Valheim 1.0: world shows "[Old Format]" or "Missing DB"
Valheim 1.0 shipped on 9 September 2026. Within hours the same two reports started appearing: a long-running world tagged [Old Format] in the select screen, or the world refusing to load with Missing DB. Several people found their backups carried the same [Old Format] tag, which is the part that makes this feel unrecoverable.
In most cases nothing is lost. These are two separate problems with two separate fixes, and the worst outcome usually comes from acting on the wrong one. Work out which label you are looking at first.
Before you touch anything
Copy the whole save folder somewhere else, right now, before you try any fix on this page. Not a move, a copy. Every recovery below is safe, but the failure mode people report is a well-intentioned fix applied to the wrong problem, on the only copy they had. If your world lives on a hosted server, take a manual backup before you start rather than relying on the last scheduled one.
What each label actually means
"[Old Format]" means the save predates the cloud-save layout
This label is much older than 1.0. Valheim's Cloud Save patch of 20 June 2022 introduced a new save location, and files written before it are marked as legacy saves. They sit in the pre-2022 folder rather than the current local or cloud folder. The tag says "this file lives in the old place", not "this file is broken".
That is why it surprises people at 1.0: a world touched rarely since 2022, or restored from an old archive, can carry the tag without anything being wrong with it. A backup made from a legacy save is itself a legacy save, which is exactly why the backups show the same tag.
"Missing DB" means half the world file pair is absent
A Valheim world is always two files that must travel together:
WorldName.dbis the world itself, every building, terrain edit and dropped item.WorldName.fwlis the metadata, essentially the seed and name.
Missing DB means Valheim found the .fwl and could not find a usable .db beside it. The world appears in the list, because the list is built from .fwl files, and then refuses to load, because the actual world data is not there. The two files must also have matching names.
Fixing "[Old Format]"
Valheim converts legacy saves itself. You do not edit files.
- On the character selection screen and again on the world selection screen, use the move to local or move to cloud button on the entry that carries the tag.
- Quit the game fully. The conversion completes on exit, and this is the step people skip.
- Start the game again. The entry should now appear without the tag.
Do this with every mod disabled. Conversion is reliable on vanilla and unreliable with a mod loader attached, which is the single most common complicating factor in the reports from launch day.
Fixing "Missing DB"
The right fix depends on whether the .db was never written or has been separated from its .fwl.
If the world is new, or was restarted soon after creation
On a dedicated server the .db is only written at the first autosave, which is roughly twenty minutes in. A server created and then restarted inside that window produces a .fwl with no .db at all, and there is nothing to recover because nothing was ever saved.
To avoid it on a fresh world: join, then type /save in the chat and wait a moment before you stop or restart anything. That forces the first write immediately.
If the world is established
The .db almost certainly exists somewhere, and you do not have to find it by hand. Our Valheim World Recovery tool reads a world folder, pairs every .db with its .fwl, ranks the copies by save time and integrity, flags orphans, and hands back the newest intact pair as a ready-to-upload world. It runs entirely in your browser and never modifies your originals.
If you would rather do it manually, look in this order:
- Beside the
.fwl. Check forWorldName.db.old, which is Valheim's own previous-save rotation, and for files whose names no longer match. - In the backup folder. Read timestamps carefully and take a
.dband.fwlfrom the same timestamp. A mismatched pair is a new problem rather than a fix. - In the other save location. A world can be half-migrated between the local and cloud folders, leaving one file in each.
Copy the matched pair back into the worlds folder, keeping the original names, and load it.
If you were running mods
Treat every BepInEx plugin as broken until its author ships a 1.0 build. Iron Gate's own position is that with no official mod support they cannot guarantee any mod is functional at 1.0, and a major version bump normally breaks the mod stack until authors catch up.
Launch day produced some genuinely alarming symptoms from stale mods, including a character duplicating itself repeatedly until the game had to be killed. If your world misbehaves after 1.0 and you had mods, remove the mod loader entirely rather than disabling plugins one by one, then load the world vanilla before concluding anything is wrong with the save.
Does an old world even work at 1.0?
Yes. Existing worlds keep working and receive new content, but Deep North terrain only generates in areas nobody has explored yet. If your crew has already ranged far north, that ground is fixed as it was and the new biome will not appear there. Iron Gate recommends a fresh world for the best experience, which is a recommendation about content rather than a warning that old saves break.
That trade-off, and how to run both worlds side by side rather than choosing, is covered in new world or continue at 1.0 and Deep North world compatibility.
What actually prevents this
Every recovery above depends on having a copy from before the update. The reports that end badly are the ones where the only backup was the world itself.
If mods are the suspect, the World and Modpack Doctor reads a modpack against a world and reports which plugins are implicated, which is faster than pulling them one at a time.
On a Supercraft Valheim server, daily backups run automatically and you can take a manual one before any update from the panel, so the pre-1.0 state stays available while you experiment with the current one. Restoring is a panel action rather than a file hunt, and worlds you upload keep their .db and .fwl pair intact. If you are recovering a world right now, restoring a backup and uploading a world cover the mechanics.
Related
- INCOMPATIBLE_VERSION after an update, when the world is fine but the client and server are on different builds.
- Creating backups and restoring a backup.
- Valheim 1.0, what shipped and what it changes for a server.