Imagine this: a player new to Valheim begins to explore their world, pouring hours and hours into building the best possible Valheim base, defeating bosses, and crafting better armor. Then, several hours in, the world crashes due to a bug and is no longer recoverable. Thankfully, there is an easy way to back up a Valheim seed to ensure that players never lose too much.
Valheim is still in early access, and although it is as bug-free as possible, there is always the possibility of data loss. Back in February, a Valheim bug was discovered that could destroy saved states and entire worlds, leading some players to lose all the hours that had been poured into their save file. In spite of the fact that this particular bug has been patched, there is no guarantee that another won't worm its way into Valheim's code. This is what makes having regular backups of all worlds absolutely necessary. Lucky for players, the process to back up a world is very easy.
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First, players need to know where they installed Valheim; for most players using Windows 10, it will be located in their AppData/LocalLow files under their Windows username. However, players may have chosen a different location to install and keep Valheim's data. In order to track it down, players just need to go to their C: drive, then use the search function to find the "Valheim" folder.
Once the Valheim folder is located, players will be able to access backups for their worlds, their characters, and even crash reports for this Norse mythology rich Valheim game. Crash reports can be useful for players experiencing a bug a chatting with Irongate's customer help.
Inside the Valheim folder under LocalLow, there will be a folder labeled "Worlds" and a folder labeled "Characters." "Worlds" will save overall player progress in an individual Valheim world seed, regardless of the number of players that use the world. The characters folder will hold all the data for a player's avatars, with save data that keeps track of what's in their inventories, what armor they are wearing, and the weapons and tools they carry.
Players can either back these files up to a different place on their computer or they can upload them to some sort of cloud service to keep them safe. Once a player has discovered the location of these folders, a shortcut on their desktop will not only make finding them again easier but will serve as a reminder to back up the worlds regularly as well. As Valheim continues down its 2021 roadmap, players will most likely come across some bugs, so backing up their worlds and characters will always be a good idea.
Valheim is currently in early access for PC.