Character missing after a transfer: no Download button, or the game asks for a new survivor

This is the long form of the "Missing character" part of Troubleshooting: connection timeout, server full, missing character; its rules stay the same.

You uploaded your survivor at an Obelisk, a Tek Transmitter or another transfer terminal. The map you travelled to offers no Download Survivor and asks you to create a new survivor, and the survivor is not on the map you left either.
ASA: the screen goes black or stalls right after loading in on the new map (see the guide ASA: black screen or endless 'joining server').
You already pressed Create New Survivor, or downloaded a different survivor, and every login now loads that one.
"Cannot upload, survivor already uploaded" while you stand on the map has its own guide, Cannot upload, survivor already uploaded.

This is the long form of the "Missing character" part of Troubleshooting: connection timeout, server full, missing character; its rules stay the same.

You uploaded your survivor at an Obelisk, a Tek Transmitter or another transfer terminal. The map you travelled to offers no Download Survivor and asks you to create a new survivor, and the survivor is not on the map you left either.
ASA: the screen goes black or stalls right after loading in on the new map (see the guide ASA: black screen or endless 'joining server').
You already pressed Create New Survivor, or downloaded a different survivor, and every login now loads that one.
"Cannot upload, survivor already uploaded" while you stand on the map has its own guide, Cannot upload, survivor already uploaded.

A survivor is two pieces: the body in the map's world save (position, inventory) and a profile file with your level and engrams. A transfer carries the profile through the cluster's transfer folder; an ID inside it links it to the body.

An empty transfer file. Occasionally an upload writes an empty transfer file: the profile is gone, while the body sleeps on the map you left with nothing able to log into it. Other servers report the same, for example after a crash during the download (Steam, 2024).
Not lost, only elsewhere. In April 2026 Studio Wildcard found that many "missing" characters were still on the server the transfer started from, or in the ARK upload (Community Crunch #502).
A rollback. If the map you left is rolled back, the game's anti-duplication rule can force a new character although the old one still exists (ARK Wiki).
One survivor per map. A server keeps one survivor per player. Creating a new one takes the same slot, and downloading a survivor always overwrites the survivor data that was there (ARK Wiki; Steam, 2017).

Do not create a new survivor on any map, and do not keep re-transferring: a new survivor takes the same slot and makes a restore harder. Studio Wildcard advises the same after a loss: do not transfer or alter items.
Check first: go back to the map you left and look for your survivor in the download list and in ARK Data, then look at the destination's download list once more (Community Crunch #502).
ASA: if the screen stalls after loading in, relog once (72.3). Before you travel, put away an active build template and take tames out of companion mode (69.18, 69.24).
If you already created a new survivor, stop playing it on that map and tell an admin at once.
Stay out of the game on that account until an admin answers: a profile is put back while you are offline.

As soon as the survivor is on neither map. An admin can:

search every map for your profile, read the transfer file and find your sleeping body with the character finder;
copy your newest profile back from the profile vault or the hourly backup while you are offline, after checking that it belongs to the body on the map;
if things you carried or uploaded were lost with it, read an older save with Restore from backup. Whether anything is replaced is the owner's decision.

A lost profile does not touch your tribe, creatures or structures. On official servers Studio Wildcard has a lost-character form; for unofficial servers like ours, its patch notes tell players to contact the server admin.

Tell an admin the map, the time (the clock in your profile menu shows the server's time), your character's name, what you carried or had uploaded, and the exact message on the screen. For a transfer: both maps and both times. Report the same day — the backups reach back only about two days. Contact admin is in your profile menu; the Guides page has a question box.

ASA Account ID, if the admin asks for it: start a single-player game, open the console, type whoami and copy the "OSS Id" (official article What is an Account ID?). It is a plain console command, not a cheat.

Report a lost survivor the same day: the backups reach back about two days.
Do not transfer right before an announced restart or maintenance: on 27/09/2026 a survivor that arrived seconds before a crash was lost.
Store valuables before a transfer: the ARK Wiki warns that transferred objects can be lost without any notice.

Character missing after a transfer: no Download button, or the game asks for a new survivor

What you see

Related guides

Character missing after a transfer: no Download button, or the game asks for a new survivor

What you see

Related guides

Why it happens

What you can do

When to ask an admin

Avoid it next time

Sources