# BEFORE YOU START: WARNINGS & GOOD PRACTICE

## <mark style="color:red;">**NEVER USE A CLOUD FOLDER**</mark>

Don't use a OneDrive, iCloud or any other type of synced folder to store anything related to Dungeondraft (saves, assets, mods...). Dungeondraft doesn't play well with that type of folder and you might break important things, and even lose your work.

## <mark style="color:red;">NEVER USE THE INSTALL FOLDER</mark>

In the same spirit as the first advice, never use the folder where Dungeondraft is installed to store information such as saves, assets or mods. It's not meant to hold anything else than the program itself and might cause some unwanted behavior.

## <mark style="color:red;">ACCENTS AND SPECIAL CHARACTERS CAUSE ISSUES</mark>

In most cases, Dungeondraft can't read accents or special characters (punctuation, cyrillic, greek letters...). Make sure your folders, asset packs, images inside the asset packs, mod folder names or anything related to Dungeondraft doesn't use them or you might get some issues.

## <mark style="color:red;">ALWAYS CLOSE DUNGEONDRAFT BETWEEN TWO MAPS</mark>

{% hint style="info" %}
*This applies only for Custom Assets users.*
{% endhint %}

If you're using [custom assets](https://unofficial-dd-manual.gitbook.io/dungeondraft/introduction/first-look/assets-menu), it is very important to close Dungeondraft before working on a second map. Without closing, Dungeondraft keeps in memory your previous asset packs, so you can visually use them... but it doesn't actually keep the packs enabled, and you might witness missing assets the next time you load your map. Of course this applies only if you use different packs on different maps.

Same goes if you want to update a pack. If you don't close Dungeondraft after a pack has been updated, it won't be processed correctly and it might not even be recognized by the software, even if you reload your map. \
\
*Always fully close and reopen Dungeondraft when you change something related to custom asset packs.*

## <mark style="color:red;">CHECK IF YOUR VERSION IS UP TO DATE</mark>

If you're not using the latest stable release, you might experience some issues that were fixed in the newer/current version. Some topics in this guide won't apply to previous versions as well.

## <mark style="color:red;">VERIFY YOUR BACKUP SETTINGS</mark>

Make sure you've enabled the [automatic backups](https://unofficial-dd-manual.gitbook.io/dungeondraft/first-look/main-menu#general) and set a decent frequency so you can easily recover your maps in case of issues.
