[Hero Wars] Save file corrupted — anything recoverable?

Finally worked this out, so here is the write-up I wish I had found. The community consensus seems to have shifted twice since I last played.

Any pointers appreciated, even partial ones.

Depends on your setup, but broadly worth testing on a second account to rule out something profile-specific.

Adding to the above: if it only happens in one mode, that narrows it down considerably.

In my testing, it depends heavily on your specific setup, so take any single number with a grain of salt.

Adding to the above: temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.

Had the exact same issue. the averages hide the problem; look at the one percent lows instead.

Not the answer you want, but the community guide covers this better than I can, but the summary is to prioritise the basics first.

For what it is worth, do not copy someone else’s config wholesale — start from defaults and adjust to your own setup.

Report back once you have tried it.

This is the bit people miss — keep a note of what you changed, otherwise you cannot undo it cleanly later.

Speaking as someone who got it wrong initially, temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.

The usual fix here is region and server load matter more than most guides acknowledge.

Speaking as someone who got it wrong initially, measure before and after, otherwise you are just guessing whether it helped.

Worth checking first: that behaviour is intentional, even though it is poorly explained in-game.

Short version: verify the files before anything else; it catches more problems than people expect.