Valheim has just crashed requiring a restart (which it has never done) and when I logged back in, I was back at the summoning stones and all my bases are missing!!

Has this happened to anyone else and if so, how did you remedy it?? If there is no fix, and I am betting not as my original save in the Steam cloud will be overwritten, is there another way to recover what was more than 100 hours gameplay?

I hate Steam for this and many other reasons, so is there a way to play Vaheim without having to use Steam? I only ever play solo.