You spent a weekend building a base, breeding a Palbox full of pals, and running a guild with friends in a co-op game. Then you rented a dedicated server so everyone could play without the host being online, copied the world across, connected, and spawned naked at level 1 in a strange spot with no pals, no guild, and no base. Nothing is wrong with the copy, and your world is not gone. The dedicated server just does not recognize your character, so it made you a new one. This guide explains exactly why that happens, how to move a Palworld co-op save to a dedicated server so your progress comes with it, and the save-format detail that breaks a lot of older fixes.
Note: Everything below assumes Palworld 1.0, which released on 10 July 2026. The method has not changed for 1.0, but the save format has a wrinkle that has, and this guide covers it.
Why Your Character Resets
The whole problem is one mismatched ID.
When you host a co-op game from inside Palworld (invite friends to your own session rather than run a separate server), the game writes your host character to a player save file with a hardcoded name: 00000000000000000000000000000001.sav. Every co-op host gets that same all-zeros-then-one ID. A normal player file, by contrast, is named with a real per-account ID, a long hexadecimal string derived from your account.
A dedicated server does not use the co-op host ID. It assigns every player who connects, including you, one of those real per-account IDs. So when you drop your co-op world onto a dedicated server and join, the server looks for a player file under your real account ID, does not find one, and spawns a brand new level-1 character. Your original character is still in the world data. It is just filed under ...0001, an ID the dedicated server never looks up. The pals you caught, your guild, and every base and chest are tagged as belonging to ...0001 as well, so none of it follows your new character. Community write-ups call this the GUID rebind problem, and it is the single most common reason people search for a “palworld save converter” in the first place.
The fix, then, is not to recover anything. It is to rewrite that old ID everywhere it appears so the world points at the character the dedicated server actually expects.
Back Up Before You Touch Anything
You are about to rename files and rewrite a world save, so make a copy of everything first. If you are on a Loafhosts server, take an on-demand backup and use Lock so retention cannot age it out. On your own machine, copy the entire world folder somewhere off to the side. A save you edited badly has no undo except the copy you kept.
Where Your Co-op Save Lives
On Windows, %LocalAppData% expands to AppData\Local, so your co-op and single-player saves sit under:
AppData\Local\Pal\Saved\SaveGames\<your-steam-id>\
Inside that Steam-ID folder you will see one or more folders with 32-character hexadecimal names. Each one is a separate world. Open the one whose files were modified when you last played to find the right save. Inside a world folder you will find Level.sav (the world itself), LevelMeta.sav, WorldOption.sav, and a Players folder holding one .sav per character, including the 00000000000000000000000000000001.sav that is your co-op host.
That Level.sav and that ...0001 player file are the two things the conversion has to reconcile.
The Fix, Step by Step
Two things have to line up: your character needs a player file named with the ID the dedicated server expects, and every reference to the old ...0001 ID inside the world has to be rewritten to that new ID.
- Generate your new server-side ID. Start the dedicated server on a fresh, default world. Connect with your Steam account and let it spawn the throwaway level-1 character, then stop the server. Open the server’s
Playersfolder: there is now a new.savwhose filename is your real per-account player ID. Write that filename down. That is the ID the world needs to point at. - Move your world in. Copy your co-op
Level.sav(and the rest of the world folder) onto the dedicated server, replacing the throwaway world you just made. - Rename the player file. In the world’s
Playersfolder, rename your co-op host file from00000000000000000000000000000001.savto<new-id>.sav, using the exact filename you noted in step 1. - Rebind the world. Rewrite every occurrence of the old
...0001ID insideLevel.savto the new ID. This is the actual conversion, and it is the part you cannot do in a text editor (see the next section). Rebinding it correctly reattaches your character, the pals you own, your guild membership, and the bases and structures you built. - Verify. Start the server, connect, and confirm you land on your own character at the right level with your pals, guild, and base intact. If you still spawn fresh, the ID inside the world does not match the player file’s name. Recheck both against the filename from step 1.
Tip: If you are moving a solo co-op host’s world and no one else’s progress needs to survive, the rename in step 3 plus the rebind in step 4 is the whole job. If several guild members are migrating at once, each person has their own old-versus-new ID pair to rebind.
The Save-Format Wrinkle That Breaks Old Fixes
Palworld does not store Level.sav as plain data you can search and replace. Since the v0.6 early-access updates in mid-2025, a change that carried straight into the 1.0 release, the game compresses saves with Oodle in what the community calls the PlM format, replacing the older PlZ compression. That single change broke most of the first-generation community migration scripts, which were written to read PlZ and simply error out when handed a PlM save.
Two consequences follow. First, you cannot do the step-4 rebind by hand in an editor; the world is a compressed binary blob. Second, an out-of-date tool will refuse the file outright. You need a save-editing tool current enough to read both the older PlZ and the newer Oodle/PlM format and to rewrite the ID across the world’s records. The open-source Palworld community maintains tools that do exactly this rebind; use a version updated for the current save format, and always run it on a copy of your save, never the original.
Note: This is why a save from before v0.6 and a save from 1.0 behave differently in the same tool. The compression, not the game version number on the box, is what a converter actually has to handle. If you see an error mentioning PlM or Oodle, your tool is too old.
Going the Other Way
The reverse direction works on the same principle. Pulling a dedicated-server world back down to single-player or a co-op session is a documented community procedure, and it rebinds your per-account server ID back to the ...0001 host ID that a locally hosted session expects. The same save-format caveat applies: use a current tool, and keep a backup.
Doing This on a Loafhosts Server
Every step above is easier when the server side is handled for you. On a Palworld server hosted with Loafhosts, you spin up the fresh dedicated world that generates your new player ID in a couple of clicks, take a locked backup before you start so a bad edit is one restore away, and use the File Manager to open the Players folder, swap the world in, and rename the host file without touching a terminal.
There is a second reason a dedicated box beats a co-op host for a persistent world: Palworld’s dedicated server has a well-documented memory leak. RAM climbs the longer the server runs until it can eventually crash, which is why a scheduled restart is standard practice for any long-lived Palworld server. Loafhosts lets you schedule those restarts so the server tidies itself up on its own overnight rather than falling over mid-session.
If you are still deciding where to run it, our Palworld server hosting page covers plan sizing for 1.0, and the setup guide below walks the deployment end to end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did my character reset when I moved my co-op save to a dedicated server?
Because a co-op host character is saved under a hardcoded ID, 00000000000000000000000000000001, and a dedicated server assigns you a different, per-account ID. The server looks for a player file under your account ID, does not find one in the copied save, and creates a fresh character. Your original is still in the world, filed under the old ID, which is why the fix is to rebind that ID rather than to recover anything.
Can I just copy the save folder over and be done?
No. Copying the files is what produces the reset. The world data still references the old co-op host ID, which the dedicated server never uses, so the copy loads but your character, pals, guild, and base do not attach to you. You have to rename the player file and rewrite the ID inside the world.
Do I need a save converter tool?
For renaming the player file, no, that is a normal file rename. For rewriting the ID inside Level.sav, effectively yes, because the world is a compressed binary you cannot edit by hand. A current community save tool handles that rebind. Make sure it is recent enough to read the Oodle/PlM format.
What are the PlZ and Oodle PlM save formats, and why do they matter?
They are the two compression formats Palworld has used for its saves. Older saves used PlZ; from the v0.6 early-access era onward, and into 1.0, saves are Oodle-compressed in the PlM format. Any tool that edits a modern save has to understand both. Tools written only for PlZ fail on current saves, which is the most common reason a “save converter” throws an error.
Will this work on Palworld 1.0, and can I go back to single-player later?
Yes on both. The character-reset behaviour and the fix are the same in 1.0; the one thing to watch is that 1.0 carries the Oodle/PlM save format forward, so use a tool that supports it. Moving a dedicated-server world back to single-player or co-op is the same job in reverse, rebinding your per-account server ID back to the co-op host ID, with the same backup-first and current-tool advice.
Related Reading
- How to Host a Palworld Server on Loafhosts: plan sizing, deployment, startup variables, and getting players connected.
- Palworld 1.0 Server Settings: the settings that shape a fresh 1.0 world once your save is in.
- Palworld Config Editor: the grouped, validated form over PalWorldSettings.ini.
- Remove pre-1.0 mods before updating your Palworld server: why leftover mods have to be deleted, not disabled.
- Palworld server hosting: build a dedicated server sized for 1.0.