Can't Download Character After Ascension (Single Player)

[xShaneTX20x]

Hey everyone.
I've run into an issue in my Single Player worlds on PC where following ascension off the island, I try to download my character to Scorched Earth but upon trying to spawn in I get the intro cutscene, the screen going dark for a few seconds, and get sent straight back to the character creator. If you try to download your character again at this point, too bad, because they're gone. I've tried uploading the character and downloading it without ascension - same result (I've thankfully backed up my game saves many times at many different major time-points along my Island journey and am thus not too worried about losing this character or progress for good; a lesson learned the hard way from ASE).

I saw some folks on Reddit having the same issue a few months back but nobody ever seemed to find a solution. This looks to be a single player thing since uploading/transferring on servers works fine to my knowledge(?) I get that you can create a lookalike clone of your character on a new map with the same name and then admin command it to get "your character to the new map", but I also feel like there's gotta be some fix to this, right? Any help is appreciated, especially because I can't imagine what it'd be like to legitimately trust the game, not backup saves, encounter this, and lose your leveled character with TekGrams to a stupid bug and have no way to get anything back for good.

Also, I have ensured that none of the options disabling transfers/tributes are active; everything should be allowed, it just isn't working straight up.

[Captain Pansy]

yeah ALWAYS keep backups periodically from the localplayerdata folder. that is where the obelisk is. if the game crashes when the player is downloaded, then the obelisk file will be empty, and your player is not created on the map. so you lost that player for good. but if you restore that file, and restart the game, you can download it again.

[xShaneTX20x]

Originally posted by Captain Pansy:

yeah ALWAYS keep backups periodically from the localplayerdata folder. that is where the obelisk is. if the game crashes when the player is downloaded, then the obelisk file will be empty, and your player is not created on the map. so you lost that player for good. but if you restore that file, and restart the game, you can download it again.

Good to know - I've seen others experience the crashing bug as well. This is slightly different though as the game doesn't actually crash so much as it simply doesn't do what it's supposed to. Either way, as you mention, huge win for backup files lol

[Ironbelly]

Always redownload to the island first, then prepare safe transfers, never go directly from ascension to another map

i hope you can get your character back to the island

[xShaneTX20x]

Originally posted by Ironbelly:

Always redownload to the island first, then prepare safe transfers, never go directly from ascension to another map

i hope you can get your character back to the island

Thanks for the advice. As mentioned in the original post, I have many different versions of this save backed up (right before broodmother, right before dragon, making the tek suit, etc), so I can get my worlds back and test things infinitely without worrying about losing this character, and really, TekGram+Level progress. Right now, the save I'm constantly reverting to is one where all my creatures are at the Tek Cave entrance right before I run the final boss.

I just tried your advice and sadly to no avail. I went down the Tek Cave, beat the overseer, and respawned to the Island. No problem there. I take my select items to the obelisk, put them in the inventory, and upload my leveled/newly ascended character. I head over to scorched - same issue originally posted about: I select my character from the downloads list, select the spawn in region, get the SE intro cinematic followed by a dark screen for a few seconds, and right back to the character creator with my uploaded character "gone forever".

Reverted the save, and my creatures again are at the Tek Cave entrance and my character is ready to go as if ascension hasn't occurred yet. It's just annoying because in SP I feel like I've tried just about every way to port this character over to the next map and absolutely nothing works. Without using admin cheats to create a clone on the new map, I guess the only thing to do is sit with this reverted save, wait till this is fixed (if ever), and just run overseer and next map when this isn't a problem anymore

[xShaneTX20x]

These were the folks i was mentioning on Reddit with the same issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/1bzbheq/asa_single_player_cant_download_survivor/
This looks like it's been going on for months now, so you'd think WC at least knows about this, right?