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[GUIDE] Repairing missing save files


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Recently, my Don't Starve crashed. I loaded the game back up, and to my shock, the 3rd save slot was missing, and the first two said "Survival 1-1" which was completely wrong.

 

I immediately disabled steam cloud, and restarted the game hoping for a fix, but it was gone...   :livid:

 

Or was it?

 

Looking inside the saves folder, I saw "survival_3", meaning my save was still there, but don't starve couldn't see it. (if your file is completely missing, i.e. no survival_3 file when you lost your 3rd slot, then this fix will not help you)

 

So how did I fix it?

You have to do a save transplant. I don't know how safe this is (please let me know Klei, AFAIK I think saveindex got corrupted), but it seems to have worked to fix the save index (list of saves).

 

The save location is different for each platform. Read here: http://dont-starve-game.wikia.com/wiki/Saving

 

- To do this, rename your save from survival_x (where x is your save slot) to something else, preferably copied somewhere safe.

WARNING: Make sure you create the game with the same character. The save index seems to control the character. Otherwise you might end up with Abigail following you around, while you're Wilson etc.

- Open don't starve, create a new game in the missing slot (make sure it's the same slot as your save number, i.e. survival_3 means slot 3 in your saves), in my case, slot 3.

- Once you've made the new world, save and quit.

 

Now the fun part.  :indecisiveness:  

 

- Close don't starve.

- Delete the survival_x file in your save folder.

- Copy your old save, i.e. survival_x_copy, and put it into the save folder as survival_x.

- Now open up don't starve, you'll see that the save slot still says "Survival 1-1", but if you load it up, it'll actually load your real world.

- Now save and quit. You'll find that your save list now correctly shows "Survival 1-43" or whatever day/world you're up to, and your save is no longer missing.

- Rinse and repeat for any other missing saves where the file is still intact.

 

Congratulations, you've successfully saved your world!   :happypigs: 

 

Post in this topic if I helped you, I couldn't find information about this anywhere else, and I just had to do my own experiments in hopes of recovering my save.

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Thanks. I had a missing cave file and even though I had a backup from before I entered caves it refused to accept a file with no cave files in that save slot. I tried to copy the cave from another save slot and rename it to match the missing one, but that also failed. I used your method to generate a new cave from a new world in the same save slot and then just replace the world with my original, but since I had two in my original world I also had to copy it once. I now have two identical caves in my world, but that's ok. 

 

 

I still have no idea how the save index system works and why I couldn't just copy a backup from before I entered the caves.

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