Back up and reset your Valheim character

A Valheim character is not stored on your server. Your character lives in a character file on the computer you play from, and the server only holds the world. That means the server's Backups tab never contains your character, and starting a fresh one is something you do on your PC, not in the dashboard. This guide covers Valheim on PC.

Why the server can't back up your character

When you join, your game keeps the character and the server keeps the world. Valheim's own patch notes describe the save console command as saving "your local character file when playing on a multiplayer server", which tells you where the file is: on your side. Our servers don't read or write character files at all.

The same split is why a new world doesn't cost you your character: Iron Gate's own notes say you can start a new world "with an older character".

Where the character files are

Valheim keeps characters and worlds in separate folders under %userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim. Paste that path into the address bar of File Explorer to open it.

• Local characters sit in the characters_local folder inside it. Since patch 0.209.8 the game keeps local files there and no longer syncs them to Steam Cloud.
• Steam Cloud characters are not in that folder. They live in your Steam userdata folder, under the number for Valheim, 892970. If characters_local is empty and you still see a character in the game, it is in the cloud. Steam lets you download your cloud saves from store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage.

If you are not sure which files in a folder belong to your character, copy the whole folder.

Back up a character

1. Quit Valheim completely, so nothing is writing to the files.
2. Open characters_local and copy the character's files, or the whole folder, to a USB drive, a cloud drive or another folder outside the Valheim one.
3. Do the same for the cloud copy if you use Steam Cloud, by downloading it from the Steam page above.

Take a copy before any big change, such as trying new mods (Install BepInEx and mods on your Valheim server), so there is always a file to go back to.

To restore, quit the game and copy the files back into characters_local.

Reset your character

To start again with an empty character, move the old one aside rather than deleting it.

1. Quit Valheim.
2. Cut the character's files out of characters_local and paste them into a backup folder somewhere else.
3. Start Valheim. The character is gone from the list, and you can create a new one.
4. Join your server with the new character. Buildings, chests and anything else in the world are untouched, because they belong to the world.

If the character was in Steam Cloud, it is not in that folder, so moving files out of characters_local will not touch it. You can still create a new character from the character list and leave the cloud one where it is. Iron Gate's patch notes also describe a Manage Saves menu, added so players could "restore/remove saves & backups", but they do not say it covers characters, so do not rely on it for this.

Resetting the world instead

If it is the world you want to wipe, not the character, that is a server job: How to reset your Valheim world walks through it. Your character will happily move to the new world.