Where Are Battle for Wesnoth Save Files Located?
Where Wesnoth keeps saves, add-ons, and preferences per version, and the OneDrive trap on Windows.
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Wesnoth stores everything per version under a userdata folder: Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.18 on Windows, with saves/, preferences, and add-ons inside. Linux uses ~/.local/share/wesnoth, Flatpak its sandbox data path.
Two traps dominate support threads. Versioned folders mean upgrades orphan old saves until copied forward. And OneDrive Documents backup silently splits the tree, so the game writes somewhere the player never looks. The --config-path flag prints the true folder in both cases.
Where Battle for Wesnoth stores this, by platform
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.18
saves/ holds campaigns, preferences file holds settings, data/add-ons holds mods. OneDrive users must check both the synced and local Documents trees. Steam Cloud adds a steam_autocloud.vdf marker when active.
~/.local/share/wesnoth/1.18
Same saves and preferences layout under the versioned folder. Flatpak builds use the sandbox data path instead. Run wesnoth --config-path to print the exact directory your build reads.
Frequently asked questions
how do i back up wesnoth saves
Copy the whole versioned folder (for example Wesnoth1.18) to the same path on the new machine. It holds saves/, preferences, and data/add-ons together. Major versions never share folders, so each upgrade starts clean by design.
where is the wesnoth preferences file
In the preferences file at the userdata root (plain text). It holds settings, hotkeys, and server credentials. The --config-path flag prints the live folder when installs disagree, which settles Steam versus standalone doubts instantly.
do wesnoth saves survive an upgrade
No. Each major version uses its own folder (Wesnoth1.16 versus Wesnoth1.18), so updating orphans the old saves by design. Copy saves/ forward manually after upgrading. Add-ons need reinstalling for the new version anyway.
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