Valheim lost tombstone: admin recovery on a server

When a player on your Valheim server cannot find their tombstone, the first thing to establish is whether it still exists. In vanilla, a tombstone stays in the world until somebody empties it - it does not despawn on a timer, and logging off does not remove it. Most "lost" tombstones are really lost map pins, tombstones in awkward places, or tombstones somebody else already looted. Once you know which, the fix is one of four: the player goes back with help, an admin with the cheat set (through a mod) flies there with ghost and god on and fetches it, an admin edits an offline copy of the world, or you give up on the tombstone and spawn the gear back.

This guide goes through those in order of how little they disturb the world, with the commands, the catches, and the house rules that stop refunds turning into a source of free items.

How tombstones work on a server#

When a character dies, the game creates a tombstone at the spot and moves the character's inventory into it - everything carried and equipped. The player respawns at their bed, or at the world spawn if they have no bed, with nothing. A marker appears on the dead character's map at the death location.

The facts that matter for recovery:

• The tombstone belongs to the world, not the character. It is an object saved in the world file, like a chest. It survives server restarts and the player logging out.
• The map marker belongs to the character. It lives in the player's character file on their own machine. Delete the pin, switch characters or restore an old character backup, and the marker is gone - the tombstone is not.
• Anyone can loot it. In vanilla, other players can open a tombstone and take its contents. Once it is empty it disappears.
• The owner gets a bonus for recovering it. Collecting your own tombstone gives the Corpse Run effect, a short buff that helps you get home. An admin who fetches it does not pass that on.
• An empty inventory leaves no tombstone. If the character died carrying nothing, there is nothing to find.
• Each death makes its own. Dying twice on the way back makes a second tombstone with whatever was carried the second time, usually very little, and a second marker.

How harsh a death is also depends on the world's death penalty modifier, which changes what goes into the tombstone and what happens to skills. The values and their effect are in Valheim world modifiers and presets, and the player-side mechanics - skill drain, corpse runs, logging off with a tombstone out - in death and tombstones on a server.

First, work out what actually happened#

Before anyone types a command, ask the player four questions. They decide the whole recovery.

Ask for a screenshot of their map with the marker visible, zoomed out enough to show a landmark. That one image replaces half the conversation, and it is what an admin flies to later.

Three common outcomes:

1. The marker is there, the player just cannot get to it. The tombstone is in a dangerous place or too far with no gear. This is an escort or fetch job.
2. The marker is gone but the player remembers roughly where. The tombstone almost certainly still exists. This is a search job.
3. The marker is there, the player went there, and nothing is there. Someone emptied it, or it ended up somewhere unreachable through a bug. This is usually a refund job.

Without admin commands: the vanilla options#

A vanilla dedicated server gives admins kick, ban, save and not much else - no teleport, no god mode, no flying. The cheat set that includes pos, goto, ghost and god is refused on a vanilla dedicated server, admin or not, as the admin console commands reference explains. So the first options do not involve the console at all.

Go back as a group. The simplest recovery is still the original one: friends with gear escort the player to their tombstone. Since anyone can open a tombstone, a friend can also go alone, empty it into their own inventory, and hand everything over at base. Make sure the friend has empty inventory space first; a tombstone full of armour, weapons and ore is heavy.

Use a portal. If there is a portal network, build a portal close to the death site and link it to the base. Most tombstones are recovered with a temporary portal and a ten-minute trip. Remember that some items cannot go through portals on most portal settings - portal rules and teleport restrictions covers which.

Edit an offline copy of the world. When the tombstone is somewhere nobody can reach without cheats - deep in a Mistlands mine, on an island no one has a boat for - the vanilla admin route is the same one used for any world-level fix:

1. Warn the group and stop the server. A save happens on a clean stop.
2. Download the world's .db and .fwl files over SFTP or the file manager.
3. Open the world locally in single player with your own character, enable devcommands, and go to the tombstone.
4. Move the contents into a chest you place at the player's base, or into a chest beside the tombstone that is easy to reach.
5. Quit cleanly so the world saves, upload both files back, and start the server.

The catch is that your own character now carried those items in single player. Put every item in the chest before you leave, so nothing travels back to the server on your character. The upload is covered in uploading a local world to a server. It is slow, it means downtime for the whole group, and it works without installing anything.

With the cheat set: pos, goto, ghost, god and fly#

Most admins who do this more than once install Server Devcommands, the mod by JereKuusela that lets the accounts in adminlist.txt use the cheat set on a dedicated server. With it, a tombstone recovery takes a couple of minutes while the server stays up. The commands you need:

ghost and god are toggles, so each typing flips the state. Read the console's confirmation line each time rather than counting in your head. Server Devcommands adds many more commands of its own, including ones for finding objects; check its documentation for the version you run, because the extras change between releases.

A typical fetch:

> devcommands> ghost> god> fly> pos> goto 1240 -3315> fly

That turns on the cheat set, makes you invisible to creatures and unkillable, lets you fly, prints where you are, jumps to the spot from the player's screenshot, and lands you. Open the tombstone, take everything, fly back, and give it to the player - drop it in front of them or put it in a chest they can reach. Then turn the cheats off:

> fly> ghost> god> devcommands

Getting coordinates for goto

Vanilla Valheim does not show coordinates on the map, so you need a way to turn "it is on the coast past the big swamp" into numbers:

• The player stands near it. If the player can get close but not survive, have them walk as near as they safely can; you fly to their rough area, then run pos once you see the tombstone. Note the coordinates for later.
• Fly by the map. With the screenshot open, fly to the area on your own map. Flight reveals your map as you go, which is personal to you - it does not reveal anything for the group, unless you later read or write at a cartography table.
• Write coordinates down for repeat locations. If players keep dying in the same crypt cluster or the same Ashlands landing, keep a note of its coordinates in your admin channel.

Special places

Dungeons. Crypts, caves and mines are built far above the surface of the world, and their entrances are on the surface. A player who died inside has a tombstone inside, and the marker points at the entrance area. Go in through the door like everyone else - with ghost on that is quick.

Water. A tombstone from a sinking ship or a serpent floats where the character died. Fly low over the area; it is visible on the surface. Bring a boat or fly with the items afterwards - you cannot swim far carrying a full inventory.

Inside someone else's base. If the player died inside another player's warded base, think before you open anything there. Fetch only the tombstone and say so in chat. Wards and griefing covers what wards block.

When to spawn items back instead#

Some tombstones are not coming back: another player looted it, a crash rolled the world back to before the death but after the player's character saved their empty inventory, or it fell somewhere it cannot be reached. That is when spawn is the right tool.

> spawn ArmorBronzeChest 1 2> spawn SwordIron 1 1> spawn Iron 30

The pattern is spawn [prefab] [amount] [level], where level sets the item's quality for gear. Prefab names are internal names, not the names you see in game, which catches everyone at first - the bronze plate cuirass is ArmorBronzeChest. Getting the names right, and spawning safely on a live server, is covered in the spawn command and item IDs.

Spawn back instead of recovering when:

• The tombstone is gone. Confirm it, ideally by checking the spot yourself, before replacing anything.
• Recovery would cost more than it is worth. A tombstone with a flint axe and some wood is not worth a trip; the player can replace that in five minutes.
• The loss came from the server or a bug. A crash, a desync on a ship, a lag spike in a boss fight - the group generally agrees these should be made good.

Spawn back carefully when:

• The loss came from risk the player chose. Dying in the Plains at night with no food is part of the game. Some groups refund everything, some refund nothing; decide in advance and apply it equally.
• You cannot be sure the tombstone is gone. If you spawn the gear and the tombstone turns up later, the player now has two sets.

Refund rules that keep it fair#

Recovering tombstones is admin work that touches the economy of the world, so treat it like any other admin action: announced, recorded and consistent.

1. One process, written down. Screenshot of the map, what was lost, and why. Players know what to send and admins know what to check.
2. Recover before refunding. Fetching the original is always better than spawning a copy. It keeps the world's item count honest.
3. Refunds replace, they do not upgrade. A level-2 sword lost comes back as a level-2 sword. Do not round up.
4. A refunded tombstone is closed. If you spawn gear back, the old tombstone, if it turns up, is emptied by an admin and its contents removed, or the player hands back the copies. Otherwise refunds become a duplication method.
5. Keep a log. A line in your admin channel per refund: who, what, why, which admin. If one player needs a refund every week, that log is how you notice.

The wider question of what admins should and should not do with cheat commands on a shared world is in the devcommands guide. If your group posts deaths to Discord with a mod, the message gives you the time and the player straight away - the Discord Connector mod is the usual choice.

Preventing lost tombstones#

A few habits cut recovery requests sharply:

• A bed and a portal at every forward camp. Respawning ten minutes away instead of forty turns most deaths into a quick walk.
• Never delete the death marker until you have the tombstone. It is the only map record of where it is.
• Do not restore a character backup with a tombstone out. The restored character has an older map, often without the marker.
• Spare gear at base. A cheap second set of armour and a weapon in a chest makes the corpse run survivable without help.
• Agree on the death penalty setting. If the group finds deaths too punishing, a softer death penalty modifier fixes the cause rather than handing admins a queue of refunds.

On RE:NODE the panel console runs save before you start anything risky, and backup slots are included on every Valheim plan; take a manual backup and lock it before an offline world edit, so the copy you can fall back to is not rotated away. Mods such as Server Devcommands go in through the file manager or SFTP, and only the admins who use the commands need the mod on their own game.

FAQ#

Do Valheim tombstones disappear after a while?

Not in vanilla. A tombstone stays in the world until it is emptied, through restarts and while the player is offline. If one is missing, someone looted it or something unusual happened to it, such as a bug or a world rollback.

Can another player pick up my tombstone for me?

Yes. Any player can open a tombstone and take what is in it, then hand the items over. You lose the Corpse Run bonus you would get from collecting it yourself, but you get your gear back without the trip.

Why can I not use goto on our server even though I am an admin?

goto is part of the cheat set, and vanilla dedicated servers refuse it whoever is admin. Install Server Devcommands, or make the change in an offline copy of the world opened in single player.

Where do I find coordinates for a tombstone?

Vanilla does not show coordinates on the map. With the cheat set, pos prints yours. Fly to the area shown on the player's map screenshot, find the tombstone, and run pos there if you need to note it.

Should we roll the world back to undo a bad death?

Almost never. A rollback costs every player their progress since the backup, and characters do not roll back with the world, which creates duplicates. Fetch the tombstone or spawn the items back instead.