If you are enjoying Valheim’s Nordic-inspired landscapes, be careful, an insect is devouring some people’s world. The Iron Gate developer is working on a solution, but is having some problems.
The failure is catastrophic – you boot, only to find that the entire rescue is gone, replaced by a loading error. Going through posts in the survival game subreddit, it seems to have become more common after the last update. Some players are reporting an error message when trying to login which seems to be unsolvable. One tried to clean up .old files, a fix for some previous problems and doing all the standard things, like restarting the machine, running as an administrator and so on, and nothing.
Richard Svensson, CEO of developer Iron Gate, posted a PSA on the bug and said the team was unable to replicate it, which means that a fix is difficult at the moment. “If you’re playing Valheim this weekend, back up your world and characters. The evil world-destroyer bug is still at large, “he said, adding that the only information the developers have is that it seems to become more likely if you leave the Viking game with Alt-F4, so try to remember to go to the menu and exit manually.
Backing up all your data is as easy as going to C: Users Username AppData LocalLow IronGate Valheim and copying all your world and character files. It is not ideal, but at least if your progress succumbs to emptiness, you will have a way to put it back.
It’s an evil bug, which we haven’t been able to reproduce just once :(. It seems to occur more often if you exit the game by pressing ALT + F4, so try using menu-> exit.
– Richard Svensson (@dvoidis) February 12, 2021
If you have problems or insights, the official Discord is a good place to chat with other players and developers. Our Valheim construction guide and Valheim progression guide will make Odin proud of your adventures.