Just lost my single player save.

[Zheran]

Heyo, I dont tend to post on disccusion boards but I don't think I know what else to do at this point :p.

Today I played a good few hours earlier in the day and finally made a bit of progress on my Ragnarok single player run, I'm pretty new to the game so it's been quite slow in progress and pretty much all of the hours spent have been over the course of the past few days have been on this single player run.

I come back later in the day, start the game looking forward to just chilling for the night after work, I load into my game (It was clear I still have my save file as the icon for it was still there). Low and behold for some reason it's asking me to create a new survivor?

Okay... that's weird maybe I clicked something I didn't mean to on the main menu and I'm just tired or something, so I close out the game to prevent the game from saving or something silly, I load back in, go back to ragnarok, my save is still visible on the menu and load in game, now I'm spawned in the ass end of nowhere with nothing at all, level 1, a completely new save...

I've just lost quite a few hours worth of progress and now I'm a bit dubious about whether or not I should ever dare trust putting anymore time into this game if what I have to look forward to is my saves spontaneously restarting themselves.

Is this a common issue? and I assume there isn't anyway I can even possibly hope to get my save back now since it forcefully shoved a new survivor into my face.

[Jazz]

This has happened to me once too. I don't know what you can do to prevent this other than maybe keeping a backup save.

[Eminence]

Ark makes backups automatically. Give me a minute and I'll try to post a link to a tutorial on how to revert for you.

[Deadman]

Assuming you ar on Windows 10 and you have a default install your save files should be located in your:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\SavedArksLocal directory. You should be able to backup your current base world save to a different name and rename a copy of an earlier save file to the name used for the base world save file to recover your game...

For instance for The Island, a file named "TheIsland.ark" would be the base world save file to backup and for example a file named "TheIsland_02.11.2017_10.41.02.ark" would be a save file for that date and time and if you rename a copy of that file to "TheIsland.ark" you would essentially roll back to that save...

Hope this helps!

[Eminence]

Totally forgot about this thread xD but what Deadman said lol

[Zheran]

Thanks for the responses :) In the end I just decided to run a little dedicated server for myself so that I don't need to worry about saves etc on my main PC. (Got two PCs in the same room so have the Alt one just running the server)

It's a shame that the singleplayer requires tinkerering with to get the saves to work correctly, but ah well, I'm glad it saves at all honestly :p.

Again thanks for the responses ^^

[DrathDragoon33]

You should do the same manual save back ups for a server as well.

[crimsondrac]

Originally posted by Sand (Zheran):

Thanks for the responses :) In the end I just decided to run a little dedicated server for myself so that I don't need to worry about saves etc on my main PC. (Got two PCs in the same room so have the Alt one just running the server)

It's a shame that the singleplayer requires tinkerering with to get the saves to work correctly, but ah well, I'm glad it saves at all honestly :p.

Again thanks for the responses ^^

The server version is no better at saving games and has just as much a chance of corruption as single player saves. In fact, it really is the same save game format and rules as you can simply move a single player save game into a server save game folder and run it without any issues.

If you are not taking the Backups of your own save game into your own hands, you have a good chance of this happening again. It is actually fairly common with Ark. I just created a small batch file that zips up the save game files and all the arkprofiles for players into a file that inserts a timestamp into the filename. Then I have a scheduler run that batch file once every 15 minutes and copy it to a backup folder on another drive. I learned my lesson within the first few months of playing this game and have had to use those backups on more than a few occasions.

Don't expect WC to care about your gaming experience. They don't

[Zheran]

Originally posted by crimsondrac:

The server version is no better at saving games and has just as much a chance of corruption as single player saves. In fact, it really is the same save game format and rules as you can simply move a single player save game into a server save game folder and run it without any issues.

If you are not taking the Backups of your own save game into your own hands, you have a good chance of this happening again. It is actually fairly common with Ark. I just created a small batch file that zips up the save game files and all the arkprofiles for players into a file that inserts a timestamp into the filename. Then I have a scheduler run that batch file once every 15 minutes and copy it to a backup folder on another drive. I learned my lesson within the first few months of playing this game and have had to use those backups on more than a few occasions.

Don't expect WC to care about your gaming experience. They don't

I do intend to do exactly as has been suggested with the server in mind aswell :)

I also wanted to enjoy the game with company at some point anyway so it only makes sense that I went towards making a server for myself at the very least to not worry about saves on my main PC going awry.

Thanks for the suggestions though definitely going to be handling it on my end, specially now that I know the game isn't completely stable as far as saves are concerned.

[Curved Vacuum]

This doesn't work for me (single player Aberration). Yes, the world gets rolled back, buildings etc. are there but my character is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ no matter what I try & buildings now belong to an 'enemy' tribe. I have these files in addition:
1903234199.arktribe & tribebak
LocalPlayer.arkprofile & profilebak

I've tried copying the Xbak files over the top of the 'arkX' files to no avail.

There are also Aberration_P_NewLaunchBackup, _AntiCorruptionBackup & _FailedAndRestored.bak files. Tried wiping these, copying over from the previous .ark file, nothing brings my char back.

[KitsuneShiro]

Originally posted by Violator:

This doesn't work for me (single player Aberration). Yes, the world gets rolled back, buildings etc. are there but my character is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ no matter what I try & buildings now belong to an 'enemy' tribe. I have these files in addition:
1903234199.arktribe & tribebak
LocalPlayer.arkprofile & profilebak

I've tried copying the Xbak files over the top of the 'arkX' files to no avail.

There are also Aberration_P_NewLaunchBackup, _AntiCorruptionBackup & _FailedAndRestored.bak files. Tried wiping these, copying over from the previous .ark file, nothing brings my char back.

If the stuff is there. Just admin claim it and add exp back to New character.

You only have a very short period of time before the character and tribe backup file gets overwritten.

You can always make redundant backups of your saves folder every time you play.

[Curved Vacuum]

Yeah - ended up doing 100x givetome & giveallstructure commands, and overwriting the 'LocalPlayer.arkprofile' from my Island char, luckily didn't really lose much gear on the char I lost (maybe it will be in the world? I was in a cave at the time though which usually means lost through the floor time if it is there). This happened due the 5th of a set of powercuts today lol (and my UPS not working for some reason :/).

[Curved Vacuum]

For others benefit, I actually was able to recover my old char's body (had as usual fallen through the floor of the Old Railway cave into the void below) by using ghost and drag it to the ocean outside the cave (dragging it back to the cave just caused me to let go and it dropped into oblivion again - leaving the cave seems to freeze the fall though so you can go back and have another go :)).

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/947347993680502133/A2FB4CDE66A827DE66B96667A846F617E78C5791/

I then had to wait for the 'old player' to drown to recover the gear off it. Luckily my ravager mount + light pet were actually still in the cave for a change rather than also falling through to their doom so was able to claim and recover them as well.

[nicomad]

Manage to recover my game with this info, thank you

[william_es]

Glad to hear it.

The issue is well known. Not common, it's happened to my about a dozen times in all the years I've played ark. And it's easily fixable by just rolling back the server.

[Wren]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.