Where Are Sea of Thieves Saves and Settings Stored?
Where Sea of Thieves keeps local settings on PC, and why your pirate itself can never be backed up.
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Sea of Thieves stores progress on Xbox Live servers, not on your disk: pirates, gold and commendations follow your Microsoft account to any device. What sits locally are client settings (GameUserSettings.ini under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Athena) and an opaque wgs container the Xbox app syncs.
The config path splits by storefront: Steam builds use a WindowsClient folder, Microsoft Store builds use WinGDK. Graphics tweaks that refuse to stick usually mean editing the wrong one, so confirm which client you launched before assuming the file is broken.
Where Sea of Thieves stores this, by platform
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Athena\Saved\Config\WindowsClient\GameUserSettings.ini
Steam uses the WindowsClient subfolder, Store uses WinGDK. The wgs backup path is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.SeaofThieves_8wekyb3d8bbwe\SystemAppData\wgs. Progress itself is server side and needs no backup.
Frequently asked questions
How do I back up my Sea of Thieves pirate?
You cannot. Gold, reputation, cosmetics and progress live on Xbox Live servers against your Microsoft account. Any PC can restore it all by signing in. The local files only hold graphics settings, so guard the account instead.
How do I manually back up the local Xbox save container?
Copy the wgs folder out of SystemAppData with the game closed. To restore, replace it and let the Xbox app sync reconcile. Manual restores can overwrite newer cloud data, so treat the copy as disaster recovery, not routine sync.
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