Steam properties. There’s nothing to copy until the files exist locally.

2. Know what you’re copying

Valheim 1.0 changed how worlds are stored. A world is now a folder that looks like this:

MyWorld/
├── _main.7.fwl2      world metadata — seed and world modifiers
├── _main.7.db2       the main world database
├── _main.7.chunks    chunk index
├── _main.7.ok        integrity marker
├── 00_00__0_3.chunk  terrain, one file per region you've explored
├── 1e_20__1_1.chunk
└── ...

Copy the entire folder. Don’t pick files out of it.

That number in _main.7 is a save counter that goes up every time the world saves — a brand new world is _main.0, a well-played one might be _main.34. Yours will not be 7. It doesn’t matter what the number is, as long as you move the whole folder and leave every file in it alone.

Note

Older guides tell you to copy a WorldName.db and WorldName.fwl pair. That was the pre-1.0 layout. If that’s what you have, see Bringing a pre-1.0 world below.

Size: a fresh world is a couple of megabytes. A world you’ve explored properly can run to hundreds, because every region you’ve visited is its own .chunk file. Budget some time for the upload.

3. Stop the server

Stop it from the Console tab in the Nitro Panel. Stop, not restart.

Danger

This is the step people skip, and skipping it quietly destroys the import.

A running Valheim server holds the world in memory and writes it back to disk on its next autosave — every 30 minutes by default. Upload onto a running server and the server will happily overwrite everything you just sent, with no error and no warning. It just looks like the import didn’t work.

If your server already has a world you care about, take a backup before you go any further.

4. Upload the world

Your world folder goes here on the server:

/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/

Pick whichever route suits you.

Option A — SFTP

Best for large worlds, and the only comfortable way to move a folder full of chunk files. We suggest Cyberduck or FileZilla — both are free.

Your details are on the Settings tab of your server:

Field	What to enter
Server / host	The address shown, on port 2022 — for example wolfhound.evlbox.com port 2022
Username	The full string shown, including the dot and everything after it
Password	Your Nitro Panel password — the one you log in to the panel with
Protocol	SFTP

Note

The username looks strange on purpose. It’s your panel username, a dot, then that specific server’s ID — something like yourname.9febe798.

The part after the dot is what tells us which server you’re connecting to, so it’s different for every server on your account. Copy the whole thing exactly as the panel shows it. Leaving off the ID is the single most common reason an SFTP login gets rejected.

Your password is not different — it’s the same one you use for the panel. There’s no separate SFTP password to find or set.

1. Click Launch SFTP in the panel to open the connection in your installed client, or enter the details above by hand.
2. Accept the fingerprint prompt the first time you connect — that’s your client noting the server it hasn’t seen before.
3. Navigate to .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/.
4. Drag your whole world folder in.

Caution

If you’re on a subuser account rather than the server owner’s, SFTP access is a permission that has to be granted to you. See Share Control Panel Access.

Option B — the panel file manager

No extra software, but the file manager can’t upload a folder — so send it as a zip.

1. On your PC, zip the world folder itself. You want the folder inside the archive, not a pile of loose files.
2. In the panel, go to the Files tab and into .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/.
3. Click Upload and send the zip.
4. Click the ⋯ menu at the end of the zip’s row and choose Unarchive.
5. Check that you now have a folder named after your world, with the _main.* files inside it. Delete the zip once you’re happy.

Note

Two things you don’t need to upload, and shouldn’t:

• Any *_backup_auto-* folders — those are the server’s own automatic backups.
• Anything in cache/. The _biomedatacache.bin file is around 20 MB and the server rebuilds it on its own.

5. Set the World Name and start

The World Name on the Startup tab has to match your world’s folder name exactly.

A folder called MyWorld means a World Name of MyWorld — not myworld, not MyWorld.db. It’s case-sensitive, and it’s capped at 20 characters, so rename the folder before you upload if yours is longer.

Then start the server and watch the Console tab for:

ZNet.LoadWorld: MyWorld
...
Game server connected

That first line is the confirmation you want — it’s the server telling you which world it actually loaded.

Danger

A World Name that doesn’t match any folder does not produce an error. Valheim generates a brand new world under that name and starts it, which looks exactly like your save being wiped.

If you join and find yourself on an empty beach, don’t panic and don’t play. Stop the server, check the spelling and capitalisation of the World Name against the folder in worlds_local/, and start again. Your uploaded world is still sitting there untouched.

Bringing a pre-1.0 world

If your world is a WorldName.db and WorldName.fwl pair rather than a folder, it’s from before Valheim 1.0. Upload the two files into worlds_local/ and set the World Name to the filename without its extension — Valheim converts it to the 1.0 format when it loads.

Caution

That conversion is one-way. Once a world has been opened by 1.0 it can’t go back. Keep a copy of the original pair somewhere safe before you load it the first time — that copy is your only way back if anything goes sideways.

Getting a world back off the server

The same trip in reverse, if you want to keep playing solo.

1. Stop the server.
2. Download the world folder from .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/. Leave the *_backup_auto-* folders behind.
3. Drop it into worlds_local/ on your PC, using the paths in step 1.

It shows up in your singleplayer world list next launch. Your character already works — it never left your machine.

Troubleshooting

Issue	What to check
Joined and got an empty new world	World Name doesn’t match the folder name. Case matters. Stop the server and fix it — your upload is fine.
World loaded but progress is missing	The server was running during the upload and overwrote it. Stop the server and upload again.
Console shows a different world name than expected	ZNet.LoadWorld tells you what actually loaded. Match the Startup tab to your folder.
Unarchive left loose files, not a folder	The zip was made from the folder’s contents. Create a folder in worlds_local/ named after your world and move the files into it.
World isn’t in worlds_local on your PC	Steam Cloud save that hasn’t synced down. Load it once in game, quit properly, look again.
Upload keeps timing out	Large explored worlds are hundreds of megabytes. Use SFTP rather than the file manager.

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Questions? Reach out on the support Discord or create a ticket.