characters lost ?

[Aquila]

hi folks
i'am back on this game after not playing for like a good year (maybe 1 1/2) and i see all my characters and progression have been erased, everything disapeared from my account, is that a thing ? (always played on steam)

[Kinjin]

the new update on 1/12 make it like that

[Rekal]

https://icarus.featureupvote.com/suggestions/463329/my-character-is-gone

This happened Dec 2022.

Originally posted by Elissa - Producer Admin:

05 Jul, '23
Elissa - Producer Admin

Hi there,

Back in December, Icarus changed where it stores your game data. We migrated from a central server to storing your game data on your local PC. You can read more about this in our Week 53 update: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1149460/view/3611354355089820956

For the three months after this change, everyone loading the game had their data automatically migrated and downloaded locally. In March the central servers were closed and we no longer store your game or character data. Unfortunately we can't restore it for you.

However, some community members have been sharing instructions for altering your game files in order to build your characters up a bit quicker in our discord: https://discord.gg/surviveicarus . I've attached a screenshot with that.

Thanks,
Elissa

Don't think there is any way to recover your character. But there are ways to save edit and get your progress back that way.

[william_es]

Yes, sadly, it's a thing.

The devs changed where the character files were stored. They're no longer trying retain that information on their servers, because it was a dead end and they were running out of space. They made changes to the game to store all the character information on our local computers now (as most games besides MMO's do).

For about 3-4 months, if you logged into the game all you had to do was a press a button to move all your character info to your own computer. At the end of that period, there was a way to download a depot from steam that had everyone's character info. Once it was copied to your computer you reverted back to the main branch of the game.

If you missed ALL of that... well... your character is gone. All your currencies, workshop gear, etc. Just... gone. That happened to me by the way, and many others.

There _IS_ a way to fix a lot of that. At least the workshop gear and currencies. Since those character files ARE stored locally, you can edit them. Give yourself enough currency to re-buy your missing gear.

If you join styx or prometheus maps with a brand new character, you will be offered a one time jump up to level 20. After you get the boost, you can take that same character to any other map, and do missions, open world, etc.

Also, if you decided to just start a new character from scratch and level it up the old fashioned way (grind, grind, grind), the game has had a LOT of changes to the gameplay loop over that period you were gone. Exotic mining is NO longer locked behind "payday extraction" mission. You don't have to do that mission at all. Not even to buy workshop radar & extractor. I started a brand new character and mined out a whole exotic node on my 3rd mission. I had to grind to get to 25 to unlock the biofuel extractor.

You can turn exotics into ren/credits at a 1 to 5 ration. Those exotics became a ton of credits. By my 4th mission I had replaced a bunch of basic workshop gear, and I just kept going from there. My new character has more workshop loot then my old character ever had.

On a new character, you will have to redo and unlock missions in the mission tree. Not gonna lie, that is pretty tedious for some of the more messed up missions. I hear you can edit the save files for that too, but I didn't want to mess with that.

[william_es]

Your data is stored at:

users/(username)/AppData/Local/Icarus/Saved

Once you open saved, look for "playerdata" and open that next. There will be a folder with a long number, and a backup folder. Open the folder with the long number.

Find the text file called "profile". Open it with a text editor program. Don't try to do this while the game is running. Exit the game first.

Highly recommend making a copy of "profile" before editing anything, and store the copy somewhere safe.

The file is in .JSON format. Which means the majority of it is in plain english. The formatting in a .JSON file is VERY important. Don't accidentally delete any curly brackets like { or }, commas, or equals signs. The spacing, etc. All there for a purpose.

Look for a section like this below:

{
"UserID": "(your steam 64 id number will be here)",
"MetaResources": [
{
"MetaRow": "Refund",
"Count": ###
},
{
"MetaRow": "Credits",
"Count": ###
},
{
"MetaRow": "Exotic1",
"Count": ###
},
{
"MetaRow": "Exotic_Red",
"Count": ###
}
],


Change the numbers after "count": with whatever currency amount you want there. I edited all my totals out and replaced them with ###. When looking at your own file, you will see a number there. Possibly 0 on a new character.

Refund = talent respecs.
Credits = ren
Exotic1 = Purple Exotics.
Exotic_Red = new red exotics only available from new Prometheus map (part of the New Frontiers DLC).

Save the changes after editing the file. When you restart the game, you should have whatever amount of currency you added.