Editing Borderlands 1 Saves

This is the one case where I'll tell you not to use Gibbed — and so will Gibbed. For the original Borderlands, his editor was never finished, and his own README points you somewhere else. The good tool for BL1 is WillowTree, and there's a clean answer for the GOTY Enhanced remaster too. Here's the whole picture.

The short answer

Don't use Gibbed for Borderlands 1 — use WillowTree#. That's not me overriding Gibbed; it's literally what his own project tells you to do. For the original Borderlands, WillowTree is the functional, maintained editor.

What about Gibbed's BL1 editor?

There is a gibbed/Gibbed.Borderlands repository, but read what it actually says: it was thrown together shortly after the original Borderlands launched, development stopped before the DLCs even came out, and there's "no further development planned." It has no published release, and the README flatly describes it as not "an actual functional save editor" — recommending WillowTree in its place.

Use WillowTree# instead

WillowTree# is the long-standing Borderlands 1 save editor — a graphical tool, same idea as Gibbed but built for BL1's save format. You'll find it on SourceForge (the project moved there from its old GitHub home). It edits the things you'd expect: level, skill points, money, backpack and bank, and weapons.

WillowTree# on SourceForge

The GOTY Enhanced remaster

The 2019 Game of the Year Enhanced edition changed the save format enough to break older tools, which trips people up. Two working routes: use a current WillowTree build (the 2.3.0.289 update and later support GOTY Enhanced), or the dedicated WillowTree GOTY-Enhanced fork. If an old WillowTree won't open your Enhanced save, that mismatch is why — grab the newer build.

A bit of history

Worth knowing, because it's a nice irony: the very first Gibbed save editor was for the original Borderlands — "Borderlands Save Editor (Revision 9)," posted way back in October 2009. So Gibbed's save-editing story actually started with BL1; it just never got finished here, and the polished editors came later for Borderlands 2 and beyond. The roots are in this game.

Where BL1 saves live

On PC, Borderlands 1 saves sit under your Documents, in a Borderlands folder (the exact name varies by edition — the GOTY/Enhanced folder differs from the original), in a SaveData directory. Open the folder in WillowTree the same way you'd point Gibbed at a BL2 save, and back it up first — that habit doesn't change between games.

Quick answers