How to - Move your saves from Steam cloud to Grim Dawn's default location.

A quick guide to moving your chars, shared stash and all known crafting recipes from Steam cloud saving to the default Grim Dawn save location.

NOTE… This is ONLY for moving char saves in the same game mode, e.g. Main Campaign or a modded game. It is NOT possible to move a char save from Main to a modded game or from a modded game to Main with this method.

This will overwrite all data in your default save location, so if you have been playing with chars after disabling steam cloud saving, please see the notes after the instructions. Or you will risk losing chars and or items

Char save locations.
These are the default install locations, if you have installed steam elsewhere then please navigate to the steam folder there.Steam
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\folder of numbers\219990\remote\save\main

Grim Dawn
C:\Users\username\Documents\my games\Grim Dawn\save\main

  1. Disable Steam cloud saving in the Grim Dawn options > general pane.
  2. Exit Grim Dawn and exit Steam
  3. Copy the entire save folder from the Steam location.
  4. Paste the save folder into the Grim Dawn folder overwriting the save folder already there.
  5. Start Grim Dawn and play.

Notes.

You cannot copy a char from steam cloud if you have a char with the same name already that you have been playing without steam cloud saving enabled as the one from the steam cloud will overwrite the non cloud saved char.

So in this case if the non cloud char is the most recent, delete its folder from the Steam save location first (\save\main) and then continue as normal. Otherwise delete its folder from the Grim Dawn save location (\save\main) to save any risk of problems by overwriting and continue as normal.

If you have newer items in your shared stash and or you have learnt any new recipes (or Illusions*) since disabling steam cloud then you need to delete from the steam cloud save folder any of the following files as required before copyingTransfer.gst - Shared stash
Transfer.gsh - Hardcore shared stash
Formulas.gst - Crafting recipes
Formulas.gsh - Hardcore crafting recipes.
leaderboard.brd - Crucible personal leaderboard (single player)
Transmutes.gst - Illusions*
Transmutes.gsh - Hardcore Illusions*
[u]

Edit… Expanded info on Folder contents / structure[/u]

In both save locations the Save folder has the same layout and these are the contents.\Save Folder[INDENT]\Main Folder[INDENT]\ _charname Folders (single underscore)

[INDENT]These contains all your actual char saves with the char data, view settings and the char’s personal stash page only

\ __charname Folders* (double underscore)

These contains all your actual char saves as above, but these are a copy made for Non-Expansion play if you want to play with friends without the expansion.

[/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]Files inside the Save Folder Formulas - including .gst, .gst.bak, .gsh and .gsh.bak[INDENT]These are all the Blueprints/crafting recipies you have learned both normal [.gst] and hardcore [.gsh] and the backup files for both [.bak]
Playmenu.cpnThis is the file that saves what char was last on the loading screen.
Transfer - including .gst, .gst.bak, .gsh and .gsh.bakThese are the Shared Stash files both normal [.gst] and hardcore [.gsh] and the backup files for both [.bak]
Transmutes* - including .gst, .gst.bak, .gsh and .gsh.bak These are the Illusion files both normal [.gst] and hardcore [.gsh] and the backup files for both [.bak] [/INDENT]Any questions or problems please just ask. :smiley:

Edit… Updated for AoM Expansion (*) indicates Exp features

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Attachment: setting.jpg
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Attachment: Current Grim Dawn Settings.jpg
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7 Likes

If you have steam cloud enabled, there should be an option under the network tab to copy the steamcloud saves over to normal local storage. Just figured I would mention it as it is much less complicated.

1 Like

Excellent guide on a common issue. Someone should sticky this. :smiley:

Where is the network tab in steam as I’m going blind and cannot see it, also this would overwrite any newer info as in chars, shared stash and recipes.

Edit…If you mean in GD as I don’t have cloud saving I never knew that useful bit of info, thank you, but it does still leave the overwriting problem.

Yes, it’s located in the grim dawn options menu.
Yeah, it could overwrite stuff. But for the majority of people, that probably doesn’t matter to them, as they had likely been playing with cloud saving enabled for the majority of the time. For anyone that doesn’t care about their old local saves, this method is a lot simpler.

Agreed. Or moved to the Utilities and Resources section to make it easier to find and link newer people with questions to.

Most people that are having problems with not being to able to locate their characters have probably switched from cloud to local or from local to cloud without knowing.

I can’t remember, does the game ask if you want to activate cloud saving the first time you run it, after the anonymous statistics?

Quick question: what happens if you only copy/paste the folder inside C:\Users\username\Documents\my games\Grim Dawn\save ? That is what I have been doing for years (previously with Titan Quest) to back up my saves and nothing bad ever happened…Is there anything important I am missing in the Steam save folder?

The folder \main inside the \save folder contains only your chars and their individual stash. The shared stash and crafting recipes for both normal and HC are stored in the \save folder and thus you would, or should miss them if you didn’t copy the \save folder and just copied \main

I wanted to download and play other player’s characters so I needed to toggle off the Steam cloud. I wanted to save my stash items too so I did what AP’s instructions said. Now I can play downloaded characters but my stash is empty. Do you know what’s wrong?

When you turned off Steam cloud save in GD options, the game looks in a different directory.

If you move your transfer.gst from the Steam save folder to the new location should fix your issue.

The first post shows the locations.

As I said, I did just what first post’s instructions said, but it didn’t work.

Edit: I needed to delete the files from the Steam folder and it started to work.
Thanks for help!

if you were playing soft core and downloaded hard core characters, or vice versa, then your stash might be empty because each has it’s own stash file.

My friend has also this issue. He believes that his transfer stash was deleted after ingame error (Steam cloud disabled, saves located in “my documents” folder). Unfortunately, he didn’t send a crash report. Crash happened during a fight with aetherials near Fort Ikon (LAN multiplayer game).

You might want to post this in the bug section as this is the general discussion section and not the place devs will be looking to find bug reports, as from what you say it has nothing to do with moving saves, but a game crash and this thread is about how to move save files from one location to the other.

Hope this helps :wink:

Well that just happened to me a second time in 3 days :rolleyes:
Clouds on Steam and GD were turned off. Even when it will be fixed I will never trust this stash anymore!

Will be using this from now on.
Thx!

Wicky.

I have quite an interesting issue with this.

I have disabled the cloud syncing for GD yet steam still saves files in the cloud (in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\83932987\219990\remote) so to back-up I have to go to GD main menu > options > network > Download Cloud Saves > Delete Cloud Saves > [Yes] to “Steam Cloud Saving is Enabled. Import existing characters?”

And it grabs the characters from (C:\Users~name~\Documents\My Games\Grim Dawn\save\main)

Any way to fix this so it doesn’t use steam cloud at all and instead purely uses the My Games folder?

I also posted this item in your original thread

Edit: The change being referenced is unchecking the Cloud Save option in Grim Dawn’s game Options.

Somehow I’ve been playing with cloud save off, but now want to use it.
I turned it on and it reverted to a months old save. That scared me so I turned off cloud saving and thankfully reverted my current save.
What I need to know is how to update the cloud save and not lose my save.
I’m using windows 10. Also I see nothing in my Documents folder, even with
“show hidden files turned on”.
So how do I move my saves from Grim Dawn’s default location to the steam cloud?

Have same problem…didnt know i had to turn on the cloud option as it is disabled at first launch…now i have two characters that disappear when i turn the cloud on…any idea how to move my saves from default to the cloud/steam location? also is it a good idea to remove anything from shared stash ?