I want to backup locally (on my home computer) what I have done so far. Then I want to kill my droplet.

You can’t really download the entire droplet if you have modified applications, You can always SSH FTP in and download all the files in the folders you want. You can use FileZilla or any other transfer program and use your SSH login with it.

If you are after downloading a snapshot there is no way to do this and be able to recover it.

@under1hat

You could simply ZIP, GZIP, or TAR (+ GZIP) your files locally, upload them to your Droplet, take a snapshot, and then destroy the Droplet. When the time comes that you wish to download the archive, simply login using SFTP, download the files, and extract the archive.

Honestly, though, you really don’t need a Droplet to do this. You could just as easily create an archive and upload it to a service, such as Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive, and achieve the same result plus if you install their applications, you’d have automatic backup. You can get quite a bit of free space from those three providers and they are far easier to work with, not to mention a better overall solution.