Enshrouded left Early Access on 15 October 2026. Version 1.0 opens the whole map: the new Cinder’s Cradle biome in the north, two new Hollow Halls, and new areas along the edges of Springlands, Blackmire and the Kindlewastes.

If your group has a world from Early Access, the first question is whether it survives. It does - with two resets you should know about before you log in.

Do Early Access Worlds Carry Over to 1.0?

Yes. Keen Games’ 1.0.0.0 changelog addresses players loading an existing save game, and the new content is not locked behind a fresh world. Your bases, Flame Altars, rescued survivors and unlocked recipes stay where you left them, and the northern gates past the Veilwater Basin lead into Cinder’s Cradle from the world you already have.

Your character comes with you too. Character progress and equipment are stored with each player, not with the world.

What Resets When You Load an Old Save?

The world itself is converted. The first time you open an Early Access world in 1.0, the game rewrites it in the new 1.0 save format. After that, treat it as a 1.0 world.

Two things reset for you, both by design:

  1. Your skill tree. The first time you play 1.0.0.0 with an existing save, the skill tree is reset. The points come back to spend on the reworked tree, which gained new skills such as Airborne Architect (free-flying building) and moved the dagger skills into the assassin branch. Re-spend them before you leave base.
  2. Your keybinds. 1.0 added new actions and changed several default bindings, so custom bindings went back to defaults. Check the controls menu before your first fight.

Some balance also changed under you. The level cap is now 50 and gear upgrades to 55, Shroud time extensions stack less than they did, and percentage-based leech perks were rebalanced. A build that worked in late Early Access may feel different.

New World or Old World?

Keep your old world if your group cares about the bases you built. Everything new in 1.0 is reachable from it.

Start fresh if you want the reworked early game. Keen rebuilt the first hours: more chests in Springlands and Revelwood, clearer roads and camps, cheaper early recipes, and a nerfed Albaneve Summits boss. Playing an old world means skipping most of that.

Plenty of groups will do both. If you do, make sure everyone knows which world is which before someone hosts the wrong one.

Back Up Your World Before the First 1.0 Session

The first 1.0 load converts your world to a new format, so take a copy before it happens. 1.0 also added measures to load save data that is partly corrupted, which is reassuring, but a conversion is still the moment to have a backup.

Early Access worlds are in one of two places:

  • Steam Cloud on: Steam\userdata\<your Steam ID>\1203620\remote
  • Steam Cloud off: %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Enshrouded

Each world is a group of files sharing one 8-character name, such as 3ad85aea, 3ad85aea-index and 3ad85aea_info. Copy every file with that name together. Copying only one of them gives you a world that won’t load.

The Co-Op Problem 1.0 Makes Worse

In a co-op group, the world lives on the host’s PC. Launch week is exactly when everyone wants to play at once - and when the host is the one who can’t make it.

It is also when copies drift. If two people host on 1.0 from different copies of the same Early Access world, you end up with two versions, and one group’s evening in Cinder’s Cradle never reaches the other.

SaveSync has supported Enshrouded since Early Access, and it handles this the same way in 1.0: share the world once, and after each session the latest copy reaches everyone in the group. Whoever is online tonight hosts the newest version. Every upload is kept in a history, so if a session goes wrong, you can roll the world back - including back to the Early Access copy from before the conversion.

Already Sharing a World With SaveSync? Do This First

SaveSync has been updated for the 1.0 save format. To move a shared world over:

  1. Update SaveSync.
  2. Activate the world if it is shared with you but not yet activated on your PC.
  3. Open Enshrouded and load the world. The game converts it to the new 1.0 format.
  4. SaveSync uploads the converted world, and the rest of your group gets the 1.0 version.

New to SaveSync? Setup takes a couple of minutes and is in the Enshrouded save sharing guide. If the host has already gone quiet, see how to play Enshrouded when the host is offline.

Before You Head North

Re-spend your skill points, check your keybinds, back up the world, and make sure the whole group is on the same copy. Then go and find out what was behind those doors.