PC players should check all steps, Xbox players only need steps #1, #4, and #6.

*If you want to skip all these steps and not mess with it, you have the option to play in a slot that has never been used. Your old slot will be glitched though and the file must be erased to make it functional again.

1. If you’re on Steam, turn off Steam Cloud so it stops overwriting the file with the blank save. If you’re on a newer Xbox, you can set the console to Offline Mode to stop cloud saves temporarily.
2. Navigate to C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Massive Monster\Cult Of The Lamb\saves on PC. You can get here quickly by hitting Windows+R and paste "%appdata%/../LocalLow" without quotes then hit enter, then look for the Massive Monster folder. Do not use Steam to browse local files, it will not go to the correct folder and these folders are hidden by default/must be navigated to directly.
3. Manually check if the file is glitched by opening the suspected glitched slot file as a text file (PC only) and seeing if there's any characters inside (glitched files will be completely blank, normal saves will display encrypted characters.)
4. Delete any glitched files by manually deleting them (slot on PC.) If you're on a newer Xbox, erase your save data in your settings while in Offline Mode. Older Xbox should erase both local and cloud data in the settings while online.
5. Check your backup folder in your Cult Of The Lamb local files you were in earlier and see if there's any recoverable save data by going backwards through the most recent slot files [slot.SNAPSHOT_NUMBER.json] Manually open any slot files going backwards by creation and see if any data is inside/can be recovered. Copy and paste recoverable files back into your saves folder to use them by renaming them to the correct file name [i.e. slot_0.json] then try to load your save.
6. Do not re-enable cloud saves on Steam if your save is fixed. Cloud saves should be able to be used again on Xbox but make sure the console stays in Offline Mode until you're able to create a new non-glitched save, then close the game and put it back online to upload the save to the cloud.