Every Valheim player’s worst nightmare is the “Failed to restore savegame” error message. The progress and grind hours you put into the game have been lost due to a system error. Fortunately, there are several ways to solve this problem. Here’s how you can fix the “Failed to restore backup” error in Valheim.
Related: All console commands in Valheim and what they do
Restore Corrupted Valheim Character
Image via iron gate
If it’s your world that’s broken and can’t be restored, be sure to select the world before clicking “move local” when managing your savegames. If done correctly, the save should be restored when you load it.
If your character data has been corrupted, accessing your Windows Files may allow you to recover a backup of your corrupted character, but note that this is not a guaranteed fix. If you are unable to recover your character after following this method, you may need to start over and redo your character.
First, navigate to the file path C:UsersUsernameAppDataLocalLowIronGateValheimcharacters, replacing “Username” with your Windows username. You should be able to see 2 files for each character you have, Character.fch and Character.fch.old, where “Character” would be your in-game character name. “Character.fch” would be your corrupt Valheim character, while that “Character.fch.old” would be your character backup. Create a new folder, then make copies of both files in that folder, just in case. After that, delete the Character.fch file and rename the Character.fch.old file to “Character.fch”. This will allow the backup to replace your current character and resolve the “Failed to restore backup” error. It is also recommended that you keep backup copies of your character data in case this situation arises.
This can also be done with world backups, just search for “World.fwl”, “World.db” and their respective .old versions. Replace the current backup with the old ones, and you should be able to restore your world from a backup, if the “move to local” method doesn’t work.
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