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Valheim World Recovery

World won't load, or a .db/.fwl got mismatched, truncated, or you restored the wrong one? A Valheim world is a matched pair - <World>.db (the world) and <World>.fwl (name, seed, spawn) - and the game keeps .old backups. Point this page at your world folder: it pairs the files up, ranks every copy by save time and integrity, picks the newest intact pair, and hands you a clean, ready-to-upload world plus the launch argument.

Your save never leaves your browser. It reads only file names, sizes and modified-times to rank the copies, copies the chosen pair's bytes into a zip locally, and never modifies your originals - the zip even keeps the files it would replace as a backup.

Your save never leaves your browser Reads names, sizes & times only Copies a pair - originals untouched

Pick your world folder

Local worlds live in %APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local\ (or Steam Cloud); a dedicated server keeps them in its worlds / save directory. Pick the folder with your .db and .fwl files. Stop the server / close the game first.

Want this on a real server? Supercraft hosts Valheim →

How Valheim saves - and how they break

Each world is two files that must stay together: <World>.db is the world itself, <World>.fwl is its metadata. On every save Valheim rotates the previous copy to .db.old / .fwl.old, and many servers keep dated auto-backups too. The usual failures:

  • Truncated .db - a crash or a copy made mid-write leaves the current world too small to load. The .old pair is almost always fine.
  • Orphaned half - a .db with no matching .fwl (or vice versa) won't load. The tool flags it and only offers complete pairs.
  • Wrong copy restored - people rename the older backup over the newer good one. The timeline (real save times) stops the guessing.

Want to read a world's name, seed and modifiers, or build the -modifier startup flags? That's the World & Modpack Doctor. Prefer it hosted with daily backups? Run a Valheim server with Supercraft.

Manual recovery (no JavaScript needed)

  1. Stop the server / close the game so nothing overwrites a copy.
  2. In the world folder, back up everything for the world first.
  3. Check the Date modified and size of <World>.db vs <World>.db.old. If the current one is tiny or newer-but-broken, the .old is your restore point.
  4. Copy the good .db.old to <World>.db and the matching .fwl.old to <World>.fwl - always both, as a pair.
  5. Start with -world "<World>" and confirm it loads before deleting the backup.

FAQ

Is my save really not uploaded?

Really - there's no upload endpoint on this page. Reading the folder and building the recovery zip both happen in your browser; the network tab shows zero requests carrying your world.

Can it recover a world with no good backup?

No tool can rebuild data that isn't on disk. If every .db is truncated and there's no intact .old or auto-backup, it says so honestly instead of handing you a broken file. Restore from a server-side backup if you have one.

Does it change my world's seed?

No - it copies your existing files verbatim and only renames the chosen pair to the clean <World>.db / .fwl. The seed and everything else are exactly as they were in that save.