How to prevent character loss until you are ready and how to prepare / cope with it.

In this thread I will show you how to prevent you from losing your saves via Steam Updates and hopefully provide some suggestions below to help you cope with losing your characters / worlds. Note that in this stage of game development you will likely lose your characters and worlds a lot if you update and that it is ultimately your choice to play right now. If you have any suggestions for helping others cope with losing worlds or characters please reply below and I can add it to a list of sorts along with my suggestions.

Important! If you have already lost your character or save this method cannot restore said characters and saves. I am sorry.

Ultimately, in this stage of development, if you don't want to lose anything you have to disable automatically updating your game. Normally, you could just keep a previous version of a game as a backup with the old data; however, Chucklefish decided to go the Steam route and Steam normally only lets you keep one copy of the game and that being the most updated version. You can however disable Steam updates for a specific game if you want and here is how to do so via an image:



If for some reason the image died or whatever:
Go to your Steam Library;
Right-Click Starbound;
Select Properties;
Go to the UPDATES tab;
Select "Do not automatically update this game" under Automatic updates.

This will prevent Starbound from updating and you losing your data. You could keep the game like this forever; however this also means you will not get new content, join other players in multiplayer, etc. The choice is up to you.

Technically, you could do this method over different computers and have saves on each computer or install different OS's or even create different drives on your computer with different Steam copies; however, that would get extremely messy very quickly and if you know how to do it you would have done so already and in such a way as to not destroy your computer(s).


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So, you've stopped updating your game but at some point you want to face the inevitable loss of your character and get the new content. How can you prepare for losing everything you've worked to achieve? Your farm? Your house? Your character even!? Here are my suggestions for what to do before and after you wipe all your data in order to cope with the loss


BEFORE


1. Document everything.

Take screenshots of everything you like using different zoom levels, maybe even make a Captain's Log of everything in notepad (it'd be a fun RolePlay thing to do anyways while you play). You might want to write down the coordinates of the planet found in the map screen in the ship along with the planet name (and maybe your specific name for the planet too).

2. Complete everything you want to do.

Did you just want to craft the beacon? Did you want to reach the end game items? Well, do it! Remember though there still is a whole lot more content to explore in the game but you have to reset your current progress to unlock it.

3. Blow everything up.

Why go back to a base when everything is gone? Maybe you could have a big boss fight with appropriately leveled gear right on top of your base (it's how I lost my roof anyways)! Maybe you fought a boss in a cheaty way and want to take a more honorable approach?

4. Hardcore mode.

True to Rouge-likes, once you die your dead forever, just like real life! Once you die once, just update your game. Think of it like unlocking bonus content because you did so good. Or fell in a hole.


AFTER

So you updated you game and everythings gone. How could you cope with such loss?

1. Visit your old homeworld.

Really easy if your planet was on the alpha sector, just type the coordinates of it in the map system, get some coal, and start traveling. You did right it down didn't you? Explore some old caves, visit familiar terrain, and go to where you old house was. Anyways, that moves on to #2.

2. Make a Memorial.

Maybe make some ruins in the shape of the old house, perhaps leave a chest of genetically-modified bananas next to an unmarked gravestone. Maybe someday Chucklefish will add customizable player tombstones or someone will mod it in.

3. Recreate your character.

Too attached to your character? Just make them again! Except they got no items, in which case...

4. Cheat, you cheaty cheater!

Maybe someone can make you a starting items mod. Maybe you could get cheat engine and give yourself a million pixels. Maybe someone has a save editor that lets you edit your inventory and get your items back, along with a gun that does 9 million damage a second. I really wouldn't know how to do any of it myself so I can't guide you on it. If you don't know how to do it already I wouldn't recommend it as it could ruin your game (have to reinstall it) or ruin your computer. Maybe sometime someone will make a tile editor such that you could edit your planet and "paint" your house back in eventually; this is something I expect to occur at some point in the future but not for a while.

5. Someone mods a world / savefile converter.

Probably would be more effort than it's worth and it's beyond my own capability. The person or team would have to have both copies of the game (and more for future updates) and that itself is a quite a bit of trouble through Steam. Don't expect this occurring.

I don't highly recommend 3 and 4. In my view your character's time has passed and they are no longer among us; 1 and 2 helps cope with this. With 4, there is the argument that you aren't really playing the game as it was meant to be played but also the argument that you are just getting your stuff back; the choice is up to you.


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If you have any suggestions for coping with the loss of your characters and worlds, feel free to post below.

tl;dr:
wordswordswords

 

res

 

Wordswordswords indeed.

Good job trying to help some people deal with this though!

 

or simply update and move on.

 

3 words: edit config files
That is, if you want to get all your items back

 

Just so you know, even if you turn off automatic updates steam will sometimes push important patch stuff through. That means you could potentially still lose your characters. if you dont want to lose them right now then don't play.

 

Darn, that's too bad. I fully agree with your last point though.

At some point they should release the non-Steam version but I think it's after the beta phase (and character wipes) if I recall correctly, so there isn't any true way of preventing the save wipes (unless you keep Steam in offline mode).