Some games have “cloud sync” which means it will upload your save to the cloud and download and sync that save to all your computers so that you can continue to play where you left off, on any machine. Some games don’t offer this or only partially. Terraria is a bit special because it offers cloud sync for your characters and even worlds, but only on the Steam version. While GOG does support cloud saves through it’s GOG Galaxy platform, Terraria doesn’t support it.

Today I will show you how to save any game to the cloud by yourself, and I will use the GOG.com version of Terraria as example. This will work with any cloud provider that provides a desktop sync tool (an application that will download files from the cloud and upload new or changed files back to it).

You could for example use Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, Nextcloud, Synology Drive Sync or whichever you like as long as it has a desktop sync tool. In this example I will be using Synology Drive Sync, syncing to my Synology NAS.

Prerequisites

  1. Know where the game stores its saves
  2. Know where your cloud sync tool stores its files
  3. Admin access (in case of Windows) to create symbolic links (“symlinks”)

Translation

  1. I know the game stores its saves in Documents\My Games\Terraria (C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Terraria).
  2. I know my cloud sync tool stores its files in SynologyDrive (C:\Users\USERNAME\SynologyDrive) (this might be “Google Drive” or “Dropbox” for you).
  3. I do have admin access to open the Windows Command Prompt (CMD).

Execution (Windows)

  1. Go to your cloud sync folder C:\Users\USERNAME\SynologyDrive (this might be “Google Drive” or “Dropbox” for you).
  2. Create a folder inside it called “Sync Gamesaves” or whatever you like so that you’ll have C:\Users\USERNAME\SynologyDrive\Sync Gamesaves.
  3. Close your game if it’s running.
  4. Move your game’s save folder inside your “Sync Gamesaves” folder. In this example that means the folder “Terraria” from C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\ into C:\Users\USERNAME\SynologyDrive\Sync Gamesaves
  5. Open a CMD as administrator (Go to your start menu and type CMD and you should see “Command Prompt”, then right click it and choose “Run as administrator”.
  6. Now switch to your savegame directory with the command “cd”, in this case this means typing (or copy-pasting): cd "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games" (with quotes).
  7. Now create the symlink by typing (or copy-pasting): mklink /D Terraria "C:\Users\natal\SynologyDrive\Sync Gamesaves\Terraria"
  8. It should now say “symbolic link created for Terraria <<===>> C:\Users\USERNAME\SynologyDrive\Sync Gamesaves\Terraria“
  9. You’re done! :)

Of course adapt this and change your paths, especially make sure you change “USERNAME” with your username and “SynologyDrive” with whatever the folder of your cloud sync is called.

Execution (Mac/Linux/FreeBSD)

On these systems it’s the same except instead of mklink /D you will be using ln -s and the link/target are swapped (so you will type the cloud folder path first, the game save path second). And no admin rights are required as long as the link is created inside your user’s directory.

Conclusion

While all these commands might seem confusing for a beginner, once you did it you can be proud of yourself! It’s an easy way for DIY game cloud saves.

I hope you enjoyed this guide. If you have any questions let me know in the comments!