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Hexane

Guides

Importing an existing world

Move a single-player world or a world from another server onto your Hexane server without losing anything.

Verified 2026-09-15 against Paper 26.2 world layout and the vanilla saves folder structure. Panel file manager steps are confirmed once our install is verified.. About 7 minutes.

Take a backup first

Whether the world comes from your own computer or another host, keep a copy somewhere else before you start. Worlds only upgrade forward: a world opened by a newer Minecraft version cannot be opened by an older one again.

Know what a world folder contains

A vanilla world is one folder (the name of the world) containing level.dat, region/, DIM-1/ (the Nether), and DIM1/ (the End). Paper stores the Nether and End as separate folders next to the main one: world, world_nether, and world_the_end. Paper converts a vanilla folder on first start, so you can import either layout.

From single-player

  1. On your computer, open the Minecraft saves folder. On Windows it is %appdata%\.minecraft\saves; on macOS it is ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves; on Linux it is ~/.minecraft/saves.
  2. Zip the world’s folder. The zip should contain the folder itself, with level.dat inside it.
  3. In the panel file manager, upload the zip to the server’s root directory and use Unarchive. Large worlds are faster over SFTP; the SFTP address and login are on the server’s settings page.
  4. Open server.properties and set level-name= to the folder name exactly, including capital letters.
  5. Start the server. Watch the console for “Preparing level”; a converted world can take a minute or two the first time.

From another server

Ask your old host for the world folders or use their file manager to download them. On Paper you want all three folders. Upload and unarchive them the same way, set level-name, and start.

If you are moving plugins as well, copy the plugins/ folder too, then check each plugin still supports your Minecraft version. Plugins built for older versions are the most common reason an imported server fails to start.

Player data and inventories

Inventories, locations, and advancements live inside the world folder under playerdata/, stats/, and advancements/, keyed by player UUID. They move with the world. If the old server ran with online-mode=false, the UUIDs differ and inventories will appear empty on an online-mode server; that is a good reason never to turn online mode off.

If the world looks empty or wrong

  • Check level-name matches the folder name character for character.
  • Make sure level.dat is directly inside that folder, not one level deeper because of how the zip was made.
  • Look for “Failed to load” lines in the console; a corrupted region file names the file to restore from your backup.