Barotrauma crews rarely settle on one permanent captain for long - people go on holiday, keep different hours, or just want a turn running the sub instead of always being the one stuck in engineering. The trouble is that a self-hosted Barotrauma campaign keeps its save on whoever’s hosting, split across two files, and handing that off cleanly by hand is where crews usually get it wrong.

Why Rotating Hosts Is Hard by Default

Barotrauma writes your campaign to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Daedalic Entertainment GmbH\Barotrauma\Multiplayer as a pair of files: <save_name>.save and <save_name>_characterData.xml. Rotating who hosts means moving both files to the next player’s machine, every time, without missing the character data or overwriting it with an older copy. Miss one file, or send a stale pair, and someone’s talents or inventory quietly roll back.

How SaveSync Makes Rotation Automatic

SaveSync keeps the current Barotrauma save - both files, together - synced across every PC in the crew. Whoever hosted last syncs automatically when the session ends; whoever’s hosting next loads the current campaign and starts the sub.

  1. Everyone who might host installs SaveSync on PC.
  2. Create a sync group, select Barotrauma, and SaveSync picks up both save files as a pair.
  3. Share it with your crew so everyone’s on the same campaign.
  4. Play. SaveSync syncs the save automatically when each session ends.
  5. The next host opens the current campaign and takes the sub out - no manual file swaps, no mismatched character data.

With history tracking, you can also see how the campaign progressed session to session, and roll back if a run goes badly wrong.

Rotate Freely

A crew that trades off hosting is exactly where manual save-copying breaks down and SaveSync earns its keep. Get SaveSync on Steam, set it up once, and anyone in the crew can captain the next voyage.

New to SaveSync? Start with the Barotrauma save sharing guide. Captain missing tonight? See how to continue Barotrauma without the host.