Restoring Saves (Maybe)

[sethbread]

What worked for me
A Guide to Recover Your Save File (I only play Repentance)
This only works if you have a backup save file either that you copied from the save file location: C:\Users\xxxx\Documents\My Games\Binding of Isaac Repentance
or the \save_backups inside that directory has backups of your save files. That was the case for me.
In my case I had to revert to a backup inside \save_backups because I had just unlocked Dead God a few days after the online beta was released and wanted to try it out. I did not backup my files and simply subscribed to the online beta. After updating I no longer had Dead God. It took me several hours to figure this out, but it has worked on two different computers now. Your experience may vary.
The first step is to completely unsubscribe from all mods. I made a steam collection to put all the mods I was using into so I could simply subscribe to all if I ever wanted to again.
Create a new folder to store the save games you are going to try to restore. I keep mine on my desktop.
Find the save files you are going to restore. There is a file for each save file in the game. Mine were named:
yyyymmdd.rep_persistentgamedata1.dat
yyyymmdd.rep_persistentgamedata2.dat
yyyymmdd.rep_persistentgamedata3.dat
Where yyyymmdd is the date format of the last save file. I did notice that my most recent save file and the file I was able to restore with Dead God also had the largest file size (17KB) and that my empty save files were only 4KB.
Copy those files to the backup folder.
Launch Isaac. Check that there are no mods present. Not just deactivated, but not installed at all. Start a run with Isaac, quit, and then exit the game.
Next, make sure Steam Cloud is disabled inside the properties of The Binding of Isaac. I shut down and relaunched Steam each time I did this so YMMV.
Launch Isaac again. Same thing. Begin a run, quit, and exit.
Now, inside C:\Users\xxxx\Documents\My Games\Binding of Isaac Repentance is a file named options.ini
Open that with notepad or a text editor of some sort. There is a line SteamCloud=1. Change the 1 to 0, save and close the file.
Restart Steam and run Isaac again. Same thing, start a run, quit, and exit the game. You could also exit Steam.
Now copy the save files that you are trying to restore.
Navigate to C:\Users\xxxx\Documents\My Games\Binding of Isaac Repentance and delete all the files stored there. You could also cut and paste them to another dummy folder if you are not comfortable just deleting them. Once the folder is empty, paste the recovery files. This is where my memory fails me a bit.
I believe I renamed the files to just rep_persistantgamedataX.dat without the date in front. It is also possible it was just persistentgamedataX.dat without the rep or the date in front. I could have also possibly not renamed it. I tried so many combinations. I currently have 3 different save files with those 3 different naming schemes and it appears they are all updated with my runs so………….
Now navigate to \Steam\userdata\xxxxxxxxx\250900
This is located wherever your steam is installed. Mine is not in the default location which I believe is C:\Program Files\Steam
The x’s are a 9 digit number folder inside the userdata folder. I have more than one of those folders so I do not know if they are named at random or specific. However, the 250900 folder is specific to Isaac and I believe where the Steam Cloud data is written to. You want to delete all the files inside this folder (or copy them to another dummy folder) and paste the same recovery files you pasted into the first folder.
Launch Isaac.
Hopefully your game save has been restored at this point. A new options.ini file will be created. You will have to edit it again if you had changed options such as the debug console.
I enabled SteamCloud inside the options.ini file and was able to restore my progress on other desktops, but I had to restore the save files first using this method. It appears that they are all synced now.
I hope this helps someone.

[BonesOfLife]

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzzp4403n4o3c1.png

Here's a simplified graphic.

[hknaxx]

Hey op, I dont have a gamestate1.dat file in my remote folder. Pretty sure thats why this isnt working, any ideas?

[sethbread]

Were you using steam cloud? If not then there may not be files in that location. I also never had any files named gamestate1.dat are you referring to persistentgamedata.dat?

[Vmaxman]

Originally posted by BonesOfLife:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzzp4403n4o3c1.png

Here's a simplified graphic.

Hi, friendly note here. If you follow this visual its super helpful and easy. Just make sure you replace the file "rep_persistentgamedataX.data" if youre playing repentance! This worked for me!

[Piket]

Originally posted by Vmaxman:

Originally posted by BonesOfLife:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzzp4403n4o3c1.png

Here's a simplified graphic.

Hi, friendly note here. If you follow this visual its super helpful and easy. Just make sure you replace the file "rep_persistentgamedataX.data" if youre playing repentance! This worked for me!

At the 4th step, i dont understand what you have to keep and what you have to delete, can y you explain to me ?
Also, why is there a "gamestate" file that i dont have ?
Thanks

[glassbeachfan]

thank goood bro u saved me i love you

[hknaxx]

Originally posted by sethbread:

Were you using steam cloud? If not then there may not be files in that location. I also never had any files named gamestate1.dat are you referring to persistentgamedata.dat?

No, I go to the remote file and the only file in it right now is my persistentgamedata1.dat that I got from backups, but I did some research and it seems like a lot of people also have gamestate1.data there, I am not sure why but I seem to only have persistentgamedata1.dat and when I have just that file and reboot issac I get nothing but a blank save. Any thoughts?

[hknaxx]

Originally posted by Piket:

Originally posted by Vmaxman:

Hi, friendly note here. If you follow this visual its super helpful and easy. Just make sure you replace the file "rep_persistentgamedataX.data" if youre playing repentance! This worked for me!

At the 4th step, i dont understand what you have to keep and what you have to delete, can y you explain to me ?
Also, why is there a "gamestate" file that i dont have ?
Thanks

Where you able to find a fix, I also noticed they have a gamestate file, my brother had one too but I did not and just moving the presistentgamedata1.dat over from the backups didnt work

[rubiaso]

What about achievments on solo mode during this beta days? They are after doing the manual backup :(