I’ve recently joined a trial for the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (on PC) and have tried out Hollow Knight. Turns out I love it, and since Humble had it on sale, I’ve picked it up to keep. Trouble is of course, that the game save locations and naming conventions are totally different on the two versions, and it took me a bit of tinkering to figure out how to transfer my save game.
Here’s how I did it.
Xbox Game Pass Location
On the Xbox Game Pass, the Hollow Knight save files are stored in a rather cryptic location. Head over roughly this location and dig: %APPDATA%\Local\Packages\TeamCherry\SystemAppData\wgs
I say “dig” because seemingly random numbers that may change from system make up the file name and save data. Essentially you’ll find two further folders in wgs, one of which contains a file without extension that’s larger than any of the others (95KB in my case). Here’s what the full path on my system was:
C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Packages\TeamCherry.15373CD61C66B_y4jvztpgccj42\SystemAppData\wgs\00090000015F9C57_0000000000000000000000007ABD14DB\7F443F23846B405C962FD5AA1B4BB67D
I found a file called 36CAA365A6A14D27A3C2B55B9FE694BE in there (yeah I know, super memorable name). This was the save file, and since version 1.5 of Hollow Knight it’s cross platform compatible, which wasn’t the case before 2022. Seems I’m joining the game at the right time.
Copy that file now, we’ll need it in a moment.
Steam Location
Steam uses the same location as GOG, namely %APPDATA%\LocalLow\Team Cherry\Hollow Knight. In here are potentially four save files, each of which corresponds to the four available save slots in the game. They’re named as follows:
- user1.dat
- user2.dat
- user3.dat
- user4.dat
You may only have the first one, or none if you’ve never played the Steam version. There can be additional files in this folder too, like logs and cloud sync files. We won’t have to worry about those. For completion, here’s the full path on my system:
C:\Users\me\AppData\LocalLow\Team Cherry\Hollow Knight
Transferring Data
Make sure neither version of the game is running when you do this to avoid data loss.
To make the Steam version acknowledge the Xbox Game Pass save, we need to paste that cryptic file with no extension into the Steam location, then rename it into one of the user.dat files. Since I didn’t have a save file, I’ve called mine user1.dat. That’s it!
Now start the Steam version and be greeted with your previous Xbox Game Pass save.
Another internet mystery has been solved!