Lost Saved Game Fix ((If you have available backups))

[Splatter]

To start off, if you don't have anything in your backups folder, this guide won't help you. I'm sorry.

A little bit of my own story, if you want to skip to the answer just scroll down to the break.

My partner is absolutely obsessed with this game. It's gotta be her biggest comfort right now, and is something that helps them unwind after work. She wanted to show it to me last night, and when she hit "Continue" on the game, it started a new game, and when she exited out, she saw that it completely wiped her save data.

She had already sunk multiple hours into the game, so as you can imagine, she was absolutely devastated. I had plans to go out soon after and when I was gone, they searched all over for some kind of answer, but nothing was definitive. By the time I got home, we had to go to bed due to the time, plus she had exhausted herself from researching and just wanted to step away from it at that point.

So, I booted up their laptop this morning and did my own file searching, and ended up fixing her issue after a lot of trial and error!

Anyways, here's what you gotta do.

---

The Solution

To be safe, make sure to disable steam cloud for Dredge before messing with the files.

First, follow these paths to open up both the "saves" and "backup saves" folders:

C:\Users\*INSERT NAME*\AppData\LocalLow\Black Salt Games\DREDGE\saves

and

C:\Users\*INSERT NAME*\AppData\LocalLow\Black Salt Games\DREDGE\backup-saves

There are going to be two types of files that you want to pay attention to. The "dredge-save0.bin" file(s) with an icon (which I'll call "active" files), and the ".bak_#" files that don't have an icon and can't open on their own (I will call these files "inactive" files).

The "active" saves are the ones that the game will run in-game. The "inactive" ones are old backups, and inaccessible if you don't change them to the same type of file as the active ones are.

So! Look through the inactive files in the backups folder and delete any that are dated after the creation of the "new game". Repeat this process with the active files from the saves folder.

Once that's done, take the most recent "inactive" file with your old save and move it from the backups folder to the saves folder. Then, rename the file to end in ".bin" instead of ".bak_#".

For example, my backup was named "dredge-save0.bin.bak_2". I renamed it to "dredge-save0.bin".

Your computer will more than likely prompt you saying that the file may become unusable if you do this. Don't worry about this and just continue.

Boom! The inactive file should change to an active file. Launch Dredge and your saved game should be ready to go!

Aaaand that's it! I really hope this was helpful! Feel free to leave extra questions if you have them, and if you run into any issues along the way, I'll do my best help as well!

I hope y'all have a good day. ^^

[mignolonobel]

I just had exactly the same problem but on the steam deck. Does anyone know how to find the backup folder on it? I've beeb loving the game (like 10hrs in) but the idea of starting from scratch is not great I have to admit!

[403Zzz]

I don't know what's going on! This game has a bug on the switch. After handing over the mortar and fish to the pilot, it gets stuck and cannot exit the conversation. Pressing the A button all the time is useless.

[bsg_joel]

Originally posted by 403Zzz:

I don't know what's going on! This game has a bug on the switch. After handing over the mortar and fish to the pilot, it gets stuck and cannot exit the conversation. Pressing the A button all the time is useless.

This issue is unrelated to this topic. But just quickly, we've heard that this particular issue can be solved by switching the text speed to "Normal" or by changing the language to English temporarily.

[Shadow_Cowcow]

Originally posted by 403Zzz:

I don't know what's going on! This game has a bug on the switch. After handing over the mortar and fish to the pilot, it gets stuck and cannot exit the conversation. Pressing the A button all the time is useless.

I ran into the exact same bug on the switch just now, changing the language back to English fixed it for me

[🎃 [ΖмBя.™] Franco 🎃]

Thank you! Today my game was corrupted for no reason and with this I was able to recover it, but...

WARNING!

In my case, when I reactivated Steam Cloud my game was corrupted again, I RECOMMEND LEAVING STEAM CLOUD DEACTIVATED

[Dresmsky]

Originally posted by Splatter:

To start off, if you don't have anything in your backups folder, this guide won't help you. I'm sorry.

A little bit of my own story, if you want to skip to the answer just scroll down to the break.

My partner is absolutely obsessed with this game. It's gotta be her biggest comfort right now, and is something that helps them unwind after work. She wanted to show it to me last night, and when she hit "Continue" on the game, it started a new game, and when she exited out, she saw that it completely wiped her save data.

She had already sunk multiple hours into the game, so as you can imagine, she was absolutely devastated. I had plans to go out soon after and when I was gone, they searched all over for some kind of answer, but nothing was definitive. By the time I got home, we had to go to bed due to the time, plus she had exhausted herself from researching and just wanted to step away from it at that point.

So, I booted up their laptop this morning and did my own file searching, and ended up fixing her issue after a lot of trial and error!

Anyways, here's what you gotta do.

---

The Solution

To be safe, make sure to disable steam cloud for Dredge before messing with the files.

First, follow these paths to open up both the "saves" and "backup saves" folders:

C:\Users\*INSERT NAME*\AppData\LocalLow\Black Salt Games\DREDGE\saves

and

C:\Users\*INSERT NAME*\AppData\LocalLow\Black Salt Games\DREDGE\backup-saves

There are going to be two types of files that you want to pay attention to. The "dredge-save0.bin" file(s) with an icon (which I'll call "active" files), and the ".bak_#" files that don't have an icon and can't open on their own (I will call these files "inactive" files).

The "active" saves are the ones that the game will run in-game. The "inactive" ones are old backups, and inaccessible if you don't change them to the same type of file as the active ones are.

So! Look through the inactive files in the backups folder and delete any that are dated after the creation of the "new game". Repeat this process with the active files from the saves folder.

Once that's done, take the most recent "inactive" file with your old save and move it from the backups folder to the saves folder. Then, rename the file to end in ".bin" instead of ".bak_#".

For example, my backup was named "dredge-save0.bin.bak_2". I renamed it to "dredge-save0.bin".

Your computer will more than likely prompt you saying that the file may become unusable if you do this. Don't worry about this and just continue.

Boom! The inactive file should change to an active file. Launch Dredge and your saved game should be ready to go!

Aaaand that's it! I really hope this was helpful! Feel free to leave extra questions if you have them, and if you run into any issues along the way, I'll do my best help as well!

I hope y'all have a good day. ^^

I love you so much

[Ernasty]

this process doesn't work for me, it's a really fun game but it's important to be able to go from PC to steam deck seamlessly without fear of losing progress...i think i'm going to just refund and play something else.. post somewhere when this issue is fixed and i'll buy the game again

[DannySka]

Spent 6 hours in the game, and I also got my saves wiped today: checking files integrity didn't help. Now I only got an option to start from the very beginning.

[🎃 [ΖмBя.™] Franco 🎃]

Originally posted by DannySka:

Spent 6 hours in the game, and I also got my saves wiped today: checking files integrity didn't help. Now I only got an option to start from the very beginning.

Try to look in the backups folder that they mention to see if your game is there with all your progress, I recommend deactivating the steam cloud, every time I activate the steam cloud it corrupts my saved game!

[Mr.War]

Thanks for saving my almost complete game with the Pale Reach Update!

[DannySka]

Originally posted by 🎃 ΖмBя.™ Franco 🎃:

Originally posted by DannySka:

Spent 6 hours in the game, and I also got my saves wiped today: checking files integrity didn't help. Now I only got an option to start from the very beginning.

Try to look in the backups folder that they mention to see if your game is there with all your progress, I recommend deactivating the steam cloud, every time I activate the steam cloud it corrupts my saved game!

That didn't work for me. But thanks anyway.

[🎃 [ΖмBя.™] Franco 🎃]

Originally posted by DannySka:

Originally posted by 🎃 ΖмBя.™ Franco 🎃:

Try to look in the backups folder that they mention to see if your game is there with all your progress, I recommend deactivating the steam cloud, every time I activate the steam cloud it corrupts my saved game!

That didn't work for me. But thanks anyway.

I made a blog with a new method to recover the saved game, see if it is useful to you!

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1562430/discussions/2/4027969376953728682/

[pineapple]

Originally posted by Tiddalik:

I thought this method wouldn't work because when I looked in both save folders they all had the date of today, the date/time when I "lost" my save file. I'm a brand new player to this, only purchased 3days ago. I have 17hrs and was so upset when I 'continued' my game only to get the opening cut scene.

When I realised something was very wrong I force exited the game, didn't even save/quit. Read this and opened my back up file and I have BAK_0 File to BAK_50 file and all of them have today's date 21/10/2023 5:51pm :( :( not a single one with yesterday's date. And in the 'saves' folder there are three files dredge-save0.bin / dredge-save0.bin.bak / steam-autocloud.vdf with 21/10/2023 5:51pm expect the steam one which is 21/10/2023 5:50pm.

So I was very sad that this method wouldn't work for me because all dates matched today's date, the date the save was lost. But BUT the size of the files in the backup folder were all different, BAK_3 was the largest of them all. so I deleted both dredge-save0 files in the save folder then all but the 3rd saved backup in the backup folder and copied that, renamed it to dredge-save0.bin in the save folder and guess what, it worked!! Well I lost maybe an hour because I obviously picked the wrong file to copy but I can deal with a loss of 1hr rather than to start all over again.

TL;DR: Don't just rely on the dates because they can all be dated with the same date as the new start save file, look for a difference in file size and follow the pinned method with the largest file in your back up folder.

This was really useful thanks for posting! I had the same issue - all backup saves had the same time and date. I loaded up backup 50 but it had a lot of lost progress. Using your method I've managed to reload a save which only has an hour or so lost play time. Still not a perfect solution but much better than I'd had previously!

[Ernasty]

What's the status of an official fix for this? I'd love to buy this game, but I won't until this has been addressed..

[NewYears1978]

Originally posted by Ernasty:

What's the status of an official fix for this? I'd love to buy this game, but I won't until this has been addressed..

NOT fixed. I just bought the game and after my first several hours of play, it was wiped.

I started a new save (my first playthrough) yesterday, played nearly half the day. Loaded up today and my save is gone. There is a backup folder but all the files are from today when I launched the game.

Annoyed, probably won't play aqain.

Can't blame Steam Cloud either because I have that disabled globally.

I had started a new game, played a bit to learn the game then started a new save below that one. Played for like I dunno 6 hours then quit when I got tired. Loaded up today and only the original blank game was there.