Valheim 1.0 Servers & Saves: Crossplay, Switch 2 Fix

Your old Valheim worlds and characters survive 1.0: Iron Gate’s 1.0 FAQ states that old saves stay where you last left them and remain playable, and that a pre-1.0 world still receives new content. The catch is biome generation, which only works properly in areas you have not explored yet, which is why the studio recommends starting over. This guide covers the save rules, the 1 – 10 player server limit, the cross-save scope, the 1.0.12 banlist and item-stand fixes, and the restored Switch 2 crossplay support and version checks.

Valheim 1.0 landed on 9 September 2026 across Steam (Windows, Linux, Mac), the Mac App Store, Humble, the Microsoft Store, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2. For anyone running a world with friends, four things matter: the world save, the character save, how many people can be in it, and which platforms can reach each other. Valheim is developed by Iron Gate, with Coffee Stain Publishing as publisher. Crossplay at 1.0 was announced as covering all platforms, which is a different thing from save sync. The chunked world-save format described below uses a complete folder rather than just the legacy .db y .fwl pair, which changes what you need to back up. If you want the wider picture of what shipped, our Valheim 1.0 Deep North update breakdown covers the content side.

El Iron Gate’s save-system FAQ on Steam is the document to read here, because it settles the question the 1.0 FAQ does not: a PC save lives in one of two places, and which one decides how you back it up. With Steam Cloud on (the default), worlds and characters are stored under Steam\userdata\<numeric Steam ID>\892970\remote — a folder the FAQ says is “not meant to be manipulated manually”. With Steam Cloud off, they sit locally in C:\Users\<you>\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local (Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local), with characters in characters_local next to them. The game shows an icon under each character and next to each world telling you whether that save is cloud or local, and the world menu has Move to Local / Move to Cloud buttons — every move writes a backup, which the FAQ notes are never deleted automatically.

Two consequences follow directly from that FAQ. First, a dedicated server reads local files only: cloud saves are bound to your Steam account, so a world you want to host must be moved to local before you copy it. Second, if the world you are looking for is not in worlds_local, it is almost certainly on the cloud — press Move to Local in the world list rather than hunting through userdata. On a dedicated server the folder is whatever -savedir points at; without that flag it is the same LocalLow / .config path, per the official dedicated-server guide.

Consoles are the hard wall: the 1.0 FAQ‘s only cross-platform save statement is the Xbox-to-PC route via the Microsoft Store build, and it says there is no sync beyond that. Do not infer a supported PS5 or Switch 2 save-export route from crossplay support. A dedicated server can instead host the shared world your mixed-platform group joins.

The save format itself is documented by Iron Gate, not by hosters: the Patch 0.221.13 announcement introduced it — a world is no longer a .db + .fwl pair but a folder in which the world is split into chunks, only changed chunks are written on each save, backups get their own folders, and “when loading a world that is not chunked, a backup is made first”. That is why a 1.0 world must be moved as the whole folder: an incomplete copy may fail to load correctly. Keep the original and verify the transferred world before resuming play.

Moving a world onto a dedicated server, in order

1. Get the world local. If its icon shows cloud, use Move to Local in the world list (a backup is written automatically).
2. Stop the game and the server. Never copy a folder that is being saved — a copy taken mid-save can be internally inconsistent.
3. Back up first. Copy the whole world folder to a place no scheduled job overwrites. On a server, -backups 4, -backupshort 7200 y -backuplong 43200 are the automatic defaults per the official dedicated-server guide (one 2-hour backup and three 12-hour ones) — keep your own copy anyway.
4. Copy the folder into the server’s save directory: the path given by -savedir, or the default LocalLow / .config path if you did not set one.
5. Point the server at it with -world "<exact world name>" — the guide says an existing world of that name is loaded, and a new one is created if the name does not match. A typo here is the other way people end up on a fresh map.
6. Verify before anyone builds. Join, check a landmark base and a character’s map, and only then let the group in. If the map is wrong, stop the server and restore the backup from step 3 — back up character saves separately as well. Restoring a world does not automatically restore each character’s inventory or progress.

Keep, restart, or restart with a new character? Three different decisions, and the 1.0 FAQ recommends a fresh start for the best experience, without making it mandatory. Keep the old world: free, and the studio says old saves keep receiving new content — but Deep North generation only works properly in ground you have not explored, so a heavily charted far north stays as it was. New world, same character: you bring that character’s skills and carried inventory, but the old world’s buildings, stored items and world progression do not transfer. Keep the old save if you want to return to them. New world, new character: the studio’s recommendation for “the best possible experience”, but do not assume a new character is required for every achievement: the FAQ says stats count from the moment you install 1.0. How long each costs you is your own play speed; we are not going to invent a number. Our guide to what each Forsaken boss gates is the order you would be repeating.

Switch 2 crossplay is restored. Iron Gate updated its official hotfix notice to confirm compatibility between all platforms again. The earlier default_old workaround described the temporary outage, not the current setup.

If you switched branches during that outage, check that the game and dedicated server are back on the current public release. Crossplay compatibility does not mean every platform has identical fixes or version numbers: the notice lists the Xbox equivalent of 1.0.10 as 1.0.11 and describes the Steam 1.0.12 fixes separately.

1.0.12 shipped on Steam on 11 September 2026 alongside 1.0.10 for all platforms, and Iron Gate states the fixes are fully crossplay compatible and will be extended to all platforms in an upcoming hotfix pushed out as soon as possible. No rollout date has been announced for Xbox, PS5 or Switch 2.

Admin check: which player ID format your lists use

On the launch build the lists only accepted the new V_ format; 1.0.12 makes both formats work. Our reading of admin reports and host documentation is that the working ID on 1.0 is the V_ prefix plus the existing SteamID64 as shown in the in-game F2 panel, and that a bare SteamID64 with no prefix is no longer accepted. Treat the permitted list with respect: third-party documentation reports that the moment it contains a single ID it becomes a strict allowlist that refuses everyone else, so a half-finished ID edit can lock out your whole group.

Getting achievements back after devcommands

1.0.12 added a devcommand that opts a character back into achievements even after devcommands or mods were used: yesiuseddevcommandsbutiwantmyachievementsanyway. Iron Gate leaves it to your own judgement whether to activate it. The patch also added a popup that makes it clearer when achievements can be received again after being temporarily disabled. Our reading of admin documentation is that this is a client-side console command each affected player runs on their own machine, with nothing to set on the server. The FAQ’s underlying cheat-flag rules — spawn flagging character and world, freefly as an exception, spawned items causing a temporary cheat state — are covered in our breakdown of how devcommands lock achievements rather than repeated here.

What is still unanswered

Iron Gate has not said whether the item-stand bug affects console players who already loaded a world in 1.0, nor scoped or dated the better fix it is looking into. The opt-in devcommand is Steam-only as of 11 September 2026, and the notes do not say the underlying cheat mark is deleted.

Myth: 1.0 wipes or breaks your old world

It does not — the FAQ’s answer to what happens to your saves is “Nothing”, and old worlds keep receiving new content. The real limit is generation: new biome content only appears properly in ground you have not explored, which is why the studio still recommends a fresh start. Decide that before you sail north, not after. If you are keeping the old world, our Deep North materials checklist is the shopping list for what is up there.

Myth: crossplay means cross-save

Crossplay was announced as supported between all platforms, but save access is far narrower: Xbox saves can be reached from a PC only when the game is launched from the Microsoft Store, and the FAQ states there is no cross-platform sync beyond that. The updated hotfix notice confirms that crossplay with Switch 2 is restored; that does not expand cross-save support.

Myth: 1.0 added mod support or Steam Workshop

There is no official mod support, no console mods and no Steam Workshop for 1.0, and Iron Gate cannot guarantee any mod works at release. Community loaders did rebuild for 1.0 — third-party data lists BepInExPack_Valheim 5.4.2350 and Jotunn 2.30.0 published on 9 September 2026 — but that is unofficial infrastructure, not support. Console clients cannot install mods, but that does not make every modded server PC-only: the community Valheim Modding wiki separates server-side mods, which vanilla clients (including Xbox) can join, from mods every player must install. Check each mod’s page for that, for its 1.0 version, and for crossplay support before you decide. Sources conflict on whether enabling crossplay stops BepInEx loading: one host’s documentation says mods will not run with crossplay on, another says the flag only changes the matchmaking backend and the breakage is mods assuming SteamID64 identities. No Iron Gate statement settles it, because mods are unsupported.

Sources and Confidence

This table separates what the studio has published from secondary restatements and our own reading. The crossplay and item-stand sections have been corrected against the updated official hotfix notice.