Source: user request in chat on 2026-05-15 to search for Terraria save-related local files, ingest the finding into the wiki, then back up and analyze them.
Inspection mode: local filesystem search of standard Terraria save locations plus a D-drive filename scan attempt.
Primary live source found: C:/Users/admin/Documents/My Games/Terraria.
EXTRACTED: The standard Windows Terraria save directory exists at C:/Users/admin/Documents/My Games/Terraria.
EXTRACTED: No Terraria save directory was found at D:/Terraria, D:/泰拉瑞亚, or D:/Terraria_doc before the backup directory was created.
EXTRACTED: A broader recursive scan of D:/ for Terraria/tModLoader/save extensions timed out after 120 seconds and did not return an additional completed result in that run.
EXTRACTED: The found save set contains 193 Terraria-related files totaling 173,405,180 bytes, about 165.37 MB.
EXTRACTED: The source tree has two main save subdirectories:
Players: 121 files, including player saves, player backups, and per-player map cache files.
Worlds: 72 files, including world saves and world backups.
File Type Summary
EXTRACTED: 54 .plr files are player/character saves. They preserve character inventory, equipment, money, health/mana, and character-level progression.
EXTRACTED: 44 .wld files are world saves. They preserve world terrain, buildings, chests, NPC housing, farms, world state, and all-item/resource maps.
EXTRACTED: 48 .map files are per-player explored-map cache files under Players/<character>/. They are useful for restoring map visibility but are less critical than .plr and .wld.
EXTRACTED: 47 .bak files are backups, including 19 player backups, 27 world backups, and 1 generic backup-like file.
Backup And Analysis Artifacts
EXTRACTED: The backup copied 193 files to D:/Terraria_doc/Terraria_saves.
EXTRACTED: The copied backup has the same count and total size as the discovered source set: 193 files and 173,405,180 bytes.
EXTRACTED: The CSV inventory records relative path, file name, inferred kind, size, modified time, source path, backup path, SHA-256 hash, and a short per-file analysis note.
EXTRACTED: The Markdown inventory records the same analysis in a human-readable table, with a recent-files section and full inventory section.
Organization Guidance
INFERRED: Treat .plr and .wld as the core files to keep even when pruning aggressively.
INFERRED: Keep .bak files until a clean restore has been verified; they are cheap insurance against corrupted or overwritten saves.
INFERRED: .map files can be kept with their corresponding player folders, but they are secondary if the goal is only to preserve characters and worlds.
INFERRED: Names indicating all-item maps, workshops, equipment shops, farms, buildings, challenge maps, or class-specific characters can be used as first-pass sorting categories.
Safety And Public Boundary
This wiki page records only routing, counts, file types, and backup locations.
Do not copy the binary game-save files into wiki/.
Keep detailed per-file sorting work in D:/Terraria_doc/inventory/ unless the user explicitly wants a public-facing summary.
If future sorting exposes personal names or private notes embedded in filenames, keep those details out of public wiki summaries unless needed.