Fix a Missing Palworld Character After a Move

If you moved a Palworld world to your server and a player lands on the character creation screen instead of their own character, there are two likely explanations: the server loaded a different world, or the character is tied to an ID the dedicated server does not use. Work down the checks below in order, because the first one takes a minute and the later ones involve third-party tools.

Checked against Palworld 1.0.5 and Pocketpair's server guide for 1.0.4, October 2026.

Check the server loaded the right world

1. Open the Backups tab and press Create backup before you touch anything.
2. In the Console tab, press Stop and wait for Offline.
3. Open the File Manager and look inside Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/. On a server we checked, a new world gets a folder named with a 32-character ID. If you see two world folders, the server may have created a fresh one beside yours.
4. Open Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini. The DedicatedServerName= line holds the ID of the world folder the server uses, and community migration tools say it must match your folder's name exactly, including capitals, or the server keeps making a new world.
5. Press Start and have a player who was in the world join again.

If everyone's characters are back, you are done. If only the person who hosted the co-op game is missing, carry on.

Why the host's character goes missing

Pocketpair's launch FAQ said a character "is bound to your world and is not shared across servers or single-player", with a transfer method promised for later, and its server guide for 1.0.4 documents no fix for this. Community tools describe the cause: a co-op world saves the host under a fixed placeholder ID, 00000000000000000000000000000001, while a dedicated server gives each player an ID of their own. The world still refers to the old host ID, so the host who joins is treated as a stranger and gets a new character.

Fix the host with a community tool

There are several free, community-made migration tools. They are not Pocketpair's: one states it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pocketpair, another calls itself experimental, and all of them have to keep up with Palworld's save format. Pick one that says it works with Palworld 1.0 saves (the Oodle PlM format), because tools built for older saves are documented as not working on them. The steps they share are:

1. The host joins your server once and makes a throwaway character. Then they quit to the title screen.
2. Stop the server in the Console tab.
3. In the File Manager, download the world folder, including Level.sav and every file in Players.
4. Run the tool on your PC, point it at the downloaded folder, and choose the host's old ID (00000000000000000000000000000001) and the throwaway character's new file name from Players. The tool swaps them.
5. Upload the fixed files over the originals. One tool says to make sure the old host file, Players/00000000000000000000000000000001.sav, and its _dps.sav are gone from the server's Players folder, and another says to delete 00000000000000000000000000000001.sav from Players on the server if it is still there.
6. Press Start.

Things the server does not hold

A player's map exploration lives in their own game's local save, not on the server, so a moved character can arrive with the map blank. The tools handle it separately. If Dimensional Storage hangs on "retrieving storage information" after a move, a tool's author attributes it to an older _dps.sav file that the game has not converted yet. Loading the old co-op save once on the PC lets the game convert it.

If a restore from Backups does not bring things back, send our support team your server name, the world folder's name and what the player sees. Move a Palworld co-op world to your server lists the upload steps.