Vintage Story Save Management

Vintage Story Save Management

Checked on 14 October 2026 against the Vintage Story 1.22.7 game and server.

Vintage Story stores all player data inside the VintagestoryData folder. Each world is one .vcdbs file, a SQLite database, in its Saves folder, and the characters of a world are stored inside that same file. A dedicated server keeps its own data folder (the one you pass with --dataPath, often ./data) with a Saves folder inside, and its serverconfig.json says which world to load.

Dedicated Server Save Location

On a dedicated server, world files are stored in:

data/Saves/

The active world is defined in serverconfig.json by SaveFileLocation, which sits inside the WorldConfig block:

"WorldConfig": {
  "SaveFileLocation": "./data/Saves/default.vcdbs",
  ...
}

A relative path counts from the folder the server starts in; an absolute path is the safest. Edit the existing line rather than adding a new one: in our tests the 1.22.7 server silently ignores a SaveFileLocation placed at the top level of the file, deletes it when it rewrites the config on startup, and loads (or creates) default.vcdbs instead.

Manual Backup (Server)

1. Stop the server.
2. Copy the current .vcdbs file from data/Saves.
3. Store it in a dated backup folder.
4. Start the server again.

Restore a Backup

1. Stop the server.
2. Place the backup .vcdbs file into data/Saves.
3. Update SaveFileLocation inside WorldConfig in serverconfig.json if the filename changed.
4. Start the server and verify the world loads.

Autosave and Backup Commands

• Autosave: a server saves the world every 300 seconds (5 minutes) by default. /serverconfig autosaveintervall 120 changes it (30 to 3600 seconds; the double l is the game's own spelling), and /autosavenow saves at once.
• Backup while running: /db backup myworld-backup.vcdbs, or the same thing as /genbackup, copies the running world into the Backups folder. It uses SQLite's own backup, so the copy is consistent without stopping the server.
• Shrink a save: /db vacuum repacks the file to its smallest size.
• Hosted mode: on a server with HostedMode on, the game refuses /db backup and /db vacuum (it says they are not available for hosted servers) and players cannot change the autosave interval; use the host's own backups instead.
• Single player: the world settings screen has a back up button that writes <world>-bkp-<date and time>.vcdbs to BackupSaves.
• Corruption: CorruptionProtection is on by default. If a chunk cannot be read, the server stops with Failed deserializing a chunk. Not in repair mode, will exit. Setting RegenerateCorruptChunks to true (or RepairMode to true inside WorldConfig) makes it discard that chunk and carry on, so back up first: whatever was built in that chunk is gone.

Not sure which backup is still intact, or the world says it may be corrupted? Run the .vcdbs files through our Vintage Story save recovery tool: it checks the SQLite structure of the live world and every backup in your browser (nothing is uploaded), ranks them by integrity and save time, and hands back a clean ready-to-drop copy with stale -wal/-shm sidecars removed.

Moving a world onto a server for the first time, rather than restoring one, is the same steps with more ways to go wrong, and step 3 above is the one that bites. If SaveFileLocation does not resolve, the server does not raise an error you would notice; it generates a fresh world and starts it, which looks exactly like the old one being deleted. Our world handoff tool takes your VintagestoryData folder, picks the world, separates the server-side mods from client-only ones, leaves the regenerable caches behind, and writes that SaveFileLocation line from the filename it actually found.

Next Steps

• Server configuration guide
• Food preservation guide
• Prospecting guide

Looking for managed Vintage Story server hosting? Supercraft runs Vintage Story dedicated servers with daily backups, instant setup, and 4 region options.