Guild Wars 2

Figured I’d post this in its own thread as it appears the Local.dat file (the file that’s supposed to simply save your preferences) gets bloated over time.

Creating a fresh Local.dat file it starts out as a 72kb file apparently, but within moments it grew to 1.7mb. My older Local.dat file at that time had already reached 30mb in about 36 days; and the one before that (from launch till Nov.3) was 40mb.

I do not know why this file gets bigger and bigger over time, but it depicts a similar behaviour to some games that had savegame-bloating (causing them to become corrupted over time). Might the same be true here?

You see, like others I started having audio issues (woo woo siren) that caused my game to crash. But renaming my Local.dat (so the client gives you a new one) seemingly fixed these issues. Fixed, until a month later when I got the same issues again and found out my new Local.dat had grown over 30mb.

So to me this is a bug, as the Local.dat file should not get bigger and bigger over time. All it’s supposed to do (afaik) is store a couple of user-preferences relating to Audio/Video settings and username/password.

I compared your file to my file and for the one from launch they are almost the same size, I think since you are creating more local Dat files that they contain the same infor but when you split them the information is sent to Local Dat and doest reconize old local Dat as the same file.

I had a similar issue that when I tried to move the Gw2.exe file from my beta folder to my desktop it started to redownload the entire game.

Not sure what you mean Mira. I renamed my old versions so they would not be recognized by the client.

And as you can see here, my latest Local.dat is already growing. Yesterday it was 1.7mb and today it’s already 12mb!

There really seems to be something wrong here, as a file that mainly stores local user-preferences shouldn’t be able to grow.

it doesn’t just store user prefs…….

ok, wait a few days if it gets much larger than 40,545 KB I say there is a problem, but if it grows until a value close to that value than I believe it is working as intended.

Alright, I’ll keep an eye on it. At any rate it seems the ‘woo woo’ siren bug may be unrelated as I got it again just now

Squall Leonhart.2075:

it doesn’t just store user prefs…….

You know what else it might store?

cached character and inventory information, authorisation data, etc.

Reviving this thread as there is more data supporting OPs hypothesis. (i.e possible bloating causing issues) Several people are reporting load time decreases and FPS increases after deleting/renaming the local.dat file.

The other local.dat renamers:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18eqxv/i_just_cut_my_load_times_to_a_fraction_of_what/

Inspired by this vid from october last year:
http://youtu.be/w4GM7mqGKUQ

What does the local.dat file store? How would deleting it improve performance? Is it advisable to do so?

Is there a way to relocate the local.dat file?
Because I have my users folder in my D : drive which is where my documents is (where gw2 makes the local.dat file) but I want it to make the file under my C: drive (my ssd).

I tried moving the folders around but every time it would just make a new file in my docs.

nyeh.4517:

Is there a way to relocate the local.dat file?
Because I have my users folder in my D : drive which is where my documents is (where gw2 makes the local.dat file) but I want it to make the file under my C: drive (my ssd).

I tried moving the folders around but every time it would just make a new file in my docs.

It’s easier to show you then for me to explain it, but I guess you have to go to C:\Users\“your name” and you should see all the folders, like My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, etc… Find My Documents, then right click and go into the properties, go to the location tab, and then click on restore default. That should reassign the folder location back to the SSD and you can go ahead and move the folder’s contents back to the SSD.

Ryokuro.8125:

nyeh.4517:

Is there a way to relocate the local.dat file?
Because I have my users folder in my D : drive which is where my documents is (where gw2 makes the local.dat file) but I want it to make the file under my C: drive (my ssd).

I tried moving the folders around but every time it would just make a new file in my docs.

It’s easier to show you then for me to explain it, but I guess you have to go to C:\Users\“your name” and you should see all the folders, like My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, etc… Find My Documents, then right click and go into the properties, go to the location tab, and then click on restore default. That should reassign the folder location back to the SSD and you can go ahead and move the folder’s contents back to the SSD.

I wanted to move the location of the .dat file not my doc folder.

nyeh.4517:

Ryokuro.8125:

nyeh.4517:

Is there a way to relocate the local.dat file?
Because I have my users folder in my D : drive which is where my documents is (where gw2 makes the local.dat file) but I want it to make the file under my C: drive (my ssd).

I tried moving the folders around but every time it would just make a new file in my docs.

It’s easier to show you then for me to explain it, but I guess you have to go to C:\Users\“your name” and you should see all the folders, like My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, etc… Find My Documents, then right click and go into the properties, go to the location tab, and then click on restore default. That should reassign the folder location back to the SSD and you can go ahead and move the folder’s contents back to the SSD.

I wanted to move the location of the .dat file not my doc folder.

That’s the only way. GW2 has the location hard coded to use the “My Docs” directory. Gotta move it to move the .dat

Thanks for reminding me. I swear I did this a few months back as well.

Original Size: 60.6 MB
Original Load Time: 46 seconds (Lion’s Arch)

New Size: 1.77 MB
New Load Time: 17 seconds (Lion’s Arch)

I wonder if this has to be deleted after every holiday/event patch.