Upload a Terraria worldMove a single-player world to the server via FTP

Published on August 4, 2026 · last updated on November 3, 2026

Which file do you need to upload?

The complete game state of a Terraria world sits in a single file with the extension .wld. Everything you have built, mined and triggered in your single-player world is in it - characters are not affected, they are stored separately with each player. That is exactly why moving to the server is essentially a file upload and not a conversion.

Locally, you find your worlds under Documents/My Games/Terraria/Worlds. Next to each .wld file, there is a .wld.bak: the backup of the previous state. You upload the .wld; you can take the .wld.bak along to be safe, but normally do not need it. Note the exact file name including upper and lower case - you will enter it in the configuration in a moment, and a typo there is the most common reason why the server generates a new, empty world instead of your own.

Finding the right world

If you have been playing for a while, the worlds folder quickly holds a dozen files - often with names that looked different in the game than on disk. Three clues help with matching them up:

• The file name corresponds to the world name from the game. Spaces and special characters are kept - copy them unchanged later.
• The modification date shows when it was last saved. The world played most recently is the one with the newest date.
• The file size grows with the world size. That at least lets you tell small worlds from large ones when the names give nothing away.

Important to know before you upload: world size and difficulty mode are stored in the file itself, not in the server configuration. A world created in Master mode stays Master, a Journey world stays a Journey world. The difficulty value in the serverconfig.txt only takes effect when a new world is generated and changes nothing about an uploaded one.

For Journey mode, this has a consequence that regularly causes confusion: if you upload a Journey world, all players need a Journey character - normal characters cannot get in. The rule applies in both directions and is described under Journey mode.

Upload the world and enter it in the serverconfig.txt

The upload itself takes only a few steps:

1. Stop the server in the panel so the file is taken over cleanly.
2. Go to the server's worlds folder via the WebFTP file manager in the browser or with an SFTP client.
3. Upload the .wld file.

For the server to actually load the world, you then have to name it in the serverconfig.txt. Without this entry, the file sits on the server but is ignored:

world=/path/to/Worlds/MyWorld.wld

The file manager shows you the exact path - copy it from there instead of typing it. Then start the server: it now loads your uploaded world instead of a newly generated one.

If the server starts with an obviously foreign, empty world, the path or the file name is almost always wrong. In that case, Terraria silently generates a new world instead of aborting with an error message - so compare the entry character by character with what the file manager shows.

What is different about tModLoader worlds?

If your world was created with tModLoader, a plain file upload is not enough. A modded world contains blocks, items and enemies that do not exist in Vanilla Terraria - the server can only load it if it knows the same mods. The server therefore has to run the same tModLoader version and the same mods as your single-player game.

The storage location is different too: tModLoader keeps worlds in a subfolder of its own, tModLoader/Worlds, both locally and on the server. So upload the world into the tModLoader worlds folder, not the Vanilla folder next to it. If the matching mods are missing or the version differs, the world cannot be loaded correctly. So first set up tModLoader including mods on the server and only then upload the world - in the reverse order, the world is in the right place, but the server cannot open it yet.

Quick check after the upload

Whether the move worked, you can see within a minute:

1. At startup, the server console states which world is being loaded. If a different name appears there than expected, you do not even need to join.
2. Connect yourself and check at the spawn whether your builds are standing - how to get there is described under join a server.
3. Check maxplayers. The player count comes from the server, not from the world, so after a move it is still at the old value.

A pitfall that only shows up later: if the configuration also contains autocreate, this value only applies as long as there is no file under world. If the server finds your world, autocreate is ignored - if it does not find it, it silently creates a new one. Both cases look the same in the panel: the server runs, players get in. Only the console reveals the difference.

Keep the local file as a backup after the move. There are no automatic backups; everything runs as self-service via WebFTP and SFTP - so for now, your single-player copy is the only second state you have. How to turn it into an orderly, dated backup is explained under create backups. By the next version change at the latest, it is worth it anyway, see update the server.

The way works in both directions, by the way: if you download the .wld from the server and put it back locally into Documents/My Games/Terraria/Worlds, it appears in the single-player menu. The same folder separation as above applies to modded worlds - locally, they belong in tModLoader/Worlds and can only be opened with the same mods.

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