The Walking Dead Season 1, Android - How to Backup and Keep Your Progress

Edited 18/03/2015 - check at the end for the new info.

Telltale Games and The Walking Dead means sooner or later you run into the problem of making a backup of your game or progress.
Let it be a firmware update, factory reset because the device is running slow or simply the transfer of choice and progress to a new device - you are lost if need the support from Telltale.
According to them it is not in any way supported, to make things worse: If you purchased the next episodes you will need to buy them again for your new device.
I had to find this out the hard way after I tried to make a backup of the game - which did not give me my progress or the already purchased episodes back!
After endless attempts to get this mess sorted through their support I gave up and searched for a way.
Although it meant buying all again and playing from the beginning....

Before you now say "Hurray!" there is a slight problem with the requirements.
You must have full root access - without this you are still unable to backup, say thanks to Telltale ;)
You also need around 3.5GB of free space for a full backup with all episodes!

Ok, let's get started here....

The game can always be installed fresh from the Playstore if you need to.
Create a backup folder, named "WD_Backup" on your SD card, make sure to have enough free space there.
Inside that backup folder make three new folders, name them "internal" , "external" and "APK" so we are on the same page with this Instructable.
The "normal" part of the game, including the new version patches are located on SD card (or the emulated SD if your device has no real SD card).
The folder to save is: SD/Android/OBB/com.telltalegames.walkingdead100
Copy this entire folder into the "external" backup folder.
The rest of the game is located in the ROOT area of your device.
The folder to save is: Root/Data/Data/com.telltalegames.walkingdead100
Copy this entire folder to the "internal" backup folder.
Last but not least the Installation file, the APK itself.
For it you can either use a backup program or Lucky Patcher (make a backup of the APK file with it).
If you do know how to use those programs copy the APK into the "APK" backup folder, otherwise you just have to download the game again.

Now you can copy the "WD_Backup" folder to your PC for save keeping if you are planning a firmware update or factory reset.
This procedure also works if for some reason you are running an older version of the game and therefor are unable to import your decisions into the second season.
For this case simply do the backup, delete the game and re-install the latest version from the Playstore.
After that copy the "internal" backup folder back.
If you want to save a lot of time downloading the new version also copy the "external" backup back into the right place (where got it ;) ) but delete the file with "patch" in it.
When you start the game the new patch file will be downloaded and you are back in your game with all decisions you have made.
And again, if you need to transfer the game to a new device it should work the same way as above only that you put the "internal" and "external" backup folders on the new device.

Additional note: When you download the game again, even with the data already on the device, it will download the entire 1.5GB of the game.
You can avoid this by making a backup of the APK file with your favorite backup program and use this APK after copying the backup folder on the device.
The game will "see" all is in place and no download is required.

Update 18/03/2015:

I already mentioned that full root access is required to backup your progress and downloaded episodes.

But I did all the operations using the ADB interface.

If you use a file explorer use something like "Root Explorer" as otherwise you might not be able to see what is located inside the "data" folder in the root.

With enough storage space left I found the best way of doing manually is by copying the entire "com.telltalegames.walkingdead100" folder to your "download" folder - the location varies on the device but you will find it ;)
If you do have a real SD card you can of course copy all direcly onto it using a dedicated folder for your backup.

Season Two is a bit different again, but you can find the Instructable here.

There you will also find information on what you can delete from this season in case you are low on storage space and still want to continue based on your previous choices.

If you do want to post this elsewhere please post a link back to this Instructable website or if you simply copy my work please leave a credit in my name - thanks for your understandig!