World Management

Your Palworld world contains everything — terrain modifications, player-built structures, captured Pals, inventories, and progression data. Managing your world data properly ensures you never lose hours of gameplay to accidents or corruption. This guide covers world save locations, backups, restoration, and starting fresh.

World Save Location

Palworld stores all world data in a specific directory on your server. Understanding this structure helps when you need to manually manage files:

Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<WorldID>/

Inside this directory you will find:

LevelMeta.sav — World metadata including the world name and creation time
Level.sav — The main world data file containing terrain, structures, and world state
Players/ — A subdirectory containing individual player save files, each named with the player’s unique ID
WorldOption.sav — World-specific option overrides

The <WorldID> is a long alphanumeric string that uniquely identifies your world. If you have ever reset or created multiple worlds, you may see multiple directories here. The active world is the one referenced in your server’s saved state.

Creating a Backup

Before making any changes to your world, always create a backup first.

Panel Backups (Recommended)

Log in to Dashboard and select your server
Go to Backups in the sidebar
Click Create Backup
Give it a descriptive name (e.g., “before-reset-march-2026”)
Click Start Backup

Panel backups capture your entire server including world data, configurations, and all other files. They are the safest option because they can be restored with a single click.

Manual File Backup

If you want to back up just the world data:

Stop your server — This is critical. Copying files from a running server can result in corrupted backups.
Open the File Manager or connect via SFTP
Navigate to Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/
Download the entire <WorldID> folder to your computer
Store it somewhere safe

Keep multiple backups with dates in the folder names so you can go back to different points in time.

Restoring a World

From a Panel Backup

Go to Backups in the sidebar
Find the backup you want to restore
Click the restore button (arrow icon)
Confirm the restoration
Start your server

The panel will replace your current server files with the backed-up versions. This restores everything exactly as it was when the backup was created.

From a Manual Backup

If you saved world files manually:

Stop your server
Open the File Manager or connect via SFTP
Navigate to Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/
Delete or rename the current <WorldID> folder (renaming is safer in case you need it later)
Upload your backed-up <WorldID> folder to the same location
Start your server

Make sure the folder structure is correct after uploading. The path should be Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<WorldID>/Level.sav — not nested inside an extra directory.

Starting Fresh (World Reset)

Sometimes you want a clean slate. Here is how to reset your world:

Stop your server
Create a backup of your current world (in case you change your mind)
Open the File Manager or connect via SFTP
Navigate to Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/
Delete the <WorldID> folder
Start your server

The server will generate a brand new world on startup. All player progress, builds, and Pals from the previous world will be gone. This is irreversible without a backup, so make absolutely sure you have saved a copy if you think you might want to return to the old world.

Transferring a World from Another Host

If you are migrating from another hosting provider and want to keep your existing world:

On your old host, stop the server and download the world save folder from Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<WorldID>/
On your Witchly.host server, stop the server
If a world already exists in Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/, delete it
Upload your old world folder to Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/ via SFTP (recommended for large files) or the file manager
Start your server

Player data should carry over as long as players connect with the same account. If anyone has trouble, they may need to rejoin and their character will re-link based on their unique player ID.

For a complete migration walkthrough, see our Migrating to Witchly guide.

World Corruption Prevention

Palworld world saves can become corrupted under certain circumstances. Follow these practices to minimize the risk:

Always stop the server before editing files. If you modify files while the server is writing save data, you can corrupt the world. Use the Stop button in the panel and wait for the server to fully shut down before making changes.

Use scheduled restarts. Palworld servers can develop memory leaks over long uptimes. A daily restart keeps the server healthy and triggers a clean save. See our Schedules and Auto-Restarts guide.

Keep multiple backup generations. Do not rely on a single backup. Corruption is sometimes not noticed immediately, so having backups from different dates gives you more recovery options. Set up automatic daily backups through the schedule system and keep at least a week’s worth.

Monitor your disk usage. If your server runs out of disk space, save files cannot be written correctly. Check your resource usage in the panel periodically and remove old backups or unnecessary files if space is running low.

Troubleshooting World Issues

World reverted to an earlier state: This usually happens when the server crashed before completing a save. Restore from your most recent backup. If you do not have one, the server may have an auto-save from shortly before the crash in the SaveGames directory.

Players lost their progress but the world is intact: Player data is stored in individual files under the Players/ subdirectory. If a specific player’s file was corrupted, you can restore just their file from a backup without affecting the rest of the world.

Server fails to start after restoring a world: Verify the folder structure is correct. The world folder should be directly inside Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/, not nested in an extra directory. Also ensure the settings in PalWorldSettings.ini are valid.

If you encounter persistent world issues, open a support ticket on Discord and include details about what happened and when. Our team can help investigate and recover data when possible.