How Saving Works in Echoes of Aincrad (No Manual Save Button Explained)
If you’re wondering whether Echoes of Aincrad lets you manually save, you’re not alone—there’s no clear “save” button in the menus. Players exploring the interface also tend to ask the same follow-up: how the game handles saving and reloading, and when it’s safe to step away and log out. Here’s how the system works in practice.
Here’s the breakdown for Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad—including what you can and can’t control when it comes to getting your progress stored.
How to Save in Echoes of Aincrad
- Image placeholders provided in the source for the save-related visuals (credit text in the original included “Image via GameRant; Source: Bandai Namco”).
- Additional image placeholders provided in the source for the save-related visuals (credit text in the original included “Image via GameRant; Source: Bandai Namco”).
Echoes of Aincrad relies entirely on auto-saving. That means the game writes your progress automatically whenever you do any of the following: pick up an item, defeat an enemy, pass a checkpoint, move into a new area, return to town, swap or change your equipment, leave to the title screen, or quit out of the game.
Each time an auto-save happens, you’ll notice a small white auto-save indicator in the bottom-right corner of the screen, letting you know the game has captured your current state.
How to Manually Save in Echoes of Aincrad
Despite the “manual save” question coming up often, there’s no true manual saving in Echoes of Aincrad. There aren’t multiple save slots where you can lock in progress at a specific moment. Instead, the game uses a single save file that gets overwritten whenever the auto-save triggers.
That said, there’s a practical workaround to “force” an auto-save on demand. You can do it by opening the pause menu and adjusting any setting—regardless of which setting you change—since that action can trigger the auto-save system.
Even so, you generally don’t need to bother. Because the game updates your save frequently—whenever events occur that affect your character—auto-saving is already happening at a steady pace during normal play.
How to Backup Save in Death Game Mode in Echoes of Aincrad
Echoes of Aincrad’s Death Game mode handles saving the same way as the regular campaign in terms of the mechanics: it still uses that single save file and auto-save behavior. The crucial difference is punishment. In Death Game mode, if you die even once, your only save file will be removed.
If you’re playing on PC, there’s a way to reduce that risk by manually copying your save file. You can do this by going to %LOCALAPPDATA%\EchoesofAincrad\Saved\ and backing up the SaveGames folder to a separate location on your device.
Later, if you die in Death Game mode, you can restore your progress by copying and pasting the backed-up save file back into the original folder, then launching the game to continue from where you left off—effectively avoiding the forced delete outcome.
It’s important to note that this approach is limited to the PC (Steam) release. Players on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 can’t use this workaround in the same way.
Finally, when you restore a save, remember to turn off Steam Cloud Saves—otherwise Steam can overwrite your restored local files with whatever it has stored in the cloud.
