Valheim — Co-op Save Sync

Your Viking Saga Belongs
to All of You

Hearth syncs your Valheim world files between players through Google Drive. No more waiting on the host. Anyone in your crew can load the world and pick up right where you left off.

Free Forever Open Source Your Google Drive No Server Required
The Problem

Valheim Chains Your World to One Warrior

The host owns the .db and .fwl files. When they log off, the mead hall goes dark — no matter how many of your crew are ready to raid.

Host Is Offline — Raid Cancelled

Your crew wants to push into a new biome, but the person who created the world is busy. The longship sits idle. Every boss fight, every portal, every hour of progress is locked behind one person's schedule.

Steam Cloud Makes Everything Worse

Valheim and Steam Cloud have a notoriously rocky history. Saves get out of sync, world files disappear, and Steam Cloud has been overwriting local saves since day one. Hearth works entirely outside Steam Cloud — your saves stay on your own Google Drive where you control them.

Passing .db Files Through Discord Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen

Valheim worlds require both the .db and .fwl files. Miss one, rename one, or load the wrong version — and your world breaks. One mistake can wipe out dozens of hours of shared progress.

How It Works

Set It Up Once. Let Hearth Guard the Saves.

Hearth runs in the background while you raid. When the session ends, it pushes the world automatically. When anyone else opens Hearth, it pulls the latest save before they even reach the main menu.

What Hearth Syncs for Valheim

Hearth handles both save files Valheim requires — the .db (world data) and the .fwl (world metadata) — as a pair. It finds them automatically in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local. You never need to touch the save folder directly.

I

Turn Off Steam Cloud for Valheim

Right-click Valheim in Steam → Properties → General → uncheck "Keep game saves in the Steam Cloud." Everyone in your group must do this. Steam Cloud and Hearth will conflict if left on.

II

Load Into Your World Once

Valheim doesn't write save files until you've actually entered a world. Create or load your world, get fully in, then exit back to the menu and quit. Hearth will find it after that.

III

Share Your World in Hearth

Open Hearth, find your Valheim world in the list, and check the share box. Hearth pushes both the .db and .fwl files to your shared Google Drive folder. Your crew sees the world appear on their end automatically.

IV

Play — Hearth Handles the Rest

Hearth locks the world when Valheim launches, backs it up every 25 minutes mid-session, and pushes it to Drive when you close the game. The next person to open Hearth gets the latest save automatically before they launch.

What You Get

Built for Crews Who Raid on Their Own Time

No monthly server fees. No Discord file juggling. No version confusion. Just your world, always available to whoever is online.

⚔️

Both Files, Always

Hearth syncs the .db and .fwl pair together every time. No more broken worlds from missing files or mismatched versions.

🔒

World Locking

When Valheim launches, Hearth locks the shared world. Nobody can accidentally push an older save while someone else is playing.

📦

Mid-Raid Backups

Local backup every 25 minutes while you play. If Valheim crashes mid-session, you're never losing more than 25 minutes of your saga.

☁️

Your Drive, Your Saves

Saves go to your own Google Drive — not our servers. No account with us, no subscription. Google backs it up. You own it.

👁

Open Source

Every line of code is public. Read exactly what Hearth does with your save files before you ever run it.

🆓

Free Forever

No trial. No premium tier. Free because the person who built it just wanted to raid Valheim with friends without scheduling conflicts.

FAQ

What Vikings Actually Search For

Yes — that's exactly what Hearth solves. Hearth syncs your Valheim world files to a shared Google Drive folder so any player in your group can pull the latest save and host the world themselves. No one person controls access to the world.
With Hearth, you check the share box next to your world and it pushes both the .db and .fwl files to your shared Google Drive folder automatically. Your friends open Hearth on their end and the world appears within seconds. No manual file transfers, no Discord uploads.
Valheim worlds are stored at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local. Each world has two files: a .db and a .fwl — both are required. If you've been using Steam Cloud, your saves may be at ...\Steam\userdata\[SteamID]\892970\remote\worlds instead. Hearth finds the right location automatically.
Hearth handles this automatically every session. For a one-time manual transfer, you need both the .db and .fwl files for your world from the worlds_local folder. Do not rename them — Valheim will not recognize renamed world files. Hearth handles the pairing and transfer cleanly without any renaming risk.
Yes. Steam Cloud and Hearth will conflict — Steam Cloud will try to sync saves to its own servers while Hearth is syncing to Google Drive. Everyone in your group must turn off Steam Cloud for Valheim: right-click Valheim in Steam → Properties → General → uncheck "Keep game saves in the Steam Cloud." If you have existing worlds on Steam Cloud, you can move them to local through the in-game save management menu.
Valheim doesn't write save files until you've actually loaded into the world in-game. Just launching to the main menu isn't enough. Load into your world, wait until you're fully in, then exit to the main menu and quit Valheim. Hearth will find the world after that. Also check that Steam Cloud is disabled — if it's on, saves may be on Steam's servers instead of your local drive.
A dedicated server runs 24/7 so anyone can join anytime without a host. That costs money to rent or requires a spare PC running constantly. Hearth is for groups who play together — one person hosts from their machine, and Hearth makes sure everyone always has the latest save so any of them can be that host. No ongoing costs, no server management, no port forwarding.
Hearth is completely free. The only thing your group needs is a shared Google Drive folder — and Google Drive is free up to 15GB, which is far more than any Valheim world will ever need. No subscription, no premium tier, no account on our end required.
ᚱ ᚢ ᚾ ᚨ ᚱ

Your Longship Is Ready.
Stop Waiting for the Jarl to Log On.

Free download. Open source. Takes about five minutes to set up. No account required — just a Google Drive folder your crew shares.

↓ Download Hearth Free
✦ free forever  ·  open source  ·  no subscription