The Forest Server Save Management

The Forest Server Save Management

The Forest dedicated server supports up to five save slots and offers controls for autosave frequency, save location, and world initialization behaviour.

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Save Slots

The server has five independent save slots numbered 1–5. Configure the active slot in server.cfg:

slot 1

Each slot stores a completely separate world. You can run different worlds by changing the slot number and restarting the server.

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initType: New vs Continue

initType New

Value	Behaviour
New	Creates a fresh world in the specified slot on next launch, overwriting any existing save in that slot
Continue	Loads the existing save from the specified slot

Important: Always use New for the first launch of a fresh server. If you set initType Continue and no save exists in that slot, the server will error on startup. After the world has been created once, switch to Continue to preserve progress.

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Default Save Location

Windows:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\LocalLow\SKS\TheForest\ds\

The saves subfolder within this path contains the actual world data for each slot.

Linux:

~/.config/unity3d/SKS/TheForestDedicatedServer/ds/

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Custom Save Location

To store saves in a different directory, set saveFolderPath in server.cfg:

saveFolderPath D:\TheForestSaves

Leave blank to use the default AppData location. Ensure the specified directory exists and is writable by the server process.

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Autosave

serverAutoSaveInterval 30

The server autosaves every N minutes. The minimum effective value is 15 — values below 15 are silently ignored and the server falls back to 15-minute intervals.

Recommended values:

• 15 — most frequent, higher I/O
• 30 — balanced default
• 60 — low I/O, acceptable risk of losing up to an hour of progress

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Manual Save

Authenticated admins can save immediately without waiting for the autosave timer:

/save

This triggers a synchronous save. Wait for the confirmation message in chat before disconnecting players or restarting.

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Backing Up Your Save

Copy the entire ds\ folder (or just the saves\ subfolder within it) to a safe location. A simple robocopy command on Windows:

robocopy "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\LocalLow\SKS\TheForest\ds" "D:\Backups\TheForest\ds" /E /COPYALL

Schedule this with Windows Task Scheduler or run it manually before applying updates. Stop the server before taking a backup to ensure the save files are in a consistent state.

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Notes

• Changing slot in server.cfg while the server is running has no effect — the new slot only takes effect on restart.
• initType New overwrites the slot silently. Always back up before switching to New on a slot that already has a save you care about.