Back up and restore a Hytale world

Your Hytale world and every player's data live in the universe folder, and because the server writes to it while it runs, a backup worth having is one taken with the server stopped.

6 min read · Updated Oct 21, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

Your Hytale world and every player's data live in the universe folder, and because the server writes to it while it runs, a backup worth having is one taken with the server stopped.

What makes up a Hytale server

Open the Files tab on your server and you are looking at the whole thing. The parts that matter for a backup:

• universe is the important one. It holds all world and player save data, with one folder per world under universe/worlds/, each with its own config.json of world settings.
• config.json in the main folder is the server itself: name, message of the day, password, player limit and the maximum view radius.
• permissions.json, whitelist.json and bans.json are your operators, your allowed players and your bans.
• mods holds your plugins and asset packs, plus any settings folders they created, and earlyplugins holds early plugins if you use them.

A backup from the Backups page captures all of it in one go, which is why it is the route to prefer. Copying universe alone gives you the world back but not the operators, the whitelist or the mods that world depends on, and a world that loads without its mods is not the world your players remember.

Stop the server first

Hytale reads these files at startup and writes to them while it runs, including the world data and the JSON files it manages. Two things follow. An edit you make to a running server can be overwritten, and a copy taken mid-write can be missing the last few minutes or can be a file the server will not load.

For a scheduled nightly backup, running live is normal and fine. For the backup you are about to rely on, do it properly:

1. Sign in at customer.guavahost.com, open My servers and click Manage on your Hytale server.
2. Give anyone online a minute's warning.
3. Press Stop at the top of the server page and wait for the Console to show it fully offline.
4. Open the Backups page in the server menu and click Create backup.
5. Name it so you will know what it was, for example "before 1.x patch" or "before economy plugin".
6. Wait for it to show as Ready, then press Start.

The stop also flushes the world to disk, so what you captured is what was on screen.

The moments that are worth a manual backup

Hytale is in Early Access, which means more moving parts than a settled game. Take one before each of these:

• A version change. A patch updates the server on its next start, and a world opened on a newer build may not load on an older one. That makes the backup taken just before the update your only route back. Fixing a Hytale version mismatch explains how updating works and why players get locked out.
• A patchline switch. Moving between release and pre-release changes the build in the same way. Going from pre-release back to release is the dangerous direction, and the way back is a backup rather than a downgrade.
• Installing or updating a mod. A plugin that adds blocks or items can leave gaps in the world if you remove it later. Installing mods and plugins covers adding, updating and removing them.
• Editing a config by hand. Both the server's config.json and each world's own are JSON, where one missing comma stops the server starting. Hytale server settings, operators and whitelist covers the server file and the per-world one it should not be confused with.

Put it on a schedule

1. Open Scheduled tasks in the server menu.
2. The Back up every week starter gives you a weekly backup in one click. For a nightly one, click New schedule, name it, choose Daily under How often and pick a quiet hour.
3. Leave Skip if the server is offline unticked so a backup happens even on a night the server was off.
4. Under What should it do?, choose Take a backup, then click Create schedule.

If you run a nightly restart, put the backup a few minutes before it so the two do not overlap.

Your plan has a number of Backup slots, shown on the Backups page. Once they are full, a scheduled backup replaces the oldest unlocked one, so use Lock on anything you want kept, and clear out the rest now and then. Backups: creating, restoring and scheduling has the page in full.

Keep a copy off the server

Backups on the Backups page sit on the same machine as your server, which makes them ideal for undoing a change and wrong as your only copy. Add one of these:

• Click Download next to a finished backup and keep it on your own PC. Dated copies, not one that keeps getting overwritten.
• Connect over SFTP with the details under Connection details on the Settings tab and copy universe and your JSON files across with a client such as FileZilla. It handles a large universe folder far better than a browser does.
• Turn on Daily Off-site Backups, which copy the whole server to separate cloud storage every day and keep the last seven.

For a build project your community cares about, all three is not excessive, and several generations are worth more than one copy that keeps being overwritten.

Restore a backup

1. Press Stop and wait for the server to go fully offline.
2. Take a fresh backup of the current state first. A restore overwrites what is there, and this is your undo if you pick the wrong one.
3. Open the Backups page, find the backup and click Restore.
4. Choose what happens to files added since that backup. Keeping them is the safe default; also deleting newer files is for when you want the server exactly as it was and nothing else.
5. The server restarts as part of the restore. Watch the Console load the world, then join and check it yourself before telling anyone else.

Everything since that backup is gone: building, levels, items, players who joined after it. That is what a restore is, but it is worth saying before you press the button.

Restoring one world by hand

If you have several worlds and only want one back, you can put a single world folder back instead of the whole server. Stop the server, rename the existing folder under universe/worlds/ rather than deleting it, upload your copy in its place, and start the server. Keep the folder name the same, because the world the server loads is named in config.json.

Player data is the catch. It lives in universe alongside the worlds rather than inside one world folder, so a hand restore of one world can leave players holding things from a world state that no longer exists. For anything beyond a test, restore the whole backup instead.

Common questions

Where is a Hytale world stored on the server?

In the universe folder in your server's main directory. It holds all world and player save data, with one folder per world under universe/worlds/, each with its own config.json for that world's settings.

Do I need to stop my Hytale server to back it up?

Not for a scheduled nightly backup, which is fine running live. For a backup you intend to rely on, stop the server first, because Hytale writes to its world and settings files while it runs and a copy taken mid-write may not load.

Does a backup include my mods and operators?

A backup from the Backups page does, because it captures the whole server, including the mods folder, permissions.json, whitelist.json and bans.json. A copy of universe alone contains only worlds and player data.

Can I restore a backup from an older Hytale version?

Sometimes, but do not count on it. Hytale is in Early Access and the world format changes between builds, so a world saved on an older version may not load on a newer one. The practical rule is to take a backup immediately before every update, because that is the one you can use.

Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.

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