The return to checkpoint option really screwed me up many levels and so many hours of game lost. But the manual save is supposed to be there somewhere, isn't it? Now where? And how do I restore it? Steam forum's solution didn't work (die and Retry i/o Return to last checkpoint seems to work for them). Thanks.

There is pretty much only one savegame. Unless you manually back that one up at certain points or install the mod that allows multiple save files handling, that means no going back.

May I ask what exactly went so catastrophically wrong that you lost "hours" of gameplay? Most of the time the worst that happens is that you get reset to the last time you rested...

Well, I hit "Back to last checkpoint" instead of Retry and went from 18 to 12, lost the Ranger respec, all the items I had got from Blackbitter Isle, both from loot and merchant, plus all the frakking time I had spent arranging the inventory, cleaning all the shit and equipping the paws, gifts included.

Basically, I lost the whole night from 1:30 when I got home and started playing this amazing game with the worst saving system ever (worse than Into the Stars) to 7am (8am here now) instead of going back to my 4th playthrough with Andromeda... *sighs*

It seems to keep two versions in its one save file or just hold the last "checkpoint" state in RAM. The checkpoint state seems pretty random to me. Sometimes it's the last inn you rested at, sometimes it's a quest autosave, and sometimes it's a area transition autosave.

To load the manual save you need to exit to the main menu or to desktop and then select load game from the main menu.

The save system in this game is absolute garbage and have cost me a few hours of progress here and there too. Especially the way it will autosave after you fail a quest. That's just rubbing salt into the wound...

I'd recommend this mod to in order to keep save backups.

http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/96/?

Copy the two files into the main game directory and then edit the ini file to set the number of saves you'd like to keep and to manually set GOG's save file directory:

"C:\Users\YourUserNameHere\AppData\Local\GOG.com\Galaxy\Applications\49987265717041704\Storage\Shared\Files"

To restore an older save exit the game or exit to the main menu and alt-tab out. Then go to the directory above, find the file with the timestamp you want, make a copy of it, delete the delete the current save, DDDA.sav, and rename the copy DDDA.sav. Also be sure to use use caps as show otherwise the same won't read it and will start a new game for you. You can always close the game and fix the name if you make a mistake.

I use that mod, with alot of experimentation I got the game that I like, which is infinite carry wt (to negate the atrocious inventory management crap)and better stamina. i also toggled a better running animation as the native one looks like i have to hit the toilet and fast. Im thinking of toggling on clear skies as the game looks so terrible most times due to dim qualities and blurriness. in short , this mod allows you to do so many different mini mods to make the game your own, as well as save options which i have yet to use.

Well, this game is so "Gothic". Even some animations and hardcore features seem fresh out of Gothic and Risen games. But they had a free save game system. The limit is the space in our HD. It's the pawns sync thing, isn't it? I bet that Capcom hired either the Piranhas or some Piranha Bytes people to make this game. lol

The one save slot limit is likely just an attempt to make it easier for the server to track pawns. The save system is actually quite efficient. Each save is only 512Kb and like 40% (on one of my recent saves at least) is just zeros to pad it out to a standard 512kb length.

It's not like Oblivion or something where it remembers the exact position of every loose physics object in every room you've entered in the last 3 days of game time. I had gigabytes of save files after a long run of that...