I have an offline Nightmare Sorceress that I was playing who has now disappeared from my list of characters (though her save files are still there).
I also cannot start any offline games at all. Existing characters. New characters. Characters brought from my OG D2LOD saves. Nothing works. Failed To Join Game is all I get.
I have tried scan and repair - no change.
I have also tried uninstalling and reinstalling - twice - no change.
I do not have online or offline characters with the same name.
I can, however, play online…
Even though I can play online, I would really like the offline character I dumped a ton of hours into back. I greatly prefer to play offline. Please address this issue, Blizzard.
1 Like
Try removing the shared stash file from the save game folder. Sometimes that file gets corrupted. Of course, that means that you lose everything in your shared stash.
As for your sorceress, again it could be a corrupted file. That is more difficult to fix. One thing you can try is to rename the .d2s file and see if it shows up in the game.
1 Like
This exact same thing happened to me a week ago and nothing has fixed it, sadly. I even removed the shared stash file and renamed the .d2s file. I’ve tried logging out and in, reinstalling, changing my region, and pretty much anything else I’ve seen others suggest. Sure, I can play online, but I had also put a bunch of time into my offline characters. Hoping this is resolved soon.
The save game file (the .d2s file) unfortunately uses a checksum. If it doesn’t match the rest of the file, the game won’t load it and you get the “Failed to join game” error. So one thing you can try is to force a new checksum by changing the file.
Go to https://dschu012.github.io/d2s/ and load the problematic d2s file. Then click the arrow beside “Header” and add a letter to the end of the name, then go down to the bottom of the page and click on “Save D2R”. This should force a recalculation of the checksum and may allow the file to work again. Maybe. Hopefully.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I tried deleting the shared stash file and that let me in offline games.
The .d2s file won’t even load on the link you provided… I think it’s toast. 
1 Like
There is one more thing to check, if you are willing to examine the file directly with a hex editor. The first four bytes of the d2s file have to be 55 AA 55 AA. If even one byte is different, then the file will not be recognized as a valid character file and it won’t show up in game. If it’s been changed/corrupted, then changing them back should at least allow you to see the character listed in the game. Hopefully the rest of the file hadn’t been corrupted.
Here is a picture of one of my save game files: https://i.imgur.com/SkE5q1A.png
Edit: further testing shows that the next 4 bytes also have to be 61 00 00 00.
2 Likes
I just looked at the d2s file with a Hex editor - everything is 00’s. EVERYTHING. Looks like this character is toast.
It seems you’re not the only one. A couple of other people have reported the same finding. I have no idea how that could happen. That’s probably also happening to the shared stash file too.
It seems the only thing we can do is back up our save game files regularly. Hopefully someone is looking into this issue.
Hi this just happened to me and I lost my Sorc save data as well. What is the best method of backing up my save data so this hopefully doesn’t happen again.
IMO, the best way is to move the save game folder to OneDrive. OneDrive keeps a revision history for 30 days, so you can easily roll back to an earlier version of any file you keep on it. Also, it has an online recycle bin, so even if you or the program deletes a file, you can recover it.
Just make a “Save Game” folder in OneDrive in Windows Explorer, then go to your
"C\Users\<username>\" folder, right-click on the “Save Game” folder, click on Properties, then in the “Location” tab, click Move and select the folder in your OneDrive folder. Click OK to transfer your current contents to the new folder.
Sorry this happened yourself and now me. I came across this thread and working my way through it now.