Minecraft Forums

Hey 'crafters,

I've been playing a single player world in MC 1.8 with no problems. By accident I joined the world in 1.7.5 (with OptiFine) while in the nether and my inventory and armor disappeared. A chest I had in the nether still had items in it. I then joined back in 1.8 and both my inventory/armor and the chest items disappeared. Worried, I ran back to the overworld, but died by falling. I spawned back in the overworld. My inventory and my chests on the main floor of my house were all empty. I was really worried and ran down to my basement supply room. For some crazy reason, my basement chests still had all of their items... I have no idea why, but I'm thankful because these chests contain most of my valuables. Two things:

•Why did only some of my chests get emptied, but others didn't?

•Is there any way to fix this or revert to an old save?

Thanks

busterroni

This happens because 1.8 changed the way items are stored in the save format and consequentially is not backwards compatible in any manner; previously you would only lose new items and blocks if you went back. As for why only some items were lost, only items in loaded chunks (a small area out to 2-32 chunks around your position depending on render distance, plus the "spawn chunks", a 16x16 area located around your original spawn point) will be affected, although it is odd that some chests in the same chunks (I presume) were unaffected, just be lucky that you didn't lose them.

Otherwise, the only options for getting items back are backups (always backup - there is an adage that data doesn't exist if it isn't backed up - a computer crash, etc can cause you to lose your world at any time) or opening to LAN to enable cheats and giving yourself your stuff back. Also, you may be able to restore your world to a previous version (instructions for Windows, other OSs have their own methods; note that this is only back to the last restore point made; to find your world click on "edit profile" in the launcher and click on the button to open the game directory, it will be located in "saves" with whatever name you gave it; restore the entire folder, making a backup copy just to be safe before you do so).

That aside, it is strongly recommended to make separate profiles with different save locations for different worlds/versions; you can do this by clicking on "new profile" in the launcher and in the editor window change the game directory; for example, add "\1.8" to the end (so the ending is ".minecraft\1.8"), then select the version you want to use in the "use version" list - I also recommend NOT using "latest version" because upgrading, especially in cases like 1.8, can be a point of no return (many people have found they have performance issues in 1.8, after being automatically updated, so they went back and messed up their worlds). This will prevent you from being able to load worlds in the wrong version (unless you changed the version used) as the game can only see worlds in the corresponding directory.

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

This happens because 1.8 changed the way items are stored in the save format and consequentially is not backwards compatible in any manner; previously you would only lose new items and blocks if you went back. As for why only some items were lost, only items in loaded chunks (a small area out to 2-32 chunks around your position depending on render distance, plus the "spawn chunks", a 16x16 area located around your original spawn point) will be affected, although it is odd that some chests in the same chunks (I presume) were unaffected, just be lucky that you didn't lose them.

Otherwise, the only options for getting items back are backups (always backup - there is an adage that data doesn't exist if it isn't backed up - a computer crash, etc can cause you to lose your world at any time) or opening to LAN to enable cheats and giving yourself your stuff back. Also, you may be able to restore your world to a previous version (instructions for Windows, other OSs have their own methods; note that this is only back to the last restore point made; to find your world click on "edit profile" in the launcher and click on the button to open the game directory, it will be located in "saves" with whatever name you gave it; restore the entire folder, making a backup copy just to be safe before you do so).

That aside, it is strongly recommended to make separate profiles with different save locations for different worlds/versions; you can do this by clicking on "new profile" in the launcher and in the editor window change the game directory; for example, add "\1.8" to the end (so the ending is ".minecraft\1.8"), then select the version you want to use in the "use version" list - I also recommend NOT using "latest version" because upgrading, especially in cases like 1.8, can be a point of no return (many people have found they have performance issues in 1.8, after being automatically updated, so they went back and messed up their worlds). This will prevent you from being able to load worlds in the wrong version (unless you changed the version used) as the game can only see worlds in the corresponding directory.

Thanks for the thorough answer. Unfortunately my latest backup was before I put a lot of work into the world. Thankfully I didn't lose too much. I'm on Mac and I can't find any file backups. I'll let you know if I find a solution. Thanks again