[HELP] Cannot migrate dedicated server save to singleplayer – PlM format incompatibility with all known tools

[Mathéüs]

Hi everyone,

I've been trying for hours to migrate a dedicated server backup to singleplayer and I've hit a wall. I've exhausted every tool and method I could find, so I'm hoping someone here has a solution.

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**My setup**
- Backup date: early 2024
- Backup contents: Level.sav, LevelMeta.sav, Players/ folder
- Current game version: latest (v0.7.2)

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**What I've tried**

1. **Manual method (cheahjs/palworld-save-tools)** – Converted Level.sav to JSON, replaced all occurrences of my player GUID with 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001, reconverted to .sav, renamed player file accordingly. Result: world loads but shows 0 players, character not recognized.

2. **xNul/palworld-host-save-fix** – Ran fix_host_save.py with both GUID orderings (new→old and old→new). Always crashes on the singleplayer-generated 00000000...0001.sav with:
`Exception: not a compressed Palworld save, found b'PlM' instead of b'PlZ'`
The .sav files generated by the current game client use the PlM format, which this script does not support.

3. **palworld-fix-uuid (pip package)** – Installed but crashes on --help with a TypeError (typer/click compatibility issue). Unusable.

4. **deafdudecomputers/PalWorldSaveTools (v1.1.82)** – Successfully launched with uv after installing Visual C++ Build Tools to compile pyooz. Used the "Fix Host Save" tool, pointed to Level.sav. Crashes with:
`struct.error: unpack requires a buffer of 4 bytes`
(in palworld_save_tools/rawdata/character.py)

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**Root cause as I understand it**

Since Palworld v0.6, save files use a new compression format (PlM) instead of the old one (PlZ). All tools based on the classic palworld-save-tools fail on singleplayer .sav files generated by the current client. PalWorldSaveTools appears to handle PlM for decompression but fails parsing the Level.sav from the early 2024 backup.

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**Questions**
- Is there a working tool or method compatible with both the old Level.sav format (early 2024) and the new PlM player files?
- Has anyone successfully done a dedicated → singleplayer migration recently (post v0.6)?
- Is the early 2024 Level.sav format simply no longer parseable by current tools?

Any help appreciated. Happy to share files or logs if needed.

Thanks

[The Great White Shiekh]

I dont think there is a new save editor, been awhile since i looked. You are probably just better off keeping the server and playing it yourself.