Valheim is not saving when logging off? Try these fixes
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Key notes
- The Valheim not saving problem may set you hours back on your game progress.
- It seems that the Valheim save game error is caused by a bug with a read-only file.
- A great workaround for this problem with saving the game in Valheim is to use the game console as instructed below.
- Another way of solving this issue is to change that file's attribute as shown in our solution.
Valheim is an incredible fast-trending survival game with a 95% approval rate on Steam which is great for an early access title.
But we can see how that can happen because the gameplay is great and the graphics helps a lot too.
However, like any other starting game out there, Valheim came with its share of bugs and one of them is that users’ games are not saving after logging out and that translates into hours of lost play.
Here’s how a user expresses his complaint on Reddit:
I’m not sure why but whenever I log out of Valheim my game does not save. It goes to a black screen and does not do anything.
When on the black screen it shows that I am still in the game and I’ll still get the notifications that I can eat more and other related alerts.
The only fix for this for me is to go into cheat mode and manually save. Does anyone have a fix for this problem? I lose many gameplay hours because of this issue.
The Valheim not saving error is really frustrating because sometimes you spend a lot of time and effort to get a special item only to find out in the next session that all was for nothing.
So, it seems that this issue mostly occurs in single-player mode when you are offline. When you play online, the game server saves the state periodically.
There is no official fix for this issue yet, but we have found a few solutions that can get you over this problem until the next update.
How can I fix the Valheim not saving problem?
1. Save the game from your console
- Press F5 to open up the game console.
- Type save (all lower case letters) and press Enter.
- That will save your game so do that before logging out.
That’s it! Next time you open your game you will have your progress saved but you need to remember to do that every time before logging out.
2. Uncheck the read-only box from the .old file
- Open Windows File Explorer by pressing the Windows + E keys.
- Navigate to the following folder:
C:/Users/Username/AppData/LocalLow/IronGate/Valheim/characters - Locate the charactername.fch.old file (replace charactername with the actual name of the character).
- Right-click the file and select Properties.
- Uncheck the read-only attribute and click OK.
It seems that this problem is caused by the fact that a file named charactername.fch.old (replace charactername with your actual character name) somehow gets the read-only attribute.
This means that the game cannot overwrite it with new data and that’s why your game is not being saved. The solution is to remove the read-only attribute from the file.
However, this trick doesn’t work every time because some users complained that the read-only attribute comes back after a while.
Unfortunately, this is by far not the only Valheim bug out there. For instance, many gamers complained about screen shaking but you can fix that issue easily.
You should also consider installing the latest Valheim mod that can fix a lot of other issues with the game.
Buggy or not, Valheim is among the top 5 most popular games in Steam so a few issues won’t stop you. Anyway, it would be excellent to have an official copy by hitting the button below.
Valheim
Valheim is one of the most popular games on Steam so get on with this incredible survival adventure.Have you succeeded in fixing your Valheim not saving issue using our solutions? Do you have any other tweaks that can also help other fellow games? Leave us a comment in the section below.
