Character Data Missing

[Sean10M]

I made a completely new character for Daggerfall Unity but their data seems to have now corrupted or can't be found for whatever reason because their save is now missing from the load screen.

Is there any possible solution or do I have to start over?

[Ralzar]

See if you can manually locate the save folder. It’s under users/appdata somewhere. You might have to make hidden folders visible to find the appdata folder visible.

[pango]

Welcome to the forums Sean10M!

I made a completely new character for Daggerfall Unity but their data seems to have now corrupted or can't be found for whatever reason because their save is now missing from the load screen.

Is there any possible solution or do I have to start over?

Saving is not automatic, did you save?
(On that topic, something many people are missing because it's only mentioned late in the tutorial, is that you can quicksave with F9. There's also an Autosave mod now)

If you did, the last thing I can suggest is to click on "Switch char" button on the top right, in case you're actually looking at the saves of another character, but it's unlikely to be the issue here.

[Sean10M]

See if you can manually locate the save folder. It’s under users/appdata somewhere. You might have to make hidden folders visible to find the appdata folder visible.

Unhid hidden files and could not find a "Users" folder nor an "appdata" folder anywhere in either the Daggerfall Unity folder or the Daggerfall folder its linked too. I even checked in documents to see if DU saved them there. Nothing like that exists here.

Welcome to the forums Sean10M!

*Snip*

Saving is not automatic, did you save?
(On that topic, something many people are missing because it's only mentioned late in the tutorial, is that you can quicksave with F9. There's also an Autosave mod now)

If you did, the last thing I can suggest is to click on "Switch char" button on the top right, in case you're actually looking at the saves of another character, but it's unlikely to be the issue here.

An autosave mod could be of use. But don't worry about saving. This is like my 7th making a character in Daggerfall. I am pretty familiar with the classic game's workings.

As for the "Switch Char" thing. It was a possibility. I tried that though and sadly had no luck. Thanks for the mod link though.

[Ralzar]

See if you can manually locate the save folder. It’s under users/appdata somewhere. You might have to make hidden folders visible to find the appdata folder visible.

Unhid hidden files and could not find a "Users" folder nor an "appdata" folder anywhere in either the Daggerfall Unity folder or the Daggerfall folder its linked too. I even checked in documents to see if DU saved them there. Nothing like that exists here.

It's not under the Daggerfall folders.
It's saved in, for example: c:/users/<your user>/appdata/LocalLow

[Interkarma]

The sticky topic at the top of Help & Support has information on locating saves by platform.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360

Once you locate your save folder, they are in numbered directories: SAVE0, SAVE1, etc. There's no limit to the number of saves you can have.

If you have a save that isn't being displayed in the save/load UI, please attach a zip of that save here and we'll take a look at why it isn't loading.

[Sean10M]

That is really weird place to store save information. Regardless I found the save. Numbering checks out as does the quest information in the quest folder.

[Interkarma]

AppData is a fairly standard location for storing application data in Windows (in fact the entire purpose of this folder, thus the name). Unity uses this location for its persistent data path in Windows as it's a good practice, and other locations on other platforms. But that's neither here nor there.

Your save is generally OK. The core issue is that two files are completely empty (SaveInfo.txt and QuestExceptions.txt). Hard to say what's happened here, as SaveInfo is written before most of the other files. If the game was closed or crashed during save, then it stands to reason the other files written after SaveInfo.txt would also be affected. But that's not the case and all other files appear intact.

The good news is it's easy to recover from. I've attached a fixed version of your save for "Slichja" that loads OK my end. Everything is intact, I just had to recreate the SaveInfo.txt so the save is enumerated.

I also took the liberty of curing your Mage Bane poison, which had you right on death's door. Your character will be healthy again on next load.

All the best and good luck!

slichja.jpg (166.12 KiB) Viewed 1244 times

[Sean10M]

Well thanks. I won't really be needing it though. I remade the character and I like this new save more than the old one. But I do hope this incident helps other people who have this problem to recover their characters and helps improve the overall game in future to prevent such incidents from reoccuring.

[BansheeXYZ]

AppData is a fairly standard location for storing application data in Windows

But it seems like this place was initially designed for gobbledygook configuration files that the average user would never need to see or touch. It seems to fail as a place users are expected to navigate to and retrieve or modify savedata from. DFU saves are highly readable and modifiable to fix problems, test behavior, and make bug reports. They can also represent hundreds of hours of progress. Should they still be in some folder called "locallow" five levels deep the way an Office configuration file is?