Lost Progress Due to Weird Cloud Save Issue, Anyway to Recover?

[Dizzy49]

Does Steam have any kind of versioning for the save files? Unfortunately I am guessing not because people would abuse the crap out of it to cheat.

I started a game of Core Keeper on my Steam Deck. Played for about 45min. Saved, made sure the cloud save was up to date.

I then played 30 hours of Core Keeper on my desktop using the initial save from the Steam Deck. Before I left the house I made sure that the cloud save was up to date.
I got to the conference, connected the Steam Deck to my phone's Hotspot to update the save files. I went to play and in Core Keeper it showed 180HP for my character, which was correct. However, when I loaded it, it pulled up the original save with 100HP (and 45min of progress).

I knew I had to be careful and make sure that my save games were up to date on the devices, but this seems like something bigger. Like it loaded a local file vs the cloud save, and overwrite the cloud save.

I have not opened the game on my desktop again. Maybe there is a local file on the desktop I can use to restore my progress?

HELP!

[Dizzy49]

Ok, so good news bad news...

Good news is that I was able to go to the local save folder on my desktop and restore the json.backup file to get my progress back.

Bad news is that something is broken with the cloud save. The Steam Deck will update the cloud save file and I can access it on my desktop. However, the Steam Deck is not having it's file updated. Worse, since it's not picking up my progress, every time I launch the game or it updates from the Steam Deck it overwrites the cloud save that I actually want.

[Xaelon]

At this point I think your best option is to replace your Cloud Save for this game with a fresh one, and then re-save your actual file into the cloud.

I don't have a Steam Deck so it's very hard for me to troubleshoot a device I've never used but a quick search online tells me there isn't a good way to remove just save data so I would suggest uninstalling Core Keeper to clear whatever save data is on the device. You might be able to find a better method if you look around online.

Anyway once you've deleted Core Keeper's save data on your Deck you should be good to follow the steps below to clear your cloud save. You need to clear the save data on your device BEFORE following the steps below otherwise the Deck will probably just upload it's own file into the cloud next time you play and you'll be right back to where you were.

1. Backup your Core Keeper folder at "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Pugstorm". Just cut and paste the entire "Core Keeper" folder somewhere easy to find. The "Pugstorm" folder needs to be empty so we can make the game create a fresh set of save data which we will then upload into the cloud to replace whatever's there.
   
2. Turn off Cloud Save for Core Keeper. Right click the game in your library > Properties > uncheck "Keep game saves in steam cloud" box.
   
3. Launch the game. You should have no characters or worlds now since you moved the save folder elsewhere. Make a world and a character. Once the game loads the fresh world "Save and Exit" and close Core Keeper.
   
4. Re-enable cloud saves for Core Keeper by rechecking the box I mentioned in step 2.
   
5. Launch Core Keeper. Steam should now complain about how your local save data is different than the one that's stored in the cloud. Tell steam you want to use "Local Files" instead of "Cloud Files" by clicking the "upload to the steam cloud" button. The prompt you see should be the one in this article: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/68D2-35AB-09A9-7678#conflicts
   
6. Exit Core Keeper. Whatever data was previously saved into the cloud should now be replaced with the fresh file we just made.
   
7. Open that "Pugstorm" folder I mentioned in step 1. Delete everything inside it.
   
8. FInd the backup you made in step 1 and copy and paste it back into the "Pugstorm" folder.
   
9. Launch Core Keeper. You should see the prompt I mentioned in step 5 again. Click the "Upload to Steam Cloud" button again to put your actual save data back into the cloud.

With all that done you should be good to reinstall the game on your Deck and hopefully you should be able to progress the same file again.

As for how this happened I would guess it's related to your device losing internet at some point and that caused the Deck to have a different version of your save. After playing the game on your deck just make sure it's had a chance to upload your progress to the cloud before playing the game on your PC.