We all know that feeling....you're happily plugging away at your game o' the moment--maybe you're maneuvering your squad of alien blasting badasses into the perfect location in XCOM 2...or maybe you're settling into your cozy Stardew Valley bed after a hard day of farming. That's when disaster likes to strike...when your defenses are down. Then up pops a window telling you that your game has crashed. Huh? That's weird. You start the game back up again figuring that it's just a minor blip only to find that, after 77 hours of gameplay, your saved games are gone from the loading menu. What...the...living....efffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!?! My farm isn't done! I'm only one step from completing the community center! My house can still be upgraded! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The idea of starting from scratch is completely overwhelming.
I have had this weird string of bad luck with games this year. XCOM 2 had a bug that would corrupt your saves if you encountered chrysalid pods (this bug has since been fixed, but it sidelined my campaign for a few weeks while 2K was patching together a hotfix). I was more than 40 hours into the game when I was promptly halted. Now another save game bug had struck my beloved Stardew Valley. The most important thing to remember in these type of situations is 1.) Don't throw anything computer related! Probably, don't throw anything. 2.) Stay clam and Google the problem 3.) The Steam forums are also usually helpful.
After some cursory searching I discovered that others have also encountered this issue. If you find yourself in this situation it can (hopefully!) be remedied. I managed to restore my 77 hour save after some finagling of the save files. Phew! I am going to try to walkthrough the steps I took just in case someone else encounters this problem--FYI, this problem is a known issue. The sole developer, ConcernedApe, actually fixed the save of one individual and will hopefully look into this problem.
Step 1--Locate the folder with your save files. Open the start menu and/OR enter %APPDATA% in the search bar. I made sure that it said to search for a folder/file. Once you've found it, open the folder that says Stardew Valley. Then, open the "saves" folder. Inside the "saves" folder should be a folder labelled "charactername_184923746" (it's a bunch of random numbers). If you open that folder you should see your actual save files.
But, before you go any further, MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR CHARACTER FOLDER THAT CONTAINS YOUR SAVE FILES!. I saved mine onto my desktop for easy access.
Step 2--Copy the code from your current character from the old save file. Once you open the "charactername_12983829389" file you should see several files listed. When I opened mine I saw 4 different files. Two files were named "charactername_1928849849_old" and "charactername_12898494_STARDEWVALLEYTMP". The other two are called "save data" and you can ignore those.
Open the "charactername_1237872382_old" file using Notebook. Copy all the code that shows up. It's a lot...the easiest way is to click on "edit" and choose "select all" and then right click and copy it.
Step 3--Start a new character, skip the intro, and wait until the "your progress has been saved" message pops up. Re-start the game. Create a new character--you aren't going to be playing this character so just put some random stuff in for the naming screen. Once you've skipped past the intro story it should save your progress. Exit out of the game once you've saved your progress.
Step 4--Navigate back to your save file. Now, when looking in the "saves" folder, you should see a new folder for the new character that you just created.
Step 5--Copy your original character data over the save file info for your new character. Open up the folder with your new character's data (it should be called newcharactername_38483478374) Located the file that says "newcharactername_1278738738" and open it with Notebook. Select all the code on this file and then hit paste to replace it with the code from your original character. Make sure you go to "file" and hit "save" before exiting out!
Step 5--Re-start the game and load. You probably still won't see a profile for your old character. Instead, you should see a profile for your new character. Click on the profile for your new character. Your game should start up on the last day of your old character.
Following these steps worked for me and I was, thankfully, able to recover my game. Oddly, a few days later a profile started showing up for my old character on the loading screen. Weird. My game originally crashed because another program was trying to inform me that my video card drivers had an update. The only other time I have had Stardew Valley crash was also caused by a recent update related to either Windows 10 or my video card. That time I had no problems.
Even though this fix worked for me, I have read that other people have had their saves completely disappear. This won't work unless you can find your save files and copy the code onto a new profile.
I really hope other Stardew Valley players out there are able to avoid this problem. It can be quite frustrating and panic inducing to be thoroughly enjoying a game only to have all your hard work disappear.
But, before you go any further, MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR CHARACTER FOLDER THAT CONTAINS YOUR SAVE FILES!. I saved mine onto my desktop for easy access.
Step 2--Copy the code from your current character from the old save file. Once you open the "charactername_12983829389" file you should see several files listed. When I opened mine I saw 4 different files. Two files were named "charactername_1928849849_old" and "charactername_12898494_STARDEWVALLEYTMP". The other two are called "save data" and you can ignore those.
Open the "charactername_1237872382_old" file using Notebook. Copy all the code that shows up. It's a lot...the easiest way is to click on "edit" and choose "select all" and then right click and copy it.
Step 3--Start a new character, skip the intro, and wait until the "your progress has been saved" message pops up. Re-start the game. Create a new character--you aren't going to be playing this character so just put some random stuff in for the naming screen. Once you've skipped past the intro story it should save your progress. Exit out of the game once you've saved your progress.
Step 4--Navigate back to your save file. Now, when looking in the "saves" folder, you should see a new folder for the new character that you just created.
Step 5--Copy your original character data over the save file info for your new character. Open up the folder with your new character's data (it should be called newcharactername_38483478374) Located the file that says "newcharactername_1278738738" and open it with Notebook. Select all the code on this file and then hit paste to replace it with the code from your original character. Make sure you go to "file" and hit "save" before exiting out!
Step 5--Re-start the game and load. You probably still won't see a profile for your old character. Instead, you should see a profile for your new character. Click on the profile for your new character. Your game should start up on the last day of your old character.
Following these steps worked for me and I was, thankfully, able to recover my game. Oddly, a few days later a profile started showing up for my old character on the loading screen. Weird. My game originally crashed because another program was trying to inform me that my video card drivers had an update. The only other time I have had Stardew Valley crash was also caused by a recent update related to either Windows 10 or my video card. That time I had no problems.
Even though this fix worked for me, I have read that other people have had their saves completely disappear. This won't work unless you can find your save files and copy the code onto a new profile.
I really hope other Stardew Valley players out there are able to avoid this problem. It can be quite frustrating and panic inducing to be thoroughly enjoying a game only to have all your hard work disappear.
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