How to save your progress in Winter Survival

Winter Survival is a grueling game where death isn’t just an inconvenience for your character, but for you too. To stop swathes of progress from being wiped away, you’ll need to know exactly how and when your progress is saved.

Sleep to save progress in Winter Survival

You may have noticed the lack of a save function in the pause menu for Winter Survival. This is because, in Endless mode, the only way for you specifically to save your progress is by sleeping. Even if it is just for an hour, your game will only save from your input in this way.

No matter what mode you’re playing, if you don’t have a bed, you don’t have a save feature. Your number one priority should be making a bed as soon as possible. But it doesn’t have to be a proper bed, you can just make the one-time use shoddy Straw Bedroll.

Also, simply lying in bed and getting up again doesn’t work – you have to sleep in it.

How to make beds in Winter Survival

You can make a Straw Bedroll from 12 Branches and 32 Tall Grass. So even the one-use bed takes a lot of foraging to make. It’s well worth it though, to both save your progress and skip the harshly cold night that will likely freeze you to death.

As you discover and refine new resources, you will be able to craft much better beds. The Straw Bedroll allows you to save the game when away from the base, so it may be worthwhile bringing one along for your travels.

Reach checkpoints to save progress in Winter Survival

If you’re not playing Endless mode and are playing through the Story of Winter Survival, then you’ll be pleased to know that there are checkpoint saves available.

Progress is typically saved in this way after completing quests – but not always. While playing through the story, make sure not to neglect your basic survival needs, which is easily done when chasing objectives. Make sure you’ve got a bedroll ready to quickly save the game anytime some substantial progress has been made.

You can check your most recent save in the load menu. In the Checkpoints tab, you can see when the last checkpoint save was, which may influence your decision to drop a save then or later.

Saving your progress is vital in Winter Survival, especially when playing Endless with the Sickness starting scenario, arguably the hardest one in the game.