How to Restore an Automatic Backup on Your Palworld Server

Palworld automatically creates regular backups of your world on your server. This lets you roll your save back to an earlier point in time, for example if the save got corrupted or something was accidentally destroyed or deleted. These automatic backups are independent of the dashboard backups you create via Create backup.

How to find the automatic backups

The automatic backups are located on your server at:

/Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<savegame folder>/backup/world/

The savegame folder is the folder with the long string of characters as its name (e.g. A1B2C3D4E5F67890A1B2C3D4E5F67890).

Inside backup/world/ there is one folder per backup, named after the time it was created in the format YYYY.MM.DD-HH.MM.SS. The folder 2026.01.15-18.30.00, for example, contains the state from January 15, 2026 at 18:30:00. Each backup folder contains the world files Level.sav and LevelMeta.sav as well as the Players folder with the player data. Several backups from the last few hours are kept at short intervals, while for older days one backup per day remains.

How to restore a backup

Warning

Restoring resets the entire save, meaning world and players, to the time of the backup. Everything that happened between the backup and now is lost.

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard.

2. Back up the current state
   Create a backup via the dashboard or download your savegame folder to your PC (Download savegame) so you can return to the current state if needed.

3. Open the savegame folder
   Open the file manager in the dashboard and navigate to your savegame folder:

   /Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/<savegame folder>/

   Alternatively, you can connect via SFTP.

4. Choose a backup
   Open the subfolder backup/world/ and use the timestamps to find the backup folder with the state you want to restore.

5. Delete the current world files
   Go back to the savegame folder and delete the files Level.sav and LevelMeta.sav as well as the Players folder. Delete only these three items, not the backup folder and not the savegame folder itself.

6. Copy the backup files
   Copy the files Level.sav and LevelMeta.sav as well as the Players folder from the chosen backup folder directly into the savegame folder, so they sit next to the backup folder.

7. Start the server
   Start your server and check in the game that the desired state was loaded.

Tip

If there are several folders in /Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/, you can find the currently loaded savegame folder in the following file:

/Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini

The DedicatedServerName= parameter contains the name of the savegame folder in use.

Note

The automatic backups are a feature of the Palworld server itself and are controlled by the bIsUseBackupSaveData setting in PalWorldSettings.ini (see Edit server config). When it is set to True, your server creates the backups on its own.