Why was my progress deleted

[OurNathanStar]

So I just loaded up ark and it was telling me to create new survivor. I left and all my mods were randomly off and settings were default, can someone tell me what happened and how to get my world back. It got deleted in single player and in non dedicated server

[🦊 Hermit]

Sadly character/world corruptions are quite common in single player/non-dedicated sessions...we get threads about it on an almost daily basis here. The game was designed for multiplayer, so runs much smoother on a dedicated server. If you are able I'd recommend running your solo games on a locally hosted dedicated, using your client to join. And whether you are able to do that or not, make sure to take regular backups of your saves to ensure that if something does happen to them, you can revert to the backup and not lose as much progress.

With regard to getting your save back now - did you have a backup saved already that you can revert to? And if not, did you go ahead and create a new character when the game told you to, or did you quit out without doing so? The game does make automatic backups occasionally on it's own, so there may be a chance you could load one of those, but it depends on a few factors whether that would work...

[ZeBushMan]

this is why I quit playing the game. I've had my saves deleted 3 times. 2 of which had tons of progress. its just not worth the risk of playing and dropping that much time just to have it be deleted. I've been told there is a chance each time the game is updated that your save may just randomly delete.

[🦊 Hermit]

With a proper backup regime you can avoid losing progress, especially if you use the dedicated server option instead of single player. I have a save that I've been playing on and off now for around six years - in all that time I've only had perhaps three issues with it, one caused by a mod, a couple of others losing creatures when transferring between maps. Never had the world corruption which hits single player. And on those occasions when something did go wrong I loaded from backup and at most lost a couple of hours, that's all.

[OurNathanStar]

I dont think I have any backups. i made new character and my base was gone

[🦊 Hermit]

Ah you went ahead and made the new character? In that case I'm afraid the old one may have been overwritten and could be unrecoverable. But you may still have options. First of all, check this location:

Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved

In that directory you should see some folders. The folder 'SavedArksLocal' is for saves on The Island map, and mod maps downloaded from the Workshop. Official DLC maps have their own SavedArksLocal folder with the name of the map included in them, for example 'RagnarokSavedArksLocal' or 'AberrationSavedArksLocal'.

Pick the folder corresponding to the map you are playing on, and enter it. You should see a file with the same name as the map, and the filetype .ark (for example 'TheIsland.ark'), that is the map save. You'll also see a 'LocalPlayer.arkprofile', and a file with a lot of numbers and the filetype .arktribe. Besides that, you may see some other files, such as a .tribebak or .profilebak file, or other versions of the map save file with date and time included in their filename. Perhaps even a 'NewLaunchBackup' file. Do you see any of those files?

[OurNathanStar]

i think i did but i dont know how to use them

[🦊 Hermit]

Okay, first of all, look for the following files:

LocalPlayer.arkprofile
An .arktribe file which is named just numbers.
An .ark file which is named after the map you are playing on.

Edit the names of those three files to put OLD before them. So for example, rename the LocalPlayer.arkprofile to OLDLocalPlayer.arkprofile instead.

Next, look for the file LocalPlayer.profilebak (the backup for the LocalPlayer file). Edit the file extension for that so it is named LocalPlayer.arkprofile.

Find the backup for the tribe file which should be a .tribebak file. Edit the file extension for that from .tribebak to .arktribe.

And finally, look through any .ark file which has the name of the map you are playing on, plus a date and time. Find the most recent date and time of those, right click the file and copy it. Then paste it into the same folder you just copied it from, so you have two versions of it. Edit the name of the file you just pasted, and remove the date and time so the file is called simply by the name of the map, for example TheIsland.ark.

Once you have done that, start up the game and try to access your world, see if it has fixed anything. If it doesn't work, you may have to use admin commands to take control of your stuff for your new character instead, but hopefully that won't be required if this solution works.

[OurNathanStar]

Can you help me with it please. I got discord if you can call me OurNathanStar#3182