Starting a Fresh Enshrouded World
Wipe your Enshrouded world and begin again: what a reset clears, what survives it, the two ways to do it, and the things to do before you press anything.
Back up first, every time
Take a manual backup before a reset. It costs nothing and it is the only way back if somebody says "wait, my base" an hour later.
Backups โ Create Backup Now, give it a label such as "before the reset", and wait for it to finish. See Enshrouded Saves, Backups and Restore.
What a reset clears, and what it does not
| Cleared | Kept |
|---|---|
| Every building and Flame Altar | Your server settings and difficulty values |
| Chest contents | Your user groups and passwords |
| Terraforming | Your economy: wallets, shop, kits and links |
| World quest progress | Your players' characters: level, skills, inventory |
| Placed props and farms | Your backups |
Your players keep their characters. In Enshrouded a character lives on the player's own PC, so a world reset does not touch their level or inventory. They walk into a fresh Embervale with everything they had.
That is worth telling them up front, because "wipe" means total loss on most games and it does not here. A reset clears the shared world, not people's progress.
How to do it: clear the world files
This keeps everything except the world, and is the way to reset an Enshrouded world.
1. Tell your players, with a date. A reset nobody expected is how communities end.
2. Take a manual backup.
3. Stop the server and wait for it to show as stopped.
4. Open Files (or connect over FTP or SFTP) and go to savegame.
5. Delete the world files there. On the current game build that is world0.ksd, the copies in the backup folder (world0.ksd.backup-0 to -9), and the older form's files in the migrated folder if there is one. On an older build it is 3ad85aea, its numbered copies 3ad85aea-1, 3ad85aea-2 and so on, and 3ad85aea-index. Leave the folders themselves. Download the files first if you want a copy outside the backup system.
6. Start the server. It creates a new world on the first start, which takes a little longer than a normal boot. Watch the Console for [GameGrid] Server is ready: players can join.
Or, with the server stopped, use the Delete Savegames card on the Admin page instead of steps 4 and 5: GameGrid takes a backup first, then deletes exactly these world files (whichever of the two forms are there, including the backup and migrated copies) in savegame and nothing else. Your settings, user groups, logs and mods stay.
The bigger hammer: Wipe Server
Admin โ Wipe Server rebuilds the whole server as a brand-new one: no world, no settings, no mods. Your slot, paid time and connection address are kept, the server is backed up first, and it is left stopped so you can set it up before anybody joins. The server must be stopped before you can wipe it.
Use it only when you want your settings gone too. Afterwards, set the server up again from the setup guide, and check User Groups and hand out the passwords before anyone joins.
Reset the settings too, if the point is a new feel
A reset is the natural moment to change difficulty, because nobody has anything invested yet.
- Use Start from a preset to load a different difficulty preset as your new baseline: Enshrouded Difficulty Presets and Start From.
- Decide the tombstone setting deliberately before anybody dies: Enshrouded Gameplay Settings Explained.
- If you are raising stack sizes or chest slots, do it before the first start of the new world, so every chest placed in it gets the bigger version: Bigger Stacks, Backpacks and Chests.
The economy survives, so check it
Wallets, shop prices, kits and account links are GameGrid's, not the world's. They all come through a reset untouched.
That is usually what you want, since people keep their balances, but it has one consequence: a rebuild kit priced for a late-game server is very generous on day one of a fresh world. Re-check your kits and prices along with your settings. A kit whose limit was "once ever" stays used up for players who already claimed it; to let everyone claim a starter kit again, make a new kit.
Giving people a chance to say goodbye
- Give a last evening on the old world, announced in Discord, before you clear it.
- Keep the final backup rather than letting it age out: a manual backup is not removed to make room for automatic ones. Like every backup it goes 30 days after it is taken. For a world you may want back after that, use Keep in Vault on its row, or download it.
If you only want part of it gone
There is no partial wipe. The world is one set of files, and you cannot clear one player's base or one region.
If somebody built something you want gone, remove it in game with a group that has base-editing permission. See Managing Players on Enshrouded.
If you change your mind
Restore the backup you took. That is what it is for, and it is why the first step of this article is the backup.