Can I continue an old save game?

[SadSky]

Hi everyone, big fan of Valheim here. Me and my sister use to play together for weeks, this was couple months ago, around December 2023. We had progressed a lot on a base and sarted to explore the plains. Here is my questions :

1. I Heard a rumor that we could still continue the old save, and everywhere we didn't explore the map, it would be populated by new biome and NPCs. It's that still true?

2. How much continuing an old save could introduce bugs and incompatibilities?

3. Did the dev suggested to start a fresh save since the last couple months?

4. If we have to start a new map, would it possible to export only a portion of the map containing our base and migrate it to a new save?

Thank you so much everyone. Be safe.
<3

[Sotanaht]

Yeah you're fine. If you were talking like 2020 I might suggest starting fresh, but 2023 is no issue. There's only 1 new biome since the last time you played, and the bog witch is designed to be fully compatible, even for areas you've already explored

[Sintreme]

Best bet is take your seed and look at a map generator, see if you went too far north/south and built something. If you did (there is a band of water between middle and edge continents now) then it is gone, so move the (important) gear and contents before you update to the new version. So long as you never explored deep north or ashlands you should be ok, but if you had a southern queen spawn and built a base there then you may be up the creek. Note that also goes for swamp now bog witch, so you may need to sail to the other side of the map to find her, and the quest giving trader if you didn't have her.

You can always (if base mostly in middle of map) use your old world as a base world to help you catch up by processing ores/repairing gear etc until you are ready to occupy the new map full time

[_I_]

Originally posted by Sintreme:

Best bet is take your seed and look at a map generator, see if you went too far north/south and built something. If you did (there is a band of water between middle and edge continents now) then it is gone, so move the (important) gear and contents before you update to the new version. So long as you never explored deep north or ashlands you should be ok, but if you had a southern queen spawn and built a base there then you may be up the creek. Note that also goes for swamp now bog witch, so you may need to sail to the other side of the map to find her, and the quest giving trader if you didn't have her.

You can always (if base mostly in middle of map) use your old world as a base world to help you catch up by processing ores/repairing gear etc until you are ready to occupy the new map full time

this is wrong

old map may not have new areas on it
the game worlds are the same size
if a map was originally made with an older version, and you play on the newer one, it will not have newer biomes on it, but still contain all the older version maps

look at the map gen
https://valheim-map.world/
there are world versions to pick from, put in the version of the game you used when the map was first made
thats how it will always look, even if you play with the latest version
but if you do have an older copy of the game, a newer map (or new version game saved) will not work on it
same goes for characters, old char will work on new game, but cannot use newer char version on older version of the game

[SadSky]

Thanks everyone! Very generous.
<3

[avatar.zero]

Originally posted by _I_:

Originally posted by Sintreme:

Best bet is take your seed and look at a map generator, see if you went too far north/south and built something. If you did (there is a band of water between middle and edge continents now) then it is gone, so move the (important) gear and contents before you update to the new version. So long as you never explored deep north or ashlands you should be ok, but if you had a southern queen spawn and built a base there then you may be up the creek. Note that also goes for swamp now bog witch, so you may need to sail to the other side of the map to find her, and the quest giving trader if you didn't have her.

You can always (if base mostly in middle of map) use your old world as a base world to help you catch up by processing ores/repairing gear etc until you are ready to occupy the new map full time

this is wrong

old map may not have new areas on it
the game worlds are the same size
if a map was originally made with an older version, and you play on the newer one, it will not have newer biomes on it, but still contain all the older version maps

look at the map gen
https://valheim-map.world/
there are world versions to pick from, put in the version of the game you used when the map was first made
thats how it will always look, even if you play with the latest version
but if you do have an older copy of the game, a newer map (or new version game saved) will not work on it
same goes for characters, old char will work on new game, but cannot use newer char version on older version of the game

You're wrong here. Whenever there's an update to the map version, the sections that aren't currently explored are recalculated. This is why it takes so long for a map to load for the first time after an update (also why maps - new or updated - aren't compatible with older game versions).

As to your example about having to choose versions on the map viewer website, you should also have noticed that there's a spot to upload your save file if you have a mixed-version map. Explored areas will show up just as they do in game, unexplored areas will be populated with whatever the current version of the map would be.