Can you change who hosts a RuneScape Dragonwilds world?

Yes, but not from inside the game. Whoever hosts needs the world's .sav file in their own %LOCALAPPDATA%\RSDragonwilds\Saved\SaveGames folder, so rotating hosts means the file has to reach them first.

Does everyone keep their own character when the host changes?

Yes. Characters are stored separately in %LOCALAPPDATA%\RSDragonwilds\Saved\SaveCharacters and never leave their owner's PC. Only the world travels, and each player brings their own character into it.

What happens if two people host the same world on different nights?

Two copies of the world drift apart, and whichever one gets loaded next silently discards the other night's progress. Rotation only works if the latest world reaches the next host before they start.

Does a dedicated server remove the need to rotate hosts?

It does, and it raises the cap to six players - but it means running or renting a PC that stays online and patched. For a group of four taking turns, sharing the world file is cheaper and needs no maintenance.

Can a console player take a turn hosting?

They can host their own session under crossplay, but not your PC world. There is no cross-save in Dragonwilds and console saves cannot be copied out, so the rotation has to stay between PC players.

Dragonwilds: Take Turns Hosting Your Co-op World

Most groups playing RuneScape: Dragonwilds land on the same arrangement within a few weeks: whoever is actually free that night hosts. It is the sensible arrangement - and the game does almost nothing to support it.

Dragonwilds keeps the group’s world as a single .sav file on whichever PC hosted last. Only that machine can open it. So “take turns hosting” quietly means “move a file around before every session”, and that is the step that eventually gets skipped.

Why Rotating Hosts Is Awkward by Default

Everything the group has built - the base, the cleared bosses, the progress toward the Scorned Wilderness raid - is written to:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\RSDragonwilds\Saved\SaveGames

One .sav per world, named after the world. Hand hosting to someone else and you are grabbing that file, zipping it, sending it, and trusting they drop it in the right folder with the game closed.

The failure is not dramatic. It is someone hosting from the copy they were sent three weeks ago, and an evening of building never having happened.

What does not need to move is your character. That lives in SaveCharacters on your own PC and stays there - every player brings their own character into whoever’s world is being hosted. Only the world rotates.

Two Ways to Rotate Properly

A dedicated server

The 0.11 update in March 2026 added self-hosted dedicated servers, and they raise the cap from four players to six. The world stops belonging to anyone, so rotation stops being a concept.

The cost is a machine that stays online and patched, and it is PC only - a console player in the group cannot run one. Worth it for a large, regular group; heavy for four friends who play when they can. There is a longer comparison in SaveSync vs dedicated servers.

Keep the world on every PC

SaveSync syncs the current Dragonwilds world to every player’s machine. Whoever hosted last syncs automatically when the session ends; whoever hosts next just opens the world and starts. Nobody has to work out whose copy is newest, because they all are.

Open SaveSync and click RuneScape: Dragonwilds in the list on the left.
Click + New Save, pick your world, and click Create Save.
Wait for the green checkmark.
Click the share icon, search each friend’s Steam username, and click Share.
They click Activate on the shared save in their own list.

From there the rotation runs itself. Version history comes with it, so if a session goes badly - a griefed base, a bad trade, whatever - you can restore the world from before it rather than living with it.

If Your Group Is Mixed PC and Console

1.0 put Dragonwilds on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2 with full crossplay, so a mixed group can play together without trouble. The rotation is a different question: console saves are not copyable and there is no cross-save, so only PC players can take a turn hosting the shared world.

Keep at least two PC players in the rotation and the group never depends on one person being free.

Rotate Freely

A rotating group is exactly where manual file copying breaks down, and exactly where keeping the world on every PC pays off. Get SaveSync on Steam, set it up once, and anyone in the group can host the next run into Gielinor.

New to it? Start with the RuneScape Dragonwilds save file location guide. Stuck waiting on one person right now? See how to continue Dragonwilds when the host is offline.