Saved Games Disappear

[greywolf00]

Originally this issue came about after a crash in Raedric's Hold where my saves disappeared. I restarted, got back to the hold, saved, quit the program, verified files on Steam (all of them were fine), relaunched the program, and all my saves were gone again. I decided to test to see if this issue was restricted just to this specific area. I started a new game and saved during the prologue. Games could be loaded until the game had been shut down. Once it was shut down all my save games disappeared again. I'm basically stuck between keeping the game running forever, or waiting for a patch.

[ricLP]

This just happened with me today. I installed version 1.05 yesterday (gog). Bloody hell!!

Ok, so the fix posted by aeolisio worked, but I only had to do the first two steps:

 

First delete the folder C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment

Then delete the folder C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\Obsidian Entertainment

[tamimh]

I have the same problem. I see last save only 2 months ago. what a disappointment from this game.

[tamimh]

will this be fixed?

what a disastrous game.

Edited October 13, 2015 by tamimh

[Vordigon]

The way i resolved it was to delete everytthing in the appdata directory [C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\Obsidian Entertainment and C:\Users\User\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pillars of Eternity (made backup of loadedsave.zip) folder and delete all saves but the most recently modified in the user/saved games/pillars of eternity folder, then started the game once and placed the backup of loadedsave.zip

and it now works like it used to. I reccomend you make a backup of all your saves just in case the most recently modified one is the one corrupted.Also ive noticed that skipping the logos at the start of the game with LMB 9/10 times resulted in the game not recognising my save files, use the space bar instead.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Vordigon

[geissomatik]

I kept running into this problem - I'd save a game, then later go back to check, and it was GONE.

 

I think I found the cause.  It happened to me specifically when I would pause the game, save; then, still paused, do stuff (manage inventory, level up, etc), and save again under a different savegame name.  But when I did this, it would NUKE the previous savegame!

 

I suspect the reason is in colliding savegame filenames.  They seem to be a hash of the main player's name (or something like that), then a timestamp, then the map location.  The filenames do not actually include the text you type into the UI when saving; those are inside the file.  So if you save two games that are very close together in time, and on the same map, *they will collide* and try to use the same filename.  So the second one you save will overwrite the first, and the first will just disappear.

 

I did a quick test and if I unpause for just a few seconds and move a meter or so, then save again, the collision does not happen.

 

So - after each save, if you just unpause for a few seconds before saving again (and/or move a few feet), you should be OK.

 

Obsidian could easily fix this issue by adding a short hash of the savegame name (that you type into the UI) to the savegame filename.

[Llewen]

Two years later, on a Linux box, this problem still exists.  geissomatik is correct, it does seem to be an issue with games being saved within a few seconds of each other, or with characters that haven't changed location.  It can be worked around, but it's a fairly annoying bug, and I can't imagine it would be all that difficult to fix.

[Ebbie]

Also just got this issue. Luckily, only my most recent saved games disappeared, so I could pretty much redo what I did in maybe a half hour top.

I did skip the title screen however and it felt, this time, like the game really didn't like it. Also did a lot of save on files I already saved just a few seconds ago without much changing on screen on my previous play (I'm an anxious saver in places that look hard). So this time I made 2 recent saves and moved a bunch before saving on each ones. Hopefully, it will be ok. Also did some copies/backup of said save files and disabled steam cloud. Fingers crossed. 

However, that this MAJOR bug is not fixed after more than 5 years really makes me worried a lot, also for PoE2 that I intend to play after this one.

[greywolf00]

On 1/5/2021 at 10:46 PM, Ebbie said:

However, that this MAJOR bug is not fixed after more than 5 years really makes me worried a lot, also for PoE2 that I intend to play after this one.

I'm surprised this was never fixed. For what it's worth, I never ran into the issue on PoE 2.