Hi, after installing Grim Dawn on my new PC (which had Win 11, and thus OneDrive) Steam put my save folder here C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\94472820\219990\remote\save. I have turned all Cloud saving and OneDrive off (OneDrive many, many times). Now when I edit characters using GD Stash, they save to this directory but don’t actually update in the game – but I can see the changes in the save folder. I am not sure if this would affect things, but I was using DoM characters before the GD and DoM (-82-1-6-0a-1726433885) updates. GD Stash is pointing to the right directory, but I am at a loss on how to get everything working correctly. I’m not sure if the characters are corrupted from older versions of DoM, if there is something funky with GD Stash, or if Steam and/or GD need to be pointing somewhere different for saves. Oh, in case things weren’t complicated enough, I used Vortex to install the DoM (thankfully the only mod installed).
Follow the instructions here for moving saves from cloud to local and make sure cloud saving is turned off in both the Steam settings and the ingame Options menu.
As it turns out, I had three save directories. One in my user docs, one in my Steam folder, and one in…you guessed it, OneDrive. GD was putting my saves on the OneDrive and I’m not sure how to rectify that. Even after deleting the OneDrive saves, reinstalling GD, enabling cloud, and downloading saves to a new folder on my C drive didn’t fix it. OneDrive is completely off my PC now.
After deleting OneDrive, I cleared the cache and downloaded Grim Dawn again. I followed the steps to move my characters, but they ALL disappeared in the GD game, yet are still in both the 219990 and the My Games directories. I made a dummy character and saved her, which showed up in the 219990 directory, but none of the other characters there are showing up. I have a suspicion that GD is still trying to find the save directory on OneDrive, or that ALL the characters other than the one I just made are corrupted. They show up in the GD Stash database, so I don’t know.
it’s not GD putting it in Onedrive, it’s windows/onedrive hijacking it by redirecting the folder link
if you have cloud on in Grim Dawn’s ingame settings it will save to the steam folder, if you have cloud off ingame it will save to the documents folder/get hijacked and redirect to the onedrive folder (cloud settings in Steam is irrelevant)
To undo that link you need to either disable it via onedrive or do it in registry iirc
if you have old characters in the opposite folder you need to import them if you want them in the steam save folder/show up ingame, you can’t just copy paste them(game wont register them), you can copy paste them in the doc folder/from steam folder to docs
when using GDstash you need to ensure that its directory location matches whichever is applicable to your game settings, (then keep in mind GDs doesn’t recommend using cloud on for a reason because of the way save files update there)
.edit
might also be worth to mention that usually there shouldn’t be a problem with the doc folder being “hijacked”, unless you’re getting specific issues that can’t be rectified with regular permission changes, or an active Onedrive overriding file changes. That is both the game and gdstash should be able to save fine in onedrive subpath as long as all paths are correct and there isn’t the above interference
To this point I have tried everything but editing the registry directly and reinstalling Windows. I have unlinked GD from OneDrive and then uninstalled Steam, GD, and OneDrive. I then reinstalled Steam (it was nice enough to uninstall all my other games as well) and GD, completely deleting what I could find. It is still pointing to that damn directory and I am not an expert in tech – really feel like this is an 80’s Gold Box game where you spend ungodly amounts of time just getting it configured to run on your PC.
I really like the game and was excited for the Fangs of Asterkan, and I’ve sunk 780 hours+ into the game and another 20 hours into trying to figure this out. The major selling point of GD for me is being able to sit down and play a few hours and relax, and this monkeying with all this to get mods to work is not relaxing.
For those of you who can get it to work and get the mods to work with it, it’s a great game. It’s been real, but I think I’ll be moving on
sry, i don’t really get what you’re trying to do, because nothing here would necessitate or even help in terms of uninstalling GD or steam since there is no relation there to save folder location, it’s going to be the same interaction regardless
If you are trying to use GDstash with cloud saves on, you can’t do that normally, hence why it’s not working, you need to do it in a special way because steam save folder reads files differently, this is normal
That’s also why GDstash recommends using local saves/turning cloud saves off, then you just redirect GDstash to the doc folder or in this case the onedrive sub path if that’s where your saves are going
again, saves not updating via GDstash when you’re saving to the steam cloud folder is normal
so both the game and GDstash need to be using the same save location, preferably cloud off, or if you insist on using the steam location you need to do some canoodling with the game running
= doc folder/onedriver sub folder / “GDstash works like normal”
*and you also need to import the dom mod and activate in the GDstash setting/config tab if you’re using that specifically and need GDs to recognize its specific things
tldr, it gets much simpler if you just turn cloud off ingame, and use the local save location, and point gdstash to that/where ever that ends up being on your system (onedrive folder should be no issue either way)
As it turns out, GD is not the only game saving to my “disabled” and “uninstalled” OneDrive. There are other games doing this as well as a few other programs and random files. It would seem Microsoft is the next step. GD is saving to the My Games/Grim Dawn directory, but on OneDrive and not on my PC. I hope this helps others who may have the same issue, and if I ever get a response from Microsoft on how to stop this, I will post that here as well.
Here is a guide I typed up for those of you that are having issues with Grim Dawn or other games saving to OneDrive despite it being disabled.
I asked Microsoft, and what they told me is that if you’re OneDrive is still linked, you may have to go into the folders that are linked and right-click each offending folder and change where the computer looks for the folder manually. Go into each folder and choose Properties. In the folder description it will tell you where the documents are saving to by default. If it lists them saving to OneDrive (which was my case) then you have to manually tell your PC to send them to the local drive with the Documents folder you wish to use. Choose the Localization tab and simple change the directory it is looking at to where you want it to look. From then on, it will ignore OneDrive and save to that directory.
As a side note, if you have had syncing or backup enabled with your OneDrive that is unresolved (i.e. it starts trying to sync whenever you open it), you have to wait until it is completely synced before being able to do this (as I discovered) bc you have to turn off the backup before continuing. If you have a lot of files, then this can take a long time. A person in the field explained that changing the default directory to OneDrive and making it a pain to manually change it saves Microsoft customer service money, as many users would accidentally get in and screw things up (like inadvertently deleting their Documents folder on the local drive). As an added bonus, OneDrive becomes necessary so that everyone needs OneDrive just to use Windows. That day isn’t here yet.
In summary:
Make sure OneDrive is installed.
Wait for it to finish syncing.
In OneDrive each folder that is being backed up must be checked off so OneDrive no longer backs them up.
Unsync and/or uninstall OneDrive.
Find the folders that used to be associated with OneDrive (i.e. Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos) and point them to the Documents folder on your local drive if they are not already pointing there.
Until this is done, it is practically impossible to mod most games. I know BG3 will constantly try to update files from OneDrive making it practically impossible to remove mods; they keep coming back because they are stored on the OneDrive and OneDrive isn’t syncing. A few other games I’ve personally had this issue with are Grim Dawn and Age of Wonders 4. AoW 4 moves a lot of files during play, and they directly advise turning OneDrive off while playing and/or modding the game.
Also, if you have other folders that OneDrive was backing up, you would have to include them in this process, and do not be surprised if the folders are already pointing at your local drive. This means that OneDrive needed to sync and the backup turned off before you did anything else.
