How to Transfer Your Palworld Save to a Dedicated Server

What moves across, and what does not

Palworld stores a world and a character in different places, and that one fact explains everything about this transfer.

• The world moves. The terrain as you reshaped it, every structure you built, your chests and what is in them, and the Pals working at your bases all live in a single file. Copy that file across and the world is there, exactly as you left it.
• Your character does not. A dedicated server recognises players by their platform account. Your single-player host character was never registered that way, so the first time you join your own server you are somebody new — level one, no gear, no technology points.
• Ownership may not move either. Bases and the Pals assigned to them are recorded against the character that built them. Your new character is not that character, so a base can be standing in front of you and still not be yours to manage.

For plenty of groups that is a fair trade: the world took months, a character takes a weekend. If it is not a fair trade for you, the original character can be brought over — but that is hands-on work on your specific save rather than a file copy, and it is covered in keeping your original character.

Find your world folder on your PC

Palworld keeps local saves under your Windows user profile. Paste this straight into the File Explorer address bar and press Enter:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames

Inside there is a folder named with a long number — that is your Steam ID — and inside that, one folder per world, each named with a 32-character code. The codes tell you nothing, so pick the world by Date modified: the folder that changed most recently is the world you played last.

Open it and confirm you can see Level.sav, LevelMeta.sav and a Players folder. That combination means you are in the right place. Now copy the entire folder to your desktop — that copy is both your backup and the thing you will upload from, so you are never working off the original.

Which files to copy, and the two to leave behind

A local world folder holds up to five things. Three of them belong on the server. Two of them do not, and uploading either one is the most common way this goes wrong.

Why leave WorldOption.sav behind

WorldOption.sav holds the settings for that world as your PC recorded them — difficulty, rates, day length. A dedicated server does not work that way: it reads its settings from PalWorldSettings.ini, which is what your panel writes to when you change something. A server that was created normally has no WorldOption.sav at all, so if you see one, it came from a PC.

Copy it over and you introduce a second source for the same settings, competing with the one you can actually edit. The symptom is unmistakable once you know it: you change a setting, restart, and nothing happens. So leave the file behind — and if you have already copied it, deleting it and restarting is the first thing to try. Everything the panel can set is listed in the Palworld server settings guide.

Put your world on the server, step by step

You need the copy of your local world folder from earlier, and your server open in the control panel. Save files are only a few megabytes, so the browser upload handles them comfortably.

1. Stop the server and wait until it reads Offline. Press Stop and watch the status. This is the one step you cannot rush: a Palworld server writes the world out as part of shutting down, so anything you upload while it is still stopping is overwritten seconds later — and it looks exactly like an upload that silently failed. If it has not gone offline after a minute, press Kill and wait for Offline.
2. Back up the world that is already on the server. Open the File Manager, go to Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0, tick the box next to the world folder and choose Archive. You get a single compressed file next to it. Thirty seconds of work, and it is what you restore from if anything below goes sideways.
3. Open the right world folder. There is normally just one folder in Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0, named with a 32-character code. If there is more than one, open Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini and find the line beginning DedicatedServerName — the value after the equals sign is the folder your server actually loads. The others are leftovers, and picking one of those is why some transfers appear to do nothing.
4. Delete the old world files. Inside that folder, delete Level.sav and LevelMeta.sav, and delete everything inside the Players folder. Keep the empty Players folder itself, and do not touch the backup folder. If a WorldOption.sav is sitting there, delete that as well.
5. Upload your Level.sav and LevelMeta.sav. Drag both from your desktop copy into the world folder, or use the Upload button. They are the only two files that go in at this level.
6. Upload your player files into the Players folder. Open Players on the server first, then drag in the files from the Players folder of your local copy. Drag the files, not the folder — the uploader accepts files only and quietly refuses a dropped folder, which catches almost everyone the first time.
7. Start the server and give it a minute. Press Start and watch the console. A large world with a developed base takes a little longer to load than a fresh one, so let it settle before you judge it.
8. Join and look around. Your map, your buildings, your Pals. You will be a new character at the starting point — that part is expected.

Keeping your original character (a manual job)

Everything that makes your host character yours — its level, stats, appearance and technology points — plus which guild owns your bases and the Pals working in them, is recorded against a player identity that only ever existed in your single-player world. The dedicated server has no idea who that is.

Making it recognise that identity is not a setting and not a file copy. It means editing the world save itself: rewriting the identity your character and your guild are stored under so the server matches them to your account when you connect, then testing on the server afterwards to confirm the character, the Pals, and base and guild ownership all actually came through. It has to be done against your specific world, and it has to be checked rather than assumed.

Our team does this by hand as a paid service. Here is how it works:

1. Open a support ticket and tell us which server it is for, and that you want your original character kept.
2. Put a copy of your local save on the server. Compress the world folder you found earlier into a zip and upload it through the File Manager — into the server root, not into the world folder, so nothing live is touched. Ticket attachments only accept images and documents, so the save itself cannot travel through the ticket.
3. We look at the world first. Saves differ, and so do game versions. We tell you what can be recovered and what it costs before any work starts, so you decide with the facts in front of you.
4. We do the conversion and test it on your server, and confirm with you that your character, your Pals and your bases are back under your control.

Your world is never at risk while we do it: the copy you made stays untouched on your PC, and the server world is archived before anything changes. And if you would rather not wait, the free route above is always there — you keep the world and start a new character in it.

If something is wrong after the transfer

Four things account for nearly every failed transfer, and all four are recoverable.

The server will not start, or starts and stops again

Check the world folder for LocalData.sav and delete it if it is there. If the server still will not boot, restore the archive you made before uploading, then repeat the process with the server fully Offline before you upload — not merely stopping.

The server starts, but the world is brand new

The server looked for a world and did not find one, which means the files are in the wrong place. Level.sav has to sit directly inside the world folder — not inside a further folder within it — and that folder has to be the one named in DedicatedServerName. Both mistakes produce the same clean, empty map.

Everything is there, but the base is not mine

Expected on the free route. The buildings and Pals belong to the character that made them, and your new character is not that character. This is exactly what the manual conversion in keeping your original character fixes.

Settings I change in the panel do nothing

Look for WorldOption.sav in the world folder. Delete it, restart, and the panel is back in charge.

None of this is corruption. Your PC save is untouched, the previous server world is inside the archive you made, and the world folder keeps its own dated copies in backup as well. If you are stuck, open a ticket with your server name and what you have tried, and we will take a look at the files with you.