How to Add a Savegame to Your Arma 3 Server

An Arma 3 server does not save the world state by itself. Whether a savegame exists at all is entirely up to the mission: persistent missions and campaigns such as Antistasi, Vindicta, KP Liberation or Wasteland bring their own saving logic and store their progress in the server profile. Vanilla missions do not save anything.

The savegame is always a single file ending in .vars.Arma3Profile, named after the profile of the server – for example server.vars.Arma3Profile.

persistent is not a savegame

The persistent value in the server.cfg does not save anything. It only keeps the mission running when all players leave the server. Guides describing persistent = 1; as a saving feature are wrong.

Tip

Create a backup of your server before uploading in case you want to switch back later.

Find your local savegame

1. Open the profile folder
   Press Windows key + R, enter the following path and confirm with Enter:

   %userprofile%\Documents\Arma 3

2. Select the file
   Look for the file ending in .vars.Arma3Profile. The part in front of it is your profile name, for example Max.vars.Arma3Profile.

   Note

   If you use an additional profile, the file is located under %userprofile%\Documents\Arma 3 - Other Profiles\<profileName>\ instead.

Find the profile name of your server

Your server saves under the profile name it uses on startup. You need that name so your uploaded file actually gets loaded.

1. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP.

2. Open the profile directory
   Change to the following directory:

   /serverprofile/home/

3. Read the profile name
   The folder in there carries the profile name of your server. Inside it you find the matching file:

   /serverprofile/home/<profileName>/<profileName>.vars.Arma3Profile

   Note

   If the folder does not exist yet, start your server once with the desired mission and stop it again afterwards – the profile is created then.

Upload the savegame

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard. While the server is running it writes to the profile file itself.

2. Rename the file
   Rename your local file to the profile name of your server. If the profile folder is called server, the file has to be named server.vars.Arma3Profile.

3. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP.

4. Upload the file
   Upload the file into the profile folder and overwrite the existing file:

   /serverprofile/home/<profileName>/

5. Provide the mission
   Make sure the server runs the same mission the savegame was created with. Missions are stored as .pbo files in the /mpmissions folder.

6. Start the server
   Start your server and load the savegame through the mission's own load function – with most persistent missions this happens right at mission start through a menu.

Savegames from singleplayer

Singleplayer savegames and dedicated server savegames are stored inside the same file under different variable names. A singleplayer savegame may therefore not be recognized as loadable on the server.

Caution

How a savegame is loaded is defined by the mission itself. When in doubt, check the documentation of the mission you use – Arma 3 has no unified load function.

Reset the savegame

If you want to start over completely, delete the file <profileName>.vars.Arma3Profile while the server is stopped. There is no other way to reset the progress of a persistent mission.

Important

Download the file before deleting it – see Download Savegame. Once deleted, the progress cannot be restored.