Where to Find Your Palworld Save File.

Steam on Windows

Paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames into Explorer's address bar and press Enter. Inside is one folder per Steam account, then one folder per world, and each world folder holds a Level.sav.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames\<account>\<world>\Level.sav

Explorer expands %LOCALAPPDATA% for you, so there is no need to type your username or to turn on hidden files. The full form is C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Pal\Saved\SaveGames if you would rather walk to it. Win + R takes the same string.

What is inside a world folder

Three things sit in a world folder and they belong together. Splitting them up is the part that costs people their characters.

• Level.sav is the world itself, holding your bases, your guild and every Pal in every box and pen.
• The Players folder holds one file per character, keyed by player ID. Your level, your gear and your appearance live here, outside Level.sav.
• LocalData.sav holds your own client-side data, including the pins you have dropped on the in-game map.

Restore a Level.sav without the Players folder that matches it and the world comes back without you in it. Copy the folder, never the file.

Why the file picker will not open AppData

Chrome and Edge refuse to open AppData from a file dialog and answer with "can't open files in this folder because it contains system files". That is the browser guarding a system folder. Your save is fine.

It catches almost everyone, because Steam on Windows is the most common setup there is and AppData is exactly where the game puts saves. The block applies to the file dialog only, so there are three ways past it.

• Drag Level.sav onto the page. Drag and drop is exempt from the blocklist and works in every browser.
• Copy Level.sav to your Desktop and pick the copy. A copy reads identically, and you wanted a backup anyway.
• Take the manual picker. A plain file input is not covered by the same restriction, and that is the route the prompt hands you when the dialog refuses.

None of this means the save is corrupt, and none of it needs administrator rights. It is a browser rule about one folder name.

Which world folder is yours

Sort the world folders by date modified and take the newest one. Folder names are generated world IDs, never the name you typed at world creation, so the timestamp is the only reliable signal about which world you last played.

Quit to the desktop before you look. The game writes on exit, so a world you were playing two minutes ago may still show an older timestamp than one you abandoned last week. Close it properly and the newest folder is the right folder.

If two folders look plausible, compare file sizes. A world with 300 Pals and six bases in it is visibly larger than a world you made to test something.

Steam Deck, Linux and Proton

On Steam Deck the save sits inside Proton's Windows prefix for app ID 1623730, reachable from Desktop Mode. The layout inside the prefix matches Windows exactly, with one folder per account and then one folder per world.

~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/1623730/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/Pal/Saved/SaveGames

Most Deck guides write that path the other way round, starting /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1623730/. Both land in the same directory. Steam keeps ~/.steam/steam as a link to ~/.local/share/Steam, so whichever you paste into Dolphin, you arrive in the same place.

Two Deck-specific snags. ~/.local is hidden, so switch hidden files on in your file manager first, and if you moved Palworld to the SD card the prefix moves with it, to /run/media/mmcblk0p1/steamapps/compatdata/1623730/ and the same tail from there. Native Linux installs through Proton follow the identical pattern under whichever Steam library holds the game.

Xbox Game Pass and the Microsoft Store

Game Pass and Microsoft Store builds keep worlds in a WGS container under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages, in files with no extension and no readable name, so no fan tool reads them directly. That includes this one.

You can still find the container. Open %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages, look for the folder whose name starts with the publisher and the game title, and go into SystemAppData\wgs. What you get is a tree of folders and files named as long hexadecimal strings, with a small index file deciding which blob is which world. There is no Level.sav in there to hand a tool.

The Xbox save service writes and manages that container, not the game, and the naming is the whole obstacle. A parser cannot tell a world from a character from a thumbnail without decoding that index first. Dedicated Xbox-to-Steam save transfer tools exist to do exactly that, and they are the only route from a Game Pass world to a readable Level.sav.

Two honest options if that is you. Own the Steam build, which writes a plain Level.sav in the path at the top of this guide, or tick the Pals you own by hand and skip the save step. Hand entry takes a few minutes for a full box and everything downstream behaves the same, because the planner only needs species, gender and passives per Pal.

Console saves

Console saves never leave the console. PlayStation and Xbox do not expose the game's file system to you at all, so there is no path to give and no tool that can read one without the world being moved to PC first.

Cross-play does not change this. Joining a PC player's world from a console puts your Pals in that world's Level.sav on their machine, which is readable, but a world you host on the console itself is not reachable. Enter your box by hand, or import an export made on a PC.

Co-op and dedicated servers

A world you host yourself sits in your own SaveGames folder like any single-player world. A dedicated server keeps its world on the server machine instead, under Pal/Saved/SaveGames inside the server install.

On a rented server that folder is reachable through whatever file manager or FTP access the host gives you, and on a machine you run yourself it sits next to the server executable. The structure is the same one again, a folder per world holding Level.sav and a Players folder, so nothing about reading it differs once you have the file.

One thing to know before you ask an admin for a copy. A server world's Level.sav holds every player's guild, bases and Pals, so what you are asking for is shared data. Ask for the one file, say what you want it for, and do not pass it on.

Copy the world folder before you touch it

Copy the whole world folder, not the single Level.sav, and quit the game to the desktop first so the last write has landed. Paste the copy somewhere outside the SaveGames tree, dated, on a different drive if you have one.

Keeping the backup inside SaveGames is the mistake worth naming. The game enumerates that folder, and anything syncing your saves to the cloud will sync your backup too, which means a restore can be quietly replaced by the copy the service already holds. Outside the tree, a folder is just a folder.

Reading a save is safe. Writing to one is where worlds die, and any tool that edits stats, species or passives is writing. Pal Hatchery only reads, so it cannot damage a world even if it crashes mid-parse, but back up before you point an editor at anything.

What a breeding planner reads, and what leaves your machine

Nothing leaves your machine. Pal Hatchery unwraps the save container, walks the property tree inside it and maps every Pal onto the game data in the browser tab, with no upload, no server and no account.

The work happens in three passes you can watch. The container is decompressed first, with Oodle compiled to WebAssembly or with zlib depending on how the save was written. Then the property tree is walked to find your Pals. Then each one is matched against the bundled game data so it becomes a species with a breed rank, a gender, a level, a passive list and its talent values.

Three things persist afterward, in this browser only: your box, your theme, and on Chrome and Edge a handle that lets the next sync reopen the same file without asking. Your Level.sav is read, never copied and never stored. Clearing site data wipes the lot, which is a reason to keep an export on disk.

What the box buys you is routing from what you actually own. How breeding works once your box is loaded covers the species side, and the passives and IVs the save exposes covers the per-egg odds the planner attaches to every step.

One thing worth doing the moment the file is in. Check what you already caught and forgot about, because rare pals sit in boxes for months. Check whether your box already holds a Legend carrier before you plan an endgame project, and stock the cake before you plan a route, because the route is the easy part. Every Pal's parent pairs and all 299 Pals in the Paldex work without a save at all.

Load your save into the breeding planner →

Frequently asked

Where is the Palworld save file on Windows?

Paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pal\Saved\SaveGames into Explorer, which expands to your user folder plus AppData\Local\Pal\Saved\SaveGames. Inside is a folder per Steam account, then one folder per world, and each world folder holds Level.sav next to a Players folder. Sort those world folders by date and take the newest.

Where is the Palworld save file on Steam Deck?

Inside the Proton prefix for app 1623730. From Desktop Mode, open ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/1623730/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/Pal/Saved/SaveGames. The /home/deck/.steam/steam version of that path is the same directory reached through a link. Switch hidden files on in your file manager first, because ~/.local is hidden by default.

Why can I not open AppData in the file picker?

Chrome and Edge block AppData in file dialogs and say the folder contains system files. The save is fine. Drag Level.sav onto the page instead, or copy it to your Desktop and pick the copy, because both routes skip the dialog entirely.

Can I use my save file on Game Pass or Xbox?

Not directly. Game Pass and Microsoft Store builds store worlds in a WGS container under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages, in files with no extension and no readable name, and consoles do not expose saves at all. A dedicated transfer tool is the only route.

Which Level.sav do I pick if I have several worlds?

Sort the world folders by date modified and take the most recent, after quitting the game to the desktop so the last write has landed. Folder names are generated world IDs, never the name you typed, so the timestamp is the reliable signal.

Where is the Palworld save on a dedicated server?

On the server machine, under Pal/Saved/SaveGames inside the server install. Nothing lands in your own AppData. That Level.sav holds every player on the world, including their guilds and Pals, so treat it as shared data before asking for a copy.

Is it safe to upload my Level.sav to a website?

Pal Hatchery never uploads it. The file is decompressed and parsed inside the browser tab, so no part of your world reaches a server and there is no account to make. Be more careful with tools that do upload, because a dedicated server save contains every player on that world.

Keep reading

Breeding pages for all 299 pals carry every parent combo, the shortest route and the passive odds, one page each.

Anubis Jetragon Frostallion Lyleen Blazamut Necromus Paladius Shadowbeak