2026-08-27

Where's My Palworld Save: Location, Structure, Backup and Usage

One world folder is all it takes: four local parsing tools, read-only, nothing uploaded.

4 save-powered tools

This site has a set of tools that read your game saves directly: Save Pals shows every Pal you own with its real talents and passives, the Breeding Planner and Breeding Predictor compute from the Pals you actually have, and the Progress Tracker syncs your dex, tower bosses, statues and more from the save.

Every one of these tools parses the save locally in your browser and uploads nothing to any server, so step one is always finding the save folder yourself and dragging the files onto the page. This guide covers where saves live, what each file does, how to tell multiple worlds apart, how to back up, and the dedicated-server case.

Fastest way: straight from the game

Launch Palworld and open the world-selection screen. There is a folder icon at the bottom left of the screen; clicking it opens the save location directly in Windows Explorer. If that does not work for you, use the manual route in the next section.

The full path

On Steam, Palworld saves live outside the install directory, in your user profile:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Pal\Saved\SaveGames\<SteamID64>\<WorldID>\

What each level of the path means:

• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames The master save directory for Palworld
• <SteamID64> Your 17-digit Steam account ID. One folder per Steam account that ever logged in on this PC
• <WorldID> One specific world, named by 32 random characters. The name has nothing to do with the world name you typed in game

Open it with the Run dialog

Press Win + R.

Type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames and press Enter to land right in the master directory.

%LOCALAPPDATA% is a system variable pointing at the current user’s AppData\Local folder. AppData is hidden by default, but jumping via the variable ignores hidden attributes entirely, so there is no need to enable "show hidden files". Curious what these percent-wrapped variables really are? PruneLab has a clearly written environment variables primer.

What’s inside a world folder

Opening a world folder, you will see:

File / directory	What it is	Which tools need it
Level.sav	The main world save: every Pal on the terrain, every base, chest and map object lives here	Save Pals, the Breeding Planner and the Breeding Predictor require it; the Progress Tracker reads gold blueprints from it
Players\	One file per player character; the filename is the character UID	core data for the Progress Tracker; drop the whole folder and the page identifies them automatically
WorldOption.sav	This world’s game-rule settings (difficulty, multipliers)	not needed here; that is the dedicated-server settings generator’s territory
LevelMeta.sav	World metadata	Not needed
LocalData.sav	Local per-machine data	Not needed
backup\	Automatic snapshot backups created by the game, see the backup section below	Not needed, but it can save you one day
everything else	Other files, e.g. the global Pal storage file and Steam Cloud markers; may change between versions	Not needed

A few things worth knowing:

• All .sav files are binary compressed data. Opening them in a text editor is pointless, and editing them by hand is not recommended.
• In a singleplayer world your own character file is always 00000000000000000000000000000001.sav (32 digits). In a pile of player files you can spot the solo host at a glance.
• Co-op keeps no separate save on your machine. A shared world lives on the host’s computer, everyone’s characters included, inside that world’s Players\. To analyse your co-op character, copy the world folder over from the host; on a dedicated server, download it from the server.
• Some folders contain only LocalData.sav without a Level.sav; those are usually abandoned stubs whose world was never created. Ignore them.

Telling multiple worlds apart

Long-time players tend to accumulate a row of world folders, many of them test junk. Two ways to recognise the right one:

1. Sort by modification time: switch Explorer to details view and sort by date modified. The world you actually play should show a recent timestamp on Level.sav or its backup\ matching your last session.
2. Cross-check in game: note the playtime and character level shown in the in-game world list, then match that against your time-sorted folders.

Getting it wrong costs nothing: every tool on this site is read-only, so picking the wrong folder just means dragging another one.

Backups: a habit worth building

Before touching configs, tinkering with a dedicated server or installing a major update, copy the entire world folder (right-click the AF368190…-level folder and paste it somewhere else). That is the simplest reliable whole-world backup.

Two mechanics worth knowing:

• The game backs up automatically. The backup\ directory holds world snapshots under backup\world\<date time>\. If a save ever corrupts, you can recover an earlier version from there.
• Steam Cloud sync. On Steam it is on by default and uploads after you quit the game. When you rearrange or replace save files manually, close the game completely first so cloud sync does not fight your changes.

Dedicated servers

If you self-host or rent a server, saves use the same structure, just inside the server install directory:

<InstallDir>\Pal\Saved\SaveGames\0\<ServerName>\

• There is an extra 0 layer. Dedicated servers always have a 0 subfolder under SaveGames (think: save slot zero). The Steam client does not have this layer.
• How to get the files. Locally hosted: walk into the directory. Panel-hosted: use the file manager or FTP to download the whole <server name> folder, then drag it into the tools like any world folder. Stop the server first so the data on disk is complete.

To adjust server rules, head for the dedicated-server settings generator instead; it works on PalWorldSettings.ini and WorldOption.sav and is independent of everything in this guide.

Platform support

Everything above applies to the Steam version on Windows. The Microsoft Store / Xbox Game Pass edition stores saves in a different container format which the site tools cannot read yet; there is no official cross-version migration either, so use a community converter tool to turn it into Steam format first. Once converted, the world folder works exactly as described here. Console platforms are in the same boat.

Next: put the save to work

Once you have the world folder:

1. Open the tool you need: Save Pals, the Breeding Planner, the Breeding Predictor or the Progress Tracker.
2. Drag the whole world folder onto the page (not a single file); the tool picks out what it needs. You can also use the folder-picker button.
3. Wait for parsing to finish and browse the results. No upload happens at any point.

Have fun out there.