save files

What folder are the character save files located in? Was wondering if its possible to copy them to an external drive or memory stick etc and then , say for arguments sake you had to format your hard drive, and then reinstall PSO, would it be possible to copy these files back over to the original directory and thus keep your character intact and continue where you left off?

Yes, it's referred to as backing up your characters. People do it all the time. Go to where you installed PSO PC. Head all the way to the PhantasyStarOnline folder, and in it, you should see a folder called "Backup".

That is what you're looking for. Back up the whole file and you're good. Easiest way is to simply Copy/Paste it to another location, zip it, etc. I keep a back-up on my flash drive as well as my Hard Drive itself. Do this and you should be O.K.

Keep in mind, that if you are registered, you will need to keep the serials safe as well. Your characters are tied to them forever, so should you attempt to reinstall PSO, or move them to a new computer, you will need to re-enter the serial again. You can do this with the autorun client just like you did before(assuming you've already registered). Without the serial, the backup is useless. It will say character data is missing/corrupt.

If you don't have your serial data anywhere, run the original autorun client that you used the first time with PSO, and go to Options. There, you shall see all of your serial data. Copy it down somewhere and keep it safe.

The backup folder also contains download quests as well as your screenshots, so it can be rather large (1 GiB) if you have close to the maximum of 1,000 screens.

If you want to just back up your characters, copy the files

PSO___COM
PSO___FLS
PSO___GUD
PSO___SYD
PSO___SYS

These are the files used to save the game data. The total file size is 1.88MiB.

brilliant thanks