Syncing your Terraria files between multiple computers

This guide will show you how to sync your Terraria save data between multiple computers so you can use the same players and worlds across multiple computers.

Version History

• 26/12/2014 : Version 1.0.0
  
  • Initial release of guide.
    
• 26/12/2014 : Version 1.0.1
  
  • Added a tonne of pictures and some batch code. Still needs a cleanup though. >.<
    
• 26/12/2014 : Version 1.0.2
  
  • Cleaned the guide up, added some FAQ's and fleshed out some stuff. The guide now sounds more like I'm dictating it to you rather than some monotonous in-the-box manual.
    
• 31/12/2014 : Version 1.1.0
  
  • Added a section on using BitTorrent Sync.
    
• 06/1/2015 : Version 1.1.1
  
  • Added an extra script and tweaked some info regarding OneDrive location on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1
    

About This Guide

I made this guide in response to a question that got asked on the Community Discussions a while back where someone asked if it was possible to keep his worlds and players in sync between his desktop and laptop.

My response:

Originalmente postado por me:

You don't.

Not easily anyway.

I told him there were two ways of doing it:

1. Copying the files between computers after he was done playing. (yeah... like ANYONE would do that. Bear in mind if you do, you're kind of an idiot, sorry... ¬.¬)
   
2. Screwing around with symbolic links and cloud storage solutions.

This guide covers point 2. If you want me to cover point 1... well... nope... not happening.

This is ideal for anyone who wants to play Terraria over multiple computers but wants to keep their worlds and players in sync.

I've covered the most common way to do this, but I'm open to add others to the guide if requested.

This guide assumes that you have a little bit of technical knowledge and assumes some prerequisites are met. If you don't know what I'm talking about in this guide, either Google it, or find someone who does.

Any questions or suggestions? Just throw them in the comments and I'll address them as soon as soon I see them.

Now let's begin:

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you meet the following prerequisites:

Your computer is running either:

• Windows Vista
  
• Windows 7
  
• Windows 8
  
• Windows 8.1
  
• Windows 10

Forget ANYTHING before Vista (yes, even XP)
If for some bizarre reason you play it on Server 2008 (R2) or Server 2012 (R2), this should work too, but really, leave server OS's for server stuff, ok?
I wouldn't suggest doing this on Windows 10 either since (at the time of writing) it's still a CTP/alpha/beta/whatever.

You have one of the following installed:

• OneDrive
  
• Dropbox
  
• Google Drive

This list is by no means exhaustive, there's bound to be more services.

It's also useful to know what the following things are:

• The command prompt (or Powershell)
  
• The MOVE and MKLINK utilities. (Maybe DIR, ECHO and SET if you read the whole guide.)
  
• The %USERPROFILE% environment variable.

All happy? Excellent let's begin.

Command Prompt 101

You should know what the command prompt is, if you don't... you should probably ask someone who does to help you with this, the command prompt is not something to be toyed with, especially if you have administrative rights on your computer. No really, I'm serious.

The tl;dr is basically it's a text only interface to your computer. You type commands, it executes them, you type another command, and so on...
The command prompt looks like this. You can access in a few different ways:

• Pressing Windows + R,typing "cmd" in the box that appears and hitting the Enter key
  
• FInd it under Start -> All Programs -> Accessories (on Vista and 7)
  
• Type cmd on the start screen (Windows 8 and 8.1)
  
• Right click the start button and choose either 'Command Prompt' or 'Command Prompt (Admin)' (Windows 8 and 8.1)
  
• Seriously, how many ways do I need to list here.

For the sake of illustration, here's what the command prompt looks like after you open it.


For anyone wanting to use Powershell, it's the same thing, just with PS prepended to the prompt.

You'll need to know the following commands:

• MKLINK
  
  
• MOVE
  

(I also use the SET command later on in the guide, but you don't need to worry about it.)

%USERPROFILE%

I'm not writing a tutorial on the command prompt here, this is basically a tl;dr with a short explanation added.

The command prompt has several variables which you can use when using it. These are just basically short names for other values. Environment variables are always enclosed in percentage (%) signs, here's a few I use from time to time, some of these will be obvious, others not so much:

• %APPDATA%
  
• %LOGONSERVER%
  
• %PATH%
  
• %SYSTEMROOT%
  
• %USERPROFILE%
  
• %WINDIR%

We'll be using %USERPROFILE% in this guide. But what exactly is it?

%USERPROFILE% basically contains the absolute path to your user profile on the computer. (don't worry about what that means) In laymans terms, it's where all your personal files are stored. (Music, Pictures, Videos, etc.)

For the nerds out there asking why I'm even bothering to ramble on about environment variables,. It's because if you've customised the computer internally (moving home directories and junk around the place) you might not find things where you expect them to be. Using the variable instead of a hardcoded path ensures you have the right path and sort of mitigates any typos you might make. (You just need to remember a backslash sometimes.)

You can view the value of this variable by typing this in the command prompt:

ECHO %USERPROFILE%

So in my case, all of my files are stored under C:\Users\Jake\. (not counting all the files I store in other places.)

Some notes before starting

This is just a few things to note before starting to sync everything.

• Close Terraria COMPLETELY! This is kind of a no brainer.
  
• The steps for Windows should work on any of the platforms listed in prerequisites.
  
• You NEED administrative rights on your computer to do this as MKLINK requires admin rights, if you don't have admin rights, well you're kinda screwed unless you can convince someone to either give you the password or do it for you.

How to do it

First of all, get a command prompt open.

1. Determine the location of your Terraria folder

This is almost always installed under %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\. Here's mine.

2. Determine the location of your cloud storage folder

This will depend on the provider. But here are the default locations for a few:

• OneDrive: %USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive or %USERPROFILE%\OneDrive
  
• Dropbox: %USERPROFILE%\Dropbox
  
• Google Drive: %USERPROFILE%\Google Drive

Again, here's my OneDrive folder as an example. (I've blanked some folders out because privacy and stuff, etc.)


Once you have the locations of these folders, you are ready.

3. Move your Terraria Folder to your Cloud Drive

Move (NOT COPY!) Your Terraria folder from it's original location to a folder in your cloud storage folder. As an example let's say you're using OneDrive. Copy it to %USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive\Terraria
So the command is:

MOVE "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria" "%USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive"

If you copy it, it's not going to work.

4. Create the symbolic link.

Use MKLINK to create the symbolic link from the 'My Games' folder to your cloud storage folder. The command is:

MKLINK /D "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria" "%USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive\Terraria"

And here's the result:


Oops, this is why you need admin rights, let's try it again, with admin rights. (You'll probably need a new command prompt window for this.)



Hooray, and guess what... You're done. When you go to play Terraria now everything should be fine and dandy.

Just remember repeat these steps on every computer you want to sync Terraria on.

How to do it: BitTorrent Sync

I've seen this mentioned on the community discussion boards a number of times. So let's add a section for that, shall we?

Bear in mind for this, you won't need the command prompt, but you may need admin rights to actually get it installed in the first place.

The instructions are as follows:

First, open BitTorrent Sync and click the' Add Folder' button.


Then navigate to your Terraria Folder. This will be under %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria. Going through the GUI the path will usually be:
C:\Users\<your account name>\Documents\My Games\ and the Terraria folder will be in that directory. Select the folder and then click 'Select Folder'


Once you've done this. You need to set the sharing options for the folder. The permissions will need to be set to Read & Write and I'd recommend unchecking all of the boxes. Finally share the link to yourself however you see fit. Emailing it to yourself is probably the simplest option.

(I want to point out that in this picture, my path says SkyDrive because my saves are already being synced to my OneDrive account. If they were not being synced, your path will be similar to C:\Users\Jake\Documents\My Games\Terraria.)

And you're done!


Removing it is even simpler. Just drop the menu down on the right hand side of the folder and click 'Disconnect'.

Scripts for the lazy people

Obviously, I'm not going to give you scripts to download, but if you know what "copy the code into notepad and save it as a .bat file means", you're fine.

These scripts assume default locations of folders and admin rights:

OneDrive (Windows 8.1)

SET TERRARIADIR="%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria"
SET CLOUDDRIVE="%USERPROFILE\SkyDrive"
MOVE %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%
MKLINK /D %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%

OneDrive (Windows 7/8)

SET TERRARIADIR="%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria"
SET CLOUDDRIVE="%USERPROFILE\OneDrive"
MOVE %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%
MKLINK /D %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%

Dropbox

SET TERRARIADIR="%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria"
SET CLOUDDRIVE="%USERPROFILE\Dropbox"
MOVE %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%
MKLINK /D %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%

Google Drive

SET TERRARIADIR="%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria"
SET CLOUDDRIVE="%USERPROFILE\Google Drive"
MOVE %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%
MKLINK /D %TERRARIADIR% %CLOUDDRIVE%

FAQ

Why does your command prompt have different coloured borders?
Because Windows 8.1.

I messed with the command prompt and broke my computer!
I told you to get someone who knows what they're doing to do it for you, it's not my problem.

Can this be undone?
Yep. Run the following two commands. I'll use my example here.

RMDIR "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Terraria"
MOVE "%USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive\Terraria" "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\"

DO NOT USE THE 'DEL' COMMAND HERE, OTHERWISE YOU'LL DELETE YOUR TERRARIA DATA! See this[superuser.com] question on StackOverflow for more information.

My saves are corrupted or not in sync, what the hell?
Before opening the game on another computer, make sure EVERYTHING has synced with OneDrive, Dropbox or whatever before running it.
Alternatively, try using a clentaminator on your computer. (har har har)

Where did you find out how to do this?
StackOverflow. They gave a tl;dr, I added pictures, explanation and my tone to it. Link.[gaming.stackexchange.com]

Can't Steam do this?
The short answer is nope. The long version would be a wall of text. Which do you prefer?

[Cristian_Erick]

just go to documents, My Games, copy "Terraria", then create My Games folder in the new computer and paste "Terraria" on it?

[en4cer1133]

Trying to sync up my laptop and desktop using this. It worked fine on my PC... but on my laptop, I am getting the error unable to create link as it already exists. Is there something I missed?

[Henwyrm (︶︹︺)]

How do I change it into another drive? My C: drive is sometimes problematic, I can't write to it. Changing permissions also don't work, the computer's old but the D: drive has no problem. It should be simple to just change the default location of Terraria's save locations. (note: this is not cloud syncing, I'm just moving it to another drive)

[ltcmdata]

I believe that you have to totally exit/logout from steam to make it do the cloud syncing.

[Megatton3000]

Instead you can just save players and maps to cloud through the game. then you just make sure when you exit you let it sync through steam. but i guess that only works if you're logged in through the same steam account. this seems like a good way to do it in other cases such as sharing with a friend.

[kurikinton]

To add to my comment below, you can share *between* platforms as well. I've got Win7 one a desktop and Fedora 23 on a laptop and successfully share between them via Dropbox.

[kurikinton]

This works on other platforms as well, not just Windows.

Ex.: For Linux and Dropbox

Dropbox location assumed to be ~/Dropbox
World/player saves located at ~/.local/share/Terraria

1. On the source machine, copy the Terraria folder to Dropbox, such as

> cp -r ~/.local/share/Terraria ~/Dropbox

2. Backup the original folder

> mv ~/.local/share/Terraria ~/.local/share/Terraria-bak

3. Create the symbolic link

> cd ~/.local/share
> ln -s ~/Dropbox/Terraria Terraria

On the target machine, just do steps 2 and 3.

[DarkNewb]

Hey, I use BitTorrent Sync to share & sync a world wherein we play together me and a friend (it's really easy), so the other one does not have to stop playing if the host leaves.
Works fine, but I don't like having to share the whole terraria folder which means all my worlds !
I did a backup folder in case something bad happens, but any clue about how to only sync 1 map ?

[Redthorne]

doesn't work. Makes the game crash on other computers

[bird daughter]

well that tells me that i am not the most lazy person in the world!