Vikings exploring the game of Valheim might, for some unknown reason be considering pausing or even saving and leaving the game at some point. (I don’t understand, I am fully sucked in to this world).
Without a clear set of instructions informing the player how to save the game it may be a little difficult to figure it out. Pressing the ESC key does open up the options menu but doesn’t seem to pause the game, even when playing the game in Single Player mode.
How to Manually Save the Game in Valheim
You may notice whilst playing Valheim that they gave shows a saving logo every now and then up the top left of the screen. The game will then inform the player that the world has been saved. This autosaving used to happen every 30 minutes and in case of a crash or the game was force closed the world would be reverted back to the time the world last saved. The last update for Valheim changed the default autosave timer. Now, instead of the game saving automatically every 30 minutes, the game will now save every 20 minutes.
There is currently no way for the player to change this setting manually and this can only been changed through later development updates. This may change in the future as it is a highly requested feature and the game is still in development.
Sometimes you just can’t rely on autosaves though however. There is a way to manually save the game by using a console command in the game. As the game is in early access there are sometimes bugs or things that can happen that can make you lose your progress and you might feel better knowing you can manually save.
To save the game, open up the console by pressing the F5 key. Once the console if open you will see your game version on the screen and you will see a message telling you to type the help command to see available commands. The one we want to use is the ‘save’ command.
By typing save and pressing enter you will force your game to manually make a save at that point in time. Lose your progress no longer in Valheim! If done correctly the game will display the ‘save’ word and wriring underneath that says ‘saving….’
Be careful not to close the game whilst it is saving or loading otherwise it could result in corrupted data which will then be lost. Not closing your game whilst saving or loading has been a tip since the beginning of gaming time. I’ll never forget all the progress my sister lost me on Pokemon Stadium by turning off the N64 mid-save…. But I digress.
How to Pause the game in Valheim
Players will be saddened to hear that there is currently no way to pause the game in Valheim. As there is a continuous server running you are not able to pause the game for all of the player currently playing the game in Valheim. Pressing the ESC key and going through the options all result in the game still running. Yes, you can still be killed and things will still happen in your world whether you are in your inventory or the options menu so be careful!
Your only option for having the game state stay the same is to save the game, (Which should happen automatically when you log out) and open the ESC menu to press the Logout button. This will keep your character in the exact same spot as when you stopped playing so no progress will be lost by logging out. Players may find this frustrating as they may just want to take a quick break from the game and not want to have to load the game again and wait for it to start.
One thing that you can do is simply find a safe spot to leave your character while you are away from the computer. A good safe spot in your base, or staying in the bubble which protects the trader are good spots to leave a character.
The game is still in early access and features and mechanics in the game are subject to change. Maybe one day we will see the inclusion of a pause button in the game, even if it is just available while playing single player mode. only time will tell in the development of Valheim. Personally I hope there will be a pause button as it is a very dangerous world in Valheim to leave your character standing around.
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