Corrupted Save Data; Every Workaround Possible

Since this is such a common complaint, let's go over every possible solution to get you back in the game without losing progress

Failed to Load Save Data

Before doing anything else, turn Steam Cloud Saves OFF for Elden Ring, it is the cause of so so many problems >.>
Right click on "Elden Ring" in your game list, select properties, and within the "General" tab of the popup window uncheck "Keep saves in the Steam Cloud"
Still you can check what the Steam Cloud is currently storing for you at:
https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorageapp/?appid=1245620

1) The first step is ALWAYS to verify the game files. Do this by going to the game in your Steam Library, clicking the little gear icon on the right side of the screen, go down to "Properties," in the popup window go to "Local Files" and then select "Verify integrity of game files."
Wait for the process to finish and check to see if this solves your issues before continuing.

2) If 1 didn't work, then locate your save folder, by default it should be:
C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Roaming\EldenRing\[Folder with 17-digit number]
There should be three files in there; ER0000.sl2, ER0000.sl2.bak, and a steam configuration file
For this step; delete ER0000.sl2, and then rename ER0000.sl2.bak to remove the ".bak" portion - this will restore the backup to now be the active save.
Check to see if this solves your issues before continuing.

3) If 1 and 2 didn't work now we have to try to repair the corrupted files, you can reverse step #2 and try this step on the original ER0000.sl2 as well btw
There are a few things we can try here, the simplest is to just re-calculate the checksum within the save to see if that is what is throwing the error and the easiest way to do that is by running a program on the file to do that for you automatically - first try:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782187284
If you wanted to manually recalculate checksums, which I do NOT recommend, it would look like this:

• Download HxD hex editor. https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
  
• Open up the ER0000.sl2 file in the hex editor
  
• Right click on the page and use the "Select block" option. Within the popup enter 310 in the start-offset and 28030f in the end-offset. Ensure "Hex" is selected.
  
• Click on "Analysis" in the top menu bar and select "Checksums"... within the popup select "MD-5," it's at the bottom.
  
• This will create a window at the bottom with a checksum in it. Right click on this and select "Copy."
  
• Right click and "Select block" again, this time using 300 - 30F as the start and end offsets.
  
• Right click the selection and choose "Paste write."
  
• Click "Save" at the top.

(NOTE: This is only recalculating the checksum for the save located in slot #1, if there are multiple save slots in use more work is required, steps NOT covered here)

4) If none of the above has worked, this is basically your last resort. 1st, move or rename your save folder such that the game will start with a completely empty save folder. Start a new game, and then quit once you are past all the cutscenes and actually in-game once again. This forces the game to build a completely new save file structure - one we know works. Then we need to copy JUST the data in save slot #1 over from the old save file to this new one. Again this can be done manually or automatically, the automatic tool for this one is:
https://github.com/BenGrn/EldenRingSaveCopier/releases/

If you want to do this manually; these are the manual steps:

• Download HxD hex editor. https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
  
• Open up the two ER0000.sl2 files in the hex editor (the new blank one and your old "real" one)
  
• In the OLD save game right click on the page and use the "select block" option. Within the popup enter 310 in the start-offset and 28030f in the end-offset. Ensure "Hex" is selected.
  
• Right click and copy the selection.
  
• In the NEW save file right click and "select block," entering the same as above in the popup.
  
• Right click on the selection and use the "Paste write" option.
  
• Right click again and use the "Select block" option. Enter the same options as before eg. 310 - 28030f
  
• Click on "Analysis" in the top menu bar and select "Checksums"... within the popup select "MD-5," it's at the bottom.
  
• This will create a window at the bottom with a checksum in it. Right click on this and select "Copy."
  
• Right click and "Select block" again, this time using 300 - 30F as the start and end offsets.
  
• Right click the selection and choose "Paste write."
  
• Click "Save" at the top and delete the ER0000.sl2.bak from your SteamID folder if there is one

(NOTE: This is only copying the save located in slot #1, if there are multiple save slots in use more work is required to copy those over, steps NOT covered here)
Credit to Reddit User Danger_Fox_ for first teaching me how to do these things

5) If none of the above has worked, you are probably going to have to just start over. I recommend turning OFF Steam Cloud saving and maintaining manual backups or else using a program that maintains backups for you (which is not Steam) here is a guide for doing that at least:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2772359899
It's repair section just goes over the same checksum recalculation we covered above

Other Save Slots

Don't use this information by itself unless you know what you are doing!

1st Slot:
First Select Block: 310 to 28030f
Checksums: 300 to 30F

2nd Slot:
First Select Block: 280320 to 50031F
Checksums: 280310 to 28031f

3rd Slot:
First Select Block: 500330 to 78032f
Checksums: 500320 to 50032f

Credit to Reddit User prodGmK for this section's info

Crashes and other issues

If you are having other issues not related to the save files, I do have a couple of suggestions...

1) As before the first step is ALWAYS to verify the game files. Do this by going to the game in your Steam Library, clicking the little gear icon on the right side of the screen, go down to "Properties," in the popup window go to "Local Files" and then select "Verify integrity of game files."
Wait for the process to finish and check to see if this solves your issues before continuing.

2) Going beyond this, it is good to also verify your system files for any corruption. Do this by:
Opening a "Command Prompt" window via the "Run as Administrator" option; you can just type "command prompt" into the search field on the taskbar. It might be harder to find in older versions of Windows, and I'm not sure if other OS have something similar.
Once you have the command prompt open, first we want to run the System File Checker (SFC) with this command:

sfc /scannow

Wait for the process to finish
Then if you are on Windows 10 or 11, also run:

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

I like to run these two commands every couple of months to make sure my systems are always running smoothly, any corruption in system files can have effects everywhere else.

Conclusion

If anything here solved your issues, please consider leaving a comment saying which step specifically worked for you - this information helps me and others

If you liked this guide, you might also like my other Elden Ring guides:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2765060616
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789660535
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2785301831

If you have any constructive criticism or helpful comments - I welcome such feedback.
Or if you have any questions I'll do my best to help out.
Otherwise thank you for taking a look at my guide. :)
And remember to rate and favorite this guide if you found it helpful :D

[Dannyboy]

You helped me recover my save from a modding session gone wrong, cant thank you enough

[Umbra]

You are right unfortunatly I've tried again this metod and others but it didn't work. Well thank you and I wish you all the best.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Sounds like the error is inside the save slot data then which means... it's probably beyond our ability to fix...

[Umbra]

For me the forth solution worked but only partially, the game now doesn't detect the save as corrupt anymore but when I try to load it the game crashes immediately. I've tried to verify the files and to restart my system but at no avail. I used the tool and I replaced the new save or character with the old one saved separately from the game files. Do you guys had a similar problem should I try again ? What do you recommend ?

[AntiElephantMine]

My save file corrupted after 200 hours and all I had to beat was the last DLC boss. Step #4, using the copying tool, worked. Thank you so much!!!

[GenghisKhan]

Tried them all, nothing worked, so I lost my game after 140+ hours. Sucks bad time, man

[meleesama]

Does anyone know what to do when they get this? It seems to happen to all of my character saves
https://steamcommunity.com/id/meleesama/screenshot/2405572559760321265/

"The name of this character has been replaced with an underscore as it was previously left blank" This happens for ANY Character I load, and then it is no longer accessible when I load the game again.

[Saucy Puppet Show]

I'll live, luckily I only lost about 20 hours of progress as opposed to the 200+ I've seen some people dealing with. It'll definitely be annoying to redo all of that, but not as devastating as it could have been.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

You could try one of those "deleted data recovery" programs to hunt through disk space marked as free and see if an old copy of the save file pops up, but whether you'd get something functional from that is... ify

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Ah, sorry to hear that Saucy, ya that means the computer restarted during the data writing process and there really isn't a way to recover from that if the backup is corrupted too. I got into the habit of copying my save folder each time just before exiting the game. Something that annoys me and is common in most Fromsoft games - is that the game client tends to overwrite the backup when you start the game so by the time you realize something is wrong with your save - the game client has already screw'd you out of your backup. I don't know why they do that... kinda like other games overwriting your oldest auto save the moment you load into the game - completely pointless and destructive behavior