Get back a character we never captured

What this can and can’t do

• It can bring back a character that only ever lived on your phone, as it was the last time that phone saved it.
• It can bring back several at once. Blades keeps one file for every character you played on that device.
• It can’t bring back a character you never played on the device you have now.
• An alt you stopped playing months before the shutdown comes back as it was back then, not as it was on the last day.
• It isn’t guaranteed. We tested the Android steps on an emulator, not on a real phone from the Play Store, and we haven’t tried the iPhone backup route ourselves yet. If a step doesn’t match what you see, tell us.

Already see your character on the Play page? Then we captured it and you don’t need any of this.

Before you start

• Don’t uninstall Blades. Removing the app deletes these files.
• Don’t clear its data. On Android, “Clear storage” or “Clear data” for Blades deletes them too.
• Don’t open Blades until you’ve copied the files. We don’t know yet whether starting the old app now changes them, so play it safe.
• Keep the copies safe. Put them on your computer and in one more place, like a USB stick or cloud storage. Uploading them to us doesn’t delete your copy, and you should keep it anyway.

Android

Blades keeps its saves in a folder on the phone called Android/data/com.bethsoft.blade/files. You don’t need to root your phone. There are two ways to reach that folder. Try the first, and if it doesn’t work, use the second.

Way 1: copy over USB

Easiest, but it doesn’t work on every phone.

1. Connect the phone to a Windows computer with a USB cable. (A Mac can’t open an Android phone on its own, so on a Mac skip to Way 2.)
2. Unlock the phone. Pull down the notifications, tap the USB notification, and choose File transfer (it may be called “Transfer files”).
3. On the computer, open File Explorer, click your phone, and open Internal storage › Android › data › com.bethsoft.blade › files.
4. Copy every file whose name starts withSave_and ends in.binto a folder on your computer. Leave everything else in there alone.

On many phones with Android 11 or newer, the Android/datafolder looks empty or is missing over USB. That doesn’t mean your saves are gone. It means your phone hides the folder, so use Way 2. The phone’s own Files app can’t open this folder on Android 11 and newer either.

Way 2: one command with Google’s free tool

Works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It looks technical, but it’s a few taps on the phone and a couple of lines to copy and paste.

1. Turn on Developer options. On the phone, open Settings › About phone. Find Build number (on some phones it’s inside “Software information”) and tap it seven times. Enter your PIN if asked. The phone tells you that you are now a developer.
2. Turn on USB debugging. Go back to Settings and open Developer options. It’s usually under System; if you can’t find it, search Settings for “Developer options”. Switch on USB debugging and confirm.
3. Get the tool. On your computer, download “SDK Platform-Tools” for your system from Google’s page, developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools, and unzip it. You get a folder called platform-tools.
4. Open a command window in that folder.
   • Windows: open theplatform-toolsfolder, click the address bar at the top, typecmdand press Enter.
   • Mac: open Terminal, typecdand a space, drag the platform-toolsfolder into the window, and press Enter.
5. Connect the phone. Plug it in, unlock it, then type this and press Enter:

   adb devices

   On a Mac, type./adb devicesinstead. The phone asks “Allow USB debugging?”. Tap Allow. If you missed the question, run the line again. You’re connected when the window shows a line ending in “device”.
6. Copy the files. Type this and press Enter (on a Mac, put./in front of adbagain):

   adb pull /sdcard/Android/data/com.bethsoft.blade/files/ blades-saves

   This copies the whole Blades folder into a new folder called blades-savesinsideplatform-tools. It can be a gigabyte or more, because the game’s downloads live there too, so give it a few minutes.
7. Keep the saves. Open blades-saves. Your saves are the files named Save_….bin. Copy those somewhere safe. You can delete the rest of the copy.
8. When you’re done, you can switch USB debugging off again in Developer options.

If the copy says “No such file or directory”, you may have played through an older community build. Try the same line with fr.mariusdavid.bladein place of com.bethsoft.blade. If neither works, the phone probably no longer has Blades’ files. Tell us what you saw.

iPhone and iPad

On an iPhone or iPad the save sits inside Blades’ own storage, and the only way to reach it is through a backup of the device to a computer. Blades doesn’t share its files with the Files app or with Finder.

The backup route not yet tested by us

1. Connect the iPhone to your computer with a cable, unlock it, and tap Trust if it asks.
2. Back it up to the computer, not to iCloud. On a Mac, open Finder, click your iPhone in the sidebar, choose to back up all of its data to this Mac, and click Back Up Now. On Windows, do the same in the Apple Devices app (or iTunes on older Windows). It’s simplest with Encrypt local backup switched off.
3. Open that backup in a backup browser app (iMazing is one). Find Blades (com.bethsoft.blade), open its Documentsfolder, and copy out every file named Save_….bin.

If you try this, please tell us how it went, even if it worked, so we can make these steps better.

The tool route, if you’re comfortable with a terminal

This is the route we have tested. Our recovery tool is a small Python script you can read before you run it. It backs up only Blades and pulls out every save. Download it from the recover page (you need to sign in), installpymobiledevice3as the tool explains, and run:

python3 extract-blades-save.py ios --out ./blades-saves

Keep the phone unlocked and plugged in the whole time, and set Settings › Display & Brightness › Auto-Lock to Never, or the backup stops. It can take a long time. The same tool works on Android too: python3 extract-blades-save.py android --out ./blades-saves.

Which file is which character?

Each character you played on the device has its own file. The long part of the name is that character’s ID, for example Save_8dbb6730-cd01-49d8-a3e7-d30634c62854.bin. You can’t tell from the name which character it is, and you don’t need to: upload all of them. The Play page lists each one by its ID, and the character’s name appears when you bring it into the arena.

Played on more than one phone or tablet? Copy the files from each one. Each device’s file is the character as that device last saved it, so the newest copy is on the device you played on last.

Upload, then play

1. Sign in with Discord and open the recover page. Your account has to be approved first. If it isn’t yet, the site tells you what to do.
2. Choose oneSave_….binfile and click Upload save. Do this once for each file. Each upload appears under “Your recovered saves”.
3. Go to Play, find step 2, “Transfer a character”, and look for “Recovered from your device”.
4. Click Recover and play next to the character you want, then Yes, replace it.

This replaces the character that’s on your arena account right now, because the arena holds one character at a time. The one it replaces isn’t thrown away: the server keeps a copy. There’s no button to switch back yet, so if you want it back, ask us in a report.

Stuck?

Tell us at the report page (sign in with Discord). Say which phone or tablet you have and which Android or iOS version it runs, which step you got to, and what you saw. A screenshot helps.