How to Back Up and Restore Your PixARK Server Saves

Surviving the blocky wilderness of PixARK takes a ton of effort. Between taming your first pixelated dinosaur, digging for rare ores, and building a massive voxel fortress, you put a lot of time into your world. The last thing any tribe wants is to lose all that hard-earned progression to a sudden file corruption or an accidental server wipe!

While the game does create automatic backup files, keeping your own manual backups is the absolute best way to ensure your blocky empire remains safe. This guide will walk you through exactly how to safely force a server save, download your world and player files, and restore them whenever disaster strikes.

Step - By - Step Guide

In PixARK, your world map data and your player profile data are stored in completely separate folders. To successfully back up or restore your server, you must grab both!

Part 1: Backing Up Your Server

1. While your server is online, open the RCON option on the Console tab on your server dashboard (or use your preferred external RCON client).

   

    

2. Type the command SaveWorld and hit enter. This forces the server to write the current world state to the disk.

   

    

3. Wait a few moments for the save to process, then navigate to Actions > Shutdown to safely stop your server. Never download files while the server is actively running!

   

    

4. Open your File Manager or connect via an FTP client like FileZilla and navigate to your world save directory located at Server/ShooterGame/Saved/CubeServers/MAPNAME/WORLDNAME/ (for example, CubeWorld_Light/world/). Download this entire folder to your local computer.

   

    

5. Next, navigate to your player profiles directory at Server/ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks/Profile/. Download this folder as well to ensure your character levels and engrams are saved.

   

Part 2: Restoring a Backup

1. Navigate to Actions > Shutdown to ensure your server is completely offline.

   

    

2. Open your File Manager or FTP client and upload your previously backed-up world folder directly into the Server/ShooterGame/Saved/CubeServers/MAPNAME/WORLDNAME/ directory by dragging and dropping the folder into the upload bubble above the path.

   

    

3. Same goes for your saved player profile data into the Server/ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks/Profile/ folder. Upload the folder on the upload bubble above the path.

4. Open your Basic Settings and verify that your selected Map and World Name match the exact names of the folders you just uploaded.

   

    

5. Navigate to Action > Restart to boot up the server with your restored save data!

   

Troubleshooting and Tips

If your restored world is not loading correctly, run through these quick troubleshooting checks:

• Missing Characters After Restore: If you load into the map and your base is there but the game asks you to create a brand new character, you forgot to restore the player profiles! Always remember that world data and player data are stored separately. You must restore the SavedArks/Profile/ folder to get your characters back.
• World Missing or Generating a New Map: PixARK stores worlds based on the Map Name and the World Name. If the folders you uploaded do not perfectly match the text configured in your Basic Settings, the server will ignore your uploaded files and generate a brand new map from scratch.
• No Response from SaveWorld Command: When you use the SaveWorld command via RCON, the game might not return a detailed confirmation message. This is normal behavior for PixARK. Simply give the server a minute to finish writing the files before hitting shutdown.
• Automatic Backups: The game engine does create automatic .bak files for the world and .profilebak files for players. While these can be useful in a pinch, you should always create external manual backups to a separate hard drive to protect against total server data loss.

Conclusion

Keeping your voxel world safe is just part of being a responsible tribe leader. By regularly backing up your Map and Profile folders, you can experiment with new mods, explore dangerous dungeons, and build massive bases without the fear of losing your progress. Keep those files secure, reboot your server, and get back to taming the blocky wilderness!

If you encounter any issues or have further questions, feel free to contact our support team for assistance!

Happy gaming!