The fiercest of deities
Empress of Light
Well I've tested this workaround extensively and I'm sure its garanteed to work every time. I've done it at least 37 times and it worked so maybe it's a memory issue leftover from the world you were last in that causes it ?Sorry to hear that, we've been trying to get the word out to avoid this situation:
Exit all the way out of the app before restarting to join a friend's world; this should avoid having your most recent world overwritten.
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/console-1-3-transition-and-workaround-faq.64292/#8
A patch to fix this permanently is in the works.