Guide

How to find your Valheim world seed

Four ways to get the seed, ordered by how much hassle each one costs you. The first two need only the game. The last two are what you use when you want the seed without loading a save, or when you are working on someone else's world.

Method 1 — read it off the world list

The fastest route, and the one people somehow miss. Start Valheim, pick a character, and open the Select World list. Every world saved on your PC shows its name in one column and its seed in the column beside it. That is your seed, ready to copy.

One limitation worth knowing: the list only shows worlds saved on your own machine. If you play on a dedicated server, the world is not in this list at all — use method 2 or 4.

Method 2 — the printseeds console command

Join the world, open the console with F5, and type printseeds. You get a block of lines describing the dungeons around you, and near the top one line reads something like world seed: -925266684/MXADgi5IxT.

The text after the slash is the seed — that is the part every map tool wants. The number before the slash is the same seed converted to a 32-bit integer, and pasting that into a seed box will give you the wrong world. Do not use the dungeon seed lines further down either; those are per-dungeon values, not your world.

This works on a dedicated server too — it is a player command, so it needs no admin rights and no cheats. See the full console command reference if F5 does nothing for you.

Method 3 — read it out of your save file

The cleanest option when you cannot or will not launch the game: the seed is stored in plain form inside the world metadata file. You do not need to understand the format — you can drop the file into the extractor on our home page and read it straight out. Nothing is uploaded; the parsing happens in your browser.

For a pre-1.0 world that file is WorldName.fwl. For a Valheim 1.0 world it is _main.N.fwl2 inside the world's folder. You can also open either in a text editor: the world name is the first readable text and the seed follows it immediately. That route is ugly but it works on a machine where you cannot install anything.

Method 4 — dedicated servers and hosted worlds

A dedicated server keeps each world as a folder under ~/.config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds_local/, or wherever you pointed -savedir. If you rent, open the host's file manager or connect over SFTP and download the world folder.

Download a copy rather than editing the live save — there is no reason to touch the running world just to read a string. Some hosts also print the seed on their control panel, so it is worth checking before you go digging through files.

Where Valheim keeps your worlds

Several of these paths changed with 1.0 and most guides online still describe the old layout. Both are listed so you can find your files whichever version made them.

What 1.0 did to your save folder

Before 1.0 a world was two files side by side: MyWorld.fwl and MyWorld.db. Since 1.0 it is a folder named after the world. Inside you will find _main.N.fwl2 (metadata, and your seed), _main.N.db2 (world data), _main.N.chunks (the chunk index), one .chunk file per explored region, and _main.N.ok written once a save completes cleanly.

Three consequences people trip over. Your old .db and .fwl are not deleted — a converted world leaves the originals in place, so it can look like the world exists twice. An empty folder with your world's name on it is normal and just means the world has not been saved since the patch. And you must copy the whole folder if you are moving a world; a partial copy is not a smaller world, it is a broken one.

"My map does not match my game"

If you have a seed and the world you got from it looks wrong, it is nearly always one of four things, in rough order of likelihood:

1. Wrong seed. Usually the numeric hash instead of the text seed, or a seed that got its capital letters mangled in copy and paste.
2. Wrong world version. A world's generation version is fixed when it is created and is not the same as the version of the game you are playing now. A generator set to the wrong generation will draw a plausible map of a world you do not have.
3. Mods. Anything that alters world generation breaks seed prediction. If you run mods that change terrain, the seed stops describing your world.
4. An old world. Valheim 1.0 reshuffled locations for worlds created before it. For those, a pure prediction can put the trader in the wrong place, and reading the data file is the only way to be exact.

Seed questions

How long is a Valheim seed?

At most ten characters, and case sensitive. If the string you found is longer than ten characters, only the first ten are the seed. Copy it exactly — do not guess where a binary save should be cut off, because Valheim will happily accept a different seed and generate a different world.

Why does the seed next to my world look different from the one I typed?

Because you are reading two different things. The world list shows the seed name. The console command printseeds shows both the seed name and its numeric hash in the form -925266684/MXADgi5IxT, and map tools want the text half, not the number.

Where is my world stored in Valheim 1.0?

Valheim 1.0 replaced the old two-file world save with a folder per world, inside worlds_local on Windows and Linux. The folder is named after the world, and the metadata file that holds the seed is _main.N.fwl2. The N is a save counter that increases every time the world saves.

My world shows as [Old Format] or says Missing DB. Did I lose it?

Almost certainly not. [Old Format] is a label from the 2022 cloud save change and means the file sits in an older location, not that it is broken. Missing DB usually means the world has not been saved since 1.0 yet. Copy the whole save folder somewhere safe before you try anything, and remember conversion happens the first time the world is saved in 1.0, not when the game updates.

Do I need the .db file to read my seed?

No. The seed lives in the metadata file — the .fwl before 1.0, the _main.N.fwl2 after it. The data files hold your buildings and terrain edits, which is why they are needed for a fully accurate map of an old world, but not for the seed itself.

Related guides

• Read a seed straight out of your save file
• Valheim console commands — the full list
• How to read the Valheim map
• Valheim build planner