Upload a Valheim world to a dedicated server

Bringing a world you've played in co-op or single player onto your Valheim server keeps everything built into it: your bases, portals, chests and their contents, the map you've explored and the bosses you've beaten. Your server's World Import tab does the fiddly part for you. You zip the world on your PC and drop it in, and the server unpacks it, puts it in the right folder and points the server at it.

What you need

• Valheim on a PC. World Import takes the world files a PC keeps. A world made on a PS5 or Xbox stays on that console, so there's nothing to upload (see Run a Valheim server for PS5 and Xbox players).
• A world name the server accepts: letters, numbers, dashes and underscores only, 20 characters at most. Midgard or Viking_Base-2 work; My World or Ragnar's Realm don't, because of the space and the apostrophe.
• Mods, if the world used any. A heavily modded world needs the same mods on the server (How to install BepInEx and mods on your Valheim server).

1. Find your world on your PC

1. Quit Valheim first, so the world's latest save is on disk.
2. Press Win+R, paste %userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local and press Enter.
3. Look for a folder with your world's name, Midgard say, holding files like _main.75.fwl2, _main.75.db2 and a set of .chunk files. That folder is your world as current versions of Valheim save it.
4. No folder, only Midgard.db and Midgard.fwl? That pair is an older save, and you upload the pair instead.

If you see both a Midgard folder and a Midgard.db + Midgard.fwl pair, the folder is the world you've been playing. The pair is usually an older copy, without your latest base.

2. Zip it

Right-click the world's folder and choose Compress to ZIP file (on older Windows, Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder). For an older pair, select both the .db and the .fwl and zip them together.

Zip just the one world, not the whole worlds_local folder. A zip holding several worlds or Valheim's own backup folders can import the wrong one.

3. Import it on your server

1. Open your server in the dashboard and Stop it. The import refuses to run while the server is up, because Valheim saves the running world when it shuts down, over anything put underneath it.
2. Open the World Import tab.
3. Drag the zip onto Drop your world .zip here, or click it to pick the file. It uploads straight to your server.
4. Under Potential saves on your server, click your zip to select it, then click Import selected world.
5. The panel asks Replace the current world? and offers Back up now. Take the backup if you've played on the server already: restoring it undoes the whole import.
6. Click Import world. When it finishes you'll see World imported.
7. Start the server and watch the Console for DungeonDB Start. That line means the world is loaded and your crew can join.

The import sets World name in the Startup tab to your world's name, so you don't need to change anything there.

Worlds over 100 MB

Browser uploads stop at 100 MB. For a bigger world, upload the zip over SFTP instead, which has no size limit and resumes if your connection drops:

1. Connect with an SFTP client as in How to connect over SFTP.
2. Upload the zip to the top folder of your server (the folder you land in when you connect), not into a subfolder.
3. Back in the World Import tab, click Rescan (or reopen the tab) so your zip shows in the list, then carry on from step 4 above.

What happens to the world already on the server

Nothing is deleted:

• A world with a different name stays where it is. To switch back to it, stop the server, set World name in the World card of the Startup tab to its name, press Save changes and start the server.
• A world with the same name is kept and renamed, ending in .pre-import- and the date and time of the import. You'll find it in .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local in the File Manager.

Old worlds take up disk space. Once you're happy with the imported one, you can delete the ones you no longer need in the File Manager.

Upload by hand instead

You can also put the world in place yourself with the File Manager: upload the zip into .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local, click Extract here, and set World name to match. How to make a Valheim dedicated server has those steps. World Import does the same thing and checks the name for you, so it's the easier route.

Taking a world back to your PC

To play the server's world offline, or keep your own copy, stop the server, open worlds_local in the File Manager, tick the world's folder and click Download. It arrives as a .zip; extract it into your PC's worlds_local folder so the world's folder sits directly inside.

Common problems

1. "Stop the server first" - the server was still running. Stop it, wait until the dashboard shows it offline, then click Import world again.
2. "Couldn't find a Valheim world in that zip" - the zip holds something other than a world folder or a .db + .fwl pair. Zip the folder that holds the _main files, or select both files of an older pair before zipping. Your zip stays on the server, so delete it in the File Manager before you upload the new one.
3. "World Name only takes letters, numbers, dashes and underscores" - rename the world's folder (or both files of the pair) on your PC to a plain name, zip it again and upload that.
4. The world loaded, but your base is gone or the map is different - you uploaded an older copy, usually the .db + .fwl pair when a folder of the same name exists on your PC. Import the folder instead.
5. A friend's mods are missing or items look broken - the world was played with mods. Install the same mods on the server, and turn Crossplay off in the Server card of the Startup tab, since console players can't install mods.