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 exact default_old workaround for Switch 2 crossplay.

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. Our reading of third-party host documentation is that 1.0 also replaced the old .db plus .fwl file pair with a folder per world holding chunked data, which changes how you back things up. If you want the wider picture of what shipped, our Valheim 1.0 Deep North update breakdown covers the content side.

Iron Gate’s own 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. A PS5 or Switch 2 world cannot be lifted onto a dedicated server; the server is the practical way to keep one shared world for a mixed-platform group.

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: copy half of it and the server quietly generates a fresh map under the same name.

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 and -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 — characters live on each player’s machine, so nothing is lost on that side.

Keep, restart, or restart with a new character? Three different decisions, and the 1.0 FAQ backs none of them as the “right” one. 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 keep skills, gear and inventory, lose nothing but the map, and get clean generation; this is the middle path most groups miss. New world, new character: the studio’s recommendation for “the best possible experience”, and the only route where achievements track a full run — 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.

Due to an unforeseen issue the 11 September 2026 hotfix could not be uploaded to Switch 2, so crossplay between Switch 2 and other platforms is not currently supported. The official post gives one workaround, and it only covers Steam and Switch 2, including a dedicated server. There is no workaround for crossplay between PS5 or Xbox and Switch 2 at the moment.

What you lose: on default_old you are playing without the 1.0.10 and 1.0.12 fixes, so the bugs those patches addressed may still be present — including the item-stand and Forge of Potential fixes and the unloaded-zone crash fix. Note also that the Xbox build of the all-platform hotfix is listed as 1.0.11 but is identical to 1.0.10, which is worth knowing if you are comparing version numbers across a mixed group.

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. And right now crossplay itself has an exception — Switch 2 is cut off after the hotfix, with a Steam-side workaround only.

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. Every link was fetched before publishing.