How can I get back my progression ?

[DarKube]

I accidentally lose all my progression in the game except saves (feats, badges, story mode). Is there backups or something that allow to get back all of this ? I'm kind of disgusted of the game right now because of it.

[SpanishMoss]

Depends on how you "accidentally lose" it, if you die, there is no getting it back, if you forgot to save, there is also no getting it back. If you saved, but it didn't load the save, you can go in the files and load from there. Make sure you understand how to save so you don't get frustrated when all your progress is gone. Easiest way to save is enter a building, or sleep/past time for at least an hour. If there is a bug with saving, report it to the support portal.

[ManicManiac]

I guess it all depends on what OP means by progress.  The question is kind of unclear and rather vague.

I think most players ought to understand the concept of permadeath... and those that don't like it, usually figure out save scumming and manual save-file backups early on.

If they are talking about feats/badges/etc... they probably used the time capsule feature at some point.

The only other thing I can think of is a save-state glitch.  In which case opening a ticket with Hinterland Support would probably be the best course of action.

In any case, the question's wording is a little confused and could be interpreted in several ways as a result (I imagine that's likely due to translation - I don't recall if English is OP's primary language or not).

Edited August 18, 2020 by ManicManiac

[DarKube]

I totally understand the pemadeath, I played TLD since two years now. This isn't the problem. I lose all my feats, badges, story mode progress. In fact, I lost everything beside saves.

[DarKube]

I "explore" in depth the save file on my computer and I find nothing. No backups, no autosave : nothing.

 

 

[UTC-10]

Did you look into:

C:\Users\Owner(<-this varies with the user)\AppData\Local\Hinterland\TheLongDark (<- this is a folder)

Sounds like your user file got corrupted and is no longer valid.  You might want to poke around until you find it. If it was corrupted there is probably little that can be done though others might have an idea or two.  If you start the game again, I would guess that it would overwrite the old user file, so you might want to look as much as you can.  If you find the save game folder, copy the contents to another folder to preserve the files.  I have no other advice. 

I am afraid that you might be "screwed".  Sorry.

[DarKube]

1 hour ago, UTC-10 said:

Did you look into:

C:\Users\Owner(<-this varies with the user)\AppData\Local\Hinterland\TheLongDark (<- this is a folder)

Sounds like your user file got corrupted and is no longer valid.  You might want to poke around until you find it. If it was corrupted there is probably little that can be done though others might have an idea or two.  If you start the game again, I would guess that it would overwrite the old user file, so you might want to look as much as you can.  If you find the save game folder, copy the contents to another folder to preserve the files.  I have no other advice. 

I am afraid that you might be "screwed".  Sorry.

Thank for your help, but I already searched there. So, yeah, I think I'm "screwed".

[Mroz4k]

What version of the game do you play? (PC, console, Steam, etc). Kinda important. I assume steam from the conversation above.

Feats should be something you aint supposed to lose, its the general progression of the game that works outside the permadeath mechanics.

I think you ought to open a ticket with Hinterland. Thought not really sure how likely they are to help you with that if you were digging in your own game files, it goes without saying that is not something you really should be doing unless at your own risk. 

(after discussing it via ticket with Hinterland) I would follow up on Steam. Try the properties, local files, and check for integrity of the game files. In updates, make sure its synced to your Steam cloud. I believe Steam cloud is where your actual progress will be saved, though you might lose the progress you made since this error opened up. 

Those are just some of my ideas. I would reccomend opening official ticket with Hinterland first, though.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Mroz4k

[DarKube]

GOG version, on Linux.

[DarKube]

Honestly, it may seem weird, but it doesn't matter so much for me. I only lost feats (wich I didn't use) and survival diary (wich is kinda useless for me) but not saves which are the most important thing.

[Mroz4k]

Nevertheless, I would still make the ticket. What you experience may be a bug that could become more severe down the road, or at least it might help the devs fix a bug or two that othervise might not get reported.

But of course, its all up to you

[Tactical Ex]

Interestingly enough, I have the same issue. I keep a backup of my saves and in this case I backed up the game directory during Winters Embrace as well so I could tinker around later. Since then I rebuilt my computer but I still had the game saves and the Winter's embrace directory. After installing through steam I started the game which built the save directory and I populated my last state of play ... then realized the badges I earned were gone still. As a test, I copied the winters embrace directory into the live steam game directory and the badges came back. I then verified the game cache in steam and that wiped them out. I then tried only copying the additional files from the winters embrace directory into the live directory and that did not make my badge progress return so there is no special file it seems that handles ONLY badges, its tied into the rest of the game assets somehow. I can only hope that the next update in 2 days prompts an update which does not wipe my progress.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Tactical Ex
typos

[Guest jeffpeng]

I had two of those catastrophic losses. One when my SSD literally went up in smoke a few years back, and one when I accidentally synced my windows install to steam, and then downloaded it on Linux. Yeah, that's stupid, I know. And, to my knowledge, there exists no legit and officially condoned way to restore any progress.

[Tactical Ex]

I usually have a fairly robust backup strategy. In this case that saved my games and it was really luck that my inquisitiveness lead to me make a copy of the game directory to mess with later but I am currently stuck to one of the two scenarios...

1. Get latest game files and lose badges
2. Keep Winters Embrace version of game files and keep badges

Very curious what the next update brings, it should shed light on the update process. I know from experience that it is atypical to test version upgrades from 2-plus versions back, especially on platforms where the game updates are delivered as service.

This may be one of the few games where I choose to backup not just the game saves but the game directory itself moving forward.

[bladerunner900]

On 10/29/2020 at 5:08 PM, Tactical Ex said:

I usually have a fairly robust backup strategy. In this case that saved my games and it was really luck that my inquisitiveness lead to me make a copy of the game directory to mess with later but I am currently stuck to one of the two scenarios...

1. Get latest game files and lose badges
2. Keep Winters Embrace version of game files and keep badges

Very curious what the next update brings, it should shed light on the update process. I know from experience that it is atypical to test version upgrades from 2-plus versions back, especially on platforms where the game updates are delivered as service.

This may be one of the few games where I choose to backup not just the game saves but the game directory itself moving forward.

Here's what I have found by trial and error. I have 14 user001.xxxxx files in TheLongDark save folder and 10 in TheLongDarkNoSync folder. If I delete all of them I lose my latest DarkWalker badges but keep all previous badges.

Deleting the user001 file in TheLongDark save folder, also removes all the other badges I have earned over the years. So, depending on whether like me, you keep multiple backups of your save folder, prior to every upgrade of the game (overkill or what? 🤓), you should be able to retrieve your lost badges by using an older version of the user001 file.

Edited November 1, 2020 by bladerunner900

[zfp]

On 10/29/2020 at 1:10 AM, jeffpeng said:

I had two of those catastrophic losses. One when my SSD literally went up in smoke a few years back, and one when I accidentally synced my windows install to steam, and then downloaded it on Linux. Yeah, that's stupid, I know. And, to my knowledge, there exists no legit and officially condoned way to restore any progress.

Hi,

Have you tried sharing the synced files between the two OS? I'm running TLD win version with Proton and have a symlink set up between the Linux sync directory and the WINE prefix's sync directory, while running the Linux Steam version.

[Guest jeffpeng]

2 hours ago, zfp said:

Hi,

Have you tried sharing the synced files between the two OS? I'm running TLD win version with Proton and have a symlink set up between the Linux sync directory and the WINE prefix's sync directory, while running the Linux Steam version.

Nope, I didn't. Not too bad ob an idea, however. Although I'm not gaming on Linux anymore since it's just too much of a hassle for me.