Palworld Save File Location (Steam and Game Pass, 2026): Back Up, Restore and Transfer Your World

If you are looking for your Palworld save file location, start with where you bought the game, because the path is different. On Steam, saves are not in the steamapps install folder. They sit in your Windows user profile at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames. Press Windows + R, paste that path and press Enter, and the folder opens even though AppData is hidden by default. It does not matter which drive you installed Steam games on; the saves stay in your user profile. Inside you will find a folder named with your Steam ID number, and inside that, each folder with a long string of letters and numbers is one world from the world select screen. On PC Game Pass (the Xbox app or Microsoft Store version), saves go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\PocketpairInc.Palworld_ad4psfrxyesvt\SystemAppData\wgs. Those files have random-looking names, so you cannot pick out one world and copy it the way you can on Steam. If you run your own dedicated server, each world lives under Pal\Saved\SaveGames\0 in the server folder. This guide starts from those paths and covers backing up and restoring a world, moving a save to another PC or a dedicated server, and why a character can look lost after a move. Paths and menus were checked on October 16, 2026 against Palworld 1.0 (latest patch v1.0.5), the official patch notes and server guide, and community references such as PCGamingWiki. For more guides on the game, see the Palworld game page.

Short answer: close the game, then copy the whole world folder

Here is what to do for each goal. To back up, fully close Palworld and copy the entire SaveGames folder to another drive, an external disk or cloud storage. To keep a single world, copy that world's folder as a whole. Copying only Level.sav can leave behind the Players folder, which holds each player's character. To restore, try the in-game option first. According to the official patch notes, v0.1.5.0 (February 2024) added save backups on the world selection screen, and on Steam you can roll a world back from there with Restore from Backup Data. If that does not help, players restore by hand from the backup folder inside the world folder, picking matching timestamps in its local and world subfolders. To continue on another PC with the same Steam account, check Steam Cloud first, which Palworld supports according to its Steam store page. To be certain, launch the game once on the new PC so it creates your Steam ID folder, close it, then paste the world folder inside. Moving to a dedicated server takes the most care. Community migration guides place the world folder under SaveGames\0 on the server, set DedicatedServerName in GameUserSettings.ini to the folder name, and delete WorldOption.sav from the world folder so the server's PalWorldSettings.ini applies. The catch is that a co-op host's character is stored under a fixed ID, so hosts report starting as a new character on the server, and the usual fix is a community tool, not an official one. The same community guides report that moving between Windows and Linux servers can affect every player the same way. As of October 16, 2026, we found no official way in the patch notes or the server guide to move saves between the Steam and Game Pass versions, or from a co-op world to a server. If you only want to bring Pals to another world, the official Global Palbox added in v0.5.0 is the safer route, and on a server the bAllowGlobalPalboxExport and bAllowGlobalPalboxImport settings must allow saving and loading. For the world values you may want to set again after the move, such as difficulty and capture rate, see the Palworld world settings guide.

How to back up and transfer a Palworld save

1. 1Close the game and let syncing finishQuit Palworld completely, not just back to the world select screen. While it runs, save files can be locked or in the middle of an autosave. Guides note the autosave interval can be changed from 30 seconds to 30 minutes in the world's custom settings, and that autosave cannot be turned off. On Steam, wait a moment after quitting so Steam Cloud can finish syncing. If you host co-op, close the world after your friends have left. For a dedicated server, shut the server down cleanly before you copy anything.
2. 2Open the save folderPress Windows + R, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames and press Enter. For Game Pass, open %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages, then the folder that starts with PocketpairInc.Palworld, then SystemAppData\wgs. Game8 also notes that on Steam you can select a world on the world select screen and use the folder icon at the bottom to open that world's folder directly, so use it if you see it.
3. 3Find the right world folderOpen the Steam ID folder inside SaveGames. You will see one long-named folder per world, and the names do not tell you which world is which, so sort by date modified. If you are unsure, load the world you want for a moment, quit, and pick the folder that changed most recently. Inside are Level.sav (the world), LevelMeta.sav, LocalData.sav (data kept for this PC, such as map progress), the Players folder (one file per character) and a backup folder with automatic backups. You may also see WorldOption.sav, which holds the world's settings.
4. 4Copy the folder and add a dateCopy the world folder, or the whole SaveGames folder to keep everything, paste it on another drive, an external disk or cloud storage, and add the date to the folder name. Do not cut and move it. If the move goes wrong, you will have no original to go back to. The official 1.0 notice also asks players to back up save data before updating or cleaning up mods.
5. 5Paste it on the new PC or serverFor Steam on another PC, launch Palworld there once so SaveGames and your Steam ID folder exist, quit, then paste the world folder inside the Steam ID folder. For a dedicated server, start the server once and stop it (the official guide notes its folders are only created after the first start), put the world folder under Pal\Saved\SaveGames\0, set DedicatedServerName in Pal\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\GameUserSettings.ini to the folder name, and delete WorldOption.sav. If you rent a server, use your host's upload tools and instructions.
6. 6Join, check, and keep the originalStart the game or server and check your base, your Pals and your character level. If Steam asks whether to use the cloud files or the files on this PC, compare the dates and choose the files you just pasted. If the host is sent to character creation on a server, that is the host ID problem described above. Make sure your backup is safe, then decide whether to use a community tool or start fresh. Even when everything works, keep the original backup for a few days.

Palworld save file paths at a glance (checked October 16, 2026)

Checklist before you move a save

• Palworld (or the server) was fully closed before copying.
• The save was copied, not cut, and the original folder is stored separately with a date in its name.
• If you use mods, you backed up first as the official 1.0 notice advises, and deleted old mod files from the game folder instead of only switching them off.
• For a dedicated server, DedicatedServerName and WorldOption.sav were handled.
• You joined and confirmed that the host and every other player kept their characters.
• Your base and Pal layout were recorded on video before the move.

What a save does not keep: record your base before you move it

A save folder holds world data, not what your world looked like. If structures or working Pals look different after a server move, or you restore a backup and cannot tell which point in time you went back to, having something to compare against makes checking much faster. That is why a short recorded walk around your base right before a move is worth the minute. DOR is a free Windows app. With an up-to-date version running, it detects the Steam version of Palworld and records your session as one video from launch to exit (Settings > Game, Full gameplay recording, on by default on personal PCs). When a part of the tour you want to keep goes by, press F8 to save the previous 30 seconds as a separate clip; you can set that length to 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds. Resolution, frame rate and clip length cannot be changed while recording, so set them before you launch the game (default 1080p at 30fps). The PC Game Pass version of Palworld is not auto-detected, so press F7 to start a screen recording and F7 again to stop; a screen recording captures your whole monitor. Recordings are saved to the folder set in DOR Settings > File Management > File Save Path, not next to your saves, so backing up SaveGames does not copy your videos, and cleaning up videos does not touch your saves. With Automatic File Management on (30GB by default), full session recordings are cleaned up oldest first within their own share (5GB by default), so give the videos you need, like that pre-move base tour, a Like in My Clips. You can also keep only the part you need with Trim Section. DOR warns when free space on the drive that holds your File Save Path drops below 30GB and will not start, or will stop, recording below 20GB, so check that drive if you also keep several save backups on it. For recording settings and ideas for what to capture, see how to clip and save Palworld gameplay, and if you worry about frame rate while recording, the graphics options are in Palworld best settings.