Baldur's Gate 3 Saves: Where They Live, What Larian Deletes

29 September 2026 was the date Larian set for deleting cross-save copies that had sat on its servers for more than six months. Saves stored on your own PC or console were never part of it, and Larian's own announcement says so in eight words: "Saves made directly to your device won't expire."

That is the reassuring half. The useful half is what the change exposes. A Baldur's Gate 3 campaign can exist in three places at once — your drive, your platform's cloud and Larian's servers — and they follow three different sets of rules. Only the copy on your own drive is fully under your control. Treat cross-save as a ferry between machines, not a vault.

Below is what the expiry removed, where the save folder sits on each platform, how cross-save moves a run between machines, and the Honour Mode rules that make one file the entire campaign. The sources are Larian's support FAQs, forum announcements and patch notes, plus bg3.wiki's Options and Difficulty pages, checked on 11 October 2026.

What Larian deleted on 29 September

Larian posted the change on its forums on 27 August 2026, pitched at anyone planning to sell an old PC or console and carry a save to another platform. The rule itself is on the Larian Account page of its support FAQ:

• With cross-save switched on, your Larian Account syncs a copy of your last 10 saves.
• Those copies are kept for up to six months. Anything older is deleted. The FAQ set 29 September 2026 as the date on which inactive cross-saves older than six months showing on Larian Accounts would, in its words, "expire and be permanently deleted."
• The limit applies only to the server copies. The FAQ is explicit that it does not affect saves stored on your PC or console.
• The server copy is never the original. Per the same page, the game should store your saves locally on its own, and the account only ever holds a synced copy.

So the only saves the expiry could cost you are ones whose last surviving copy lived on Larian's servers — a run started on a machine that has since been wiped, sold or replaced. The FAQ offers no recovery route for those.

One number needs care. The current account FAQ says ten synced saves. Larian's older FAQ on disappearing Xbox saves still says cross-save lets you recover your last five. If the size of that window decides anything for you, plan on five.

One campaign, three places

The middle row is not Larian's to manage, and its FAQ says as much: Steam, PlayStation and other platforms may have their own methods and timelines for storing save data, and you should ask them. Steam's store page lists Steam Cloud for the game, and Larian's PC troubleshooting FAQ describes the Steam or GOG Galaxy client downloading the cloud copy of your profile when cloud support is on.

The save options and their caps

All of the save settings live in one block, Save Options, under the Gameplay tab of the options menu — the same tab as the Karmic Dice toggle. From bg3.wiki's Options page:

On keyboard, quicksave is F5 and quickload is F8 by default. The Options page lists no equivalent cap for manual saves.

Put those numbers side by side. Ten synced copies against default caps of 25 autosaves and 25 quicksaves means Larian's server holds the tail end of a campaign, not its history. If you want a save from 30 hours ago to survive a dead drive, do not count on Larian's copy to be the one that has it.

Where the save folder is on each platform

These paths come from Larian's support FAQs and its Hotfix #34 notes.

Four details from the same pages:

• Each save is its own folder inside Story. When Larian's support team asks for a save, it asks for the .lsv file from the one in question.
• Windows hides AppData by default. Larian's shortcut is to paste the %LocalAppData% path straight into File Explorer's location bar and press Enter.
• The Windows folder moved in Patch 7, released 5 September 2024. Larian's troubleshooting FAQ describes Patch 7 changing the game to save profiles in the local AppData folder; Patch 6-era saves lived under Documents\Larian Studios. The same FAQ says the game copies that older Documents folder into AppData at startup when no AppData folder exists yet, so an old Documents folder can still hold saves after you have moved on.
• Photo Mode screenshots live somewhere else. Larian's Patch 8 notes put them in Documents\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\Screenshots on PC, ~/Pictures/Larian Studios/Baldur's Gate 3/Screenshots on Mac, and the console's media gallery on Xbox and PlayStation 5. Back up the save folder and you have not backed up your pictures.

Steam Deck has two folders

Hotfix #34, on 23 September 2025, gave Baldur's Gate 3 a native Steam Deck build. Larian's notes and its Steam Deck FAQ explain why the table above has two rows for one device: the Proton version stores saves inside the compatdata folder, a mirror of the Windows file system, while the native version stores them in SteamOS's own file system.

• With Steam Cloud on, Larian says your most recent saves sync into the native folder automatically.
• With Steam Cloud off, or for older saves, copy the Savegames folder across yourself in Desktop Mode, from the Proton path to the native path. The FAQ walks through it step by step.
• The old copy still takes up space. Larian says you can delete the compatdata folder once you have copied everything and do not plan to go back to Proton. You can switch back to Proton through Steam's Compatibility settings if the native build gives you trouble.
• It is a Steam Deck build, not Linux support. Larian's FAQ says it does not support the Linux platform and the native build is only supported on Steam Deck.

Cross-save is off until you switch it on

bg3.wiki's Options page lists the CrossSave toggle as Off by default. Switching it on is the first step. Larian's account FAQ adds three more:

1. Link your platform account to your Larian Account. Larian's Patch 8 notes point to larian.com/account/connected for this.
2. Launch the game through that platform's client. The FAQ says that if you launch the game manually without any platform client running, the Larian services will not activate.
3. Log in on the second device. Your last ten saves sync automatically and show up in the Save and Load menus there.

Larian's Patch 8 notes, from 15 April 2025, describe PC, Mac, Xbox and PlayStation 5 as sharing "full cross-platform progression" alongside cross-play. The rest of that patch is in our Patch 8 subclasses guide.

Xbox has a second system on top. Since 3 August 2026, the game has been part of Xbox Play Anywhere. Larian's announcement lists the version numbers and says nothing about saves. Microsoft's own Play Anywhere FAQ says games in the program save your progress with Xbox, so you can pick up on an Xbox console or a Windows PC, and that the program covers digital copies only. That is Microsoft's mechanism, separate from Larian's cross-save, and Larian's account FAQ does not mention it.

Getting a console save onto a PC

Larian's FAQ on retrieving files spells out the console route:

1. On PS5 or Xbox, sign in to a Larian Account and enable cross-save in the game.
2. Wait for the sync to finish.
3. On a PC, log in to your Larian Account on Larian's website and open My Saves.
4. Pick the save and click its download icon.

The account FAQ offers the same download for manual backups. It is the route Larian documents for getting a copy of a console save onto storage you control — and since 29 September, a server copy you never download is a copy with a six-month clock on it.

Mods do not travel well

Larian's Patch 8 notes set three limits that matter the moment a save leaves the PC it was made on:

• Third-party mods cannot be used on consoles.
• Consoles have a 100-mod limit.
• Cross-play lobbies need every player on the same mods at the same version. Larian's cross-play FAQ repeats it: no more and no fewer.

For cross-play, Larian's advice to PC players is to browse mods with the Available on Console & Mac tag. It only spells that out for lobbies, but it is the sensible check before you carry a modded PC campaign to a console too. Patch 8 also fixed a potential crash when loading a modded save with its mods disabled.

Honour Mode gets one file

Everything above assumes you can pick which save to load. Honour Mode takes that away. Per bg3.wiki's Difficulty page, an Honour campaign gets a single save file, it cannot be loaded outside the main menu, and the game overwrites it when you:

• return to the main menu
• quit the game
• press Alt+F4 or end the process in Task Manager
• quicksave
• autosave

If the party dies, you get two options: continue in Custom mode, which ends the Honour run, or end the campaign, which deletes the save. Our Honour Mode tips cover how to stay alive inside those rules, and our death saves guide covers what counts as a party death.

Neither covers the file itself. bg3.wiki hosts a community guide to manually backing up the Honour save between sessions. It calls the trick a way to cheat the single-save system, and names restoring a run broken by a bug as its legitimate use. Its steps are to turn cloud saves off, copy the save before you load it, and restore by closing the game and swapping the copy back in — which, the guide notes, has to happen before a total party kill. Insurance or cheating is your call.

On Xbox specifically, Hotfix #34 fixed a crash when loading a save in an Honour Mode game and a hang when exiting to the main menu from one.

Custom mode can borrow the rule

Custom mode has a setting called Use Honour mode's single save system. bg3.wiki lists it as off by default and locked once the campaign starts. Switched on, the same load and overwrite rules apply, with one difference: unlike Honour Mode, you can reload the save after the party dies.

That reload has a catch the Difficulty page spells out. If the game saves at the wrong moment — its example is during an enemy's turn, with the whole party about to go down — you can end up stuck. Patch 7 also fixed Custom saves that use the Honour ruleset being named as if they were real Honour saves.

If a save will not load

Larian's PC troubleshooting FAQ lists these fixes, among others, for errors and crashes when loading:

• Clear the level cache. Delete the contents of %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\LevelCache. The FAQ says a corrupt file there can cause problems when saving or loading.
• Verify the game files. On Steam, through the game's Properties and its Installed Files tab, which Larian's FAQ still calls Local Files. On GOG Galaxy, through Manage Installation and Verify / Repair.
• Check your antivirus. The FAQ names BitDefender, Windows Defender, Avast and AVG as having caused save or file errors, and explains how to add exceptions.
• Try with Steam Cloud off, either globally or for this game only.
• Rebuild the profile. Rename the Baldur's Gate 3 folder in %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios, let the game create a fresh one, confirm a new game saves and loads, then copy a couple of your old saves back and, if they load, move the rest over. With cloud sync on, the FAQ notes the client will simply download the cloud copy of your profile again.

If a new game works and recent saves still crash, the FAQ asks you to send support your latest save, plus the newest one that loads and the oldest one that does not.

Larian has also patched save problems directly:

Larian's FAQ on disappearing Xbox saves says a console update fixed that problem, and still recommends turning cross-save on as protection should it come back.

Quick reference

• Your local saves did not expire on 29 September 2026. Larian's expiry covered only server copies older than six months.
• Cross-save holds a copy of your last 10 saves for up to six months. Larian's older Xbox FAQ says five, so do not count on more.
• Cross-save is off by default. Switch it on in Options, Gameplay, Save Options, link your platform account to a Larian Account, and launch through the platform's client.
• Windows saves: %LocalAppData%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\Public\Savegames\Story. Mac: ~/Documents/Larian Studios/Baldur's Gate 3/PlayerProfiles/Public/Savegames/Story.
• Steam Deck native saves live under /home/deck/.local/share/Larian Studios/Baldur's Gate 3/PlayerProfiles/Public, not in the Proton compatdata folder.
• Console saves come out through cross-save: enable it, let it sync, then download from My Saves on your Larian Account on a PC.
• Defaults are 25 autosaves and 25 quicksaves per campaign, each adjustable from 1 to 50.
• Honour Mode is one file that overwrites on quitting, returning to the menu, quicksaving and autosaving. Custom mode can copy the rule but still lets you reload after a wipe.
• Third-party mods cannot go to consoles, and consoles cap mods at 100.
• A save that will not load: clear LevelCache, verify files, check your antivirus, then try a fresh profile.