Where Borderlands 2 Keeps Your Saves

You can't edit a save you can't find, and Borderlands 2 hides them in a spot that trips people up — buried under Documents, in a folder named after a string of digits that looks like nonsense. It's the same place whether you're on Steam or Epic. Here's exactly where it is, what each file does, and the 10-second backup habit that's saved me more characters than I'd like to admit.

The path

On PC — Steam and Epic both — your saves are here:

That WillowGame bit throws people — it's the engine's internal name for Borderlands 2, not a typo. Note one thing up front: this folder doesn't exist until you've created a character and saved the game at least once. If you're staring at a "Borderlands 2" folder with no SaveData inside, go make a character and play for thirty seconds first. The game builds the folder on its first save.

Open it in two seconds

Don't click through Documents by hand every time. Hit Win + R, paste this, press Enter:

That %UserProfile% shortcut resolves to your user folder automatically, so it works no matter what your Windows username is. I keep this one on a sticky note. It drops you straight into SaveData.

The folder full of numbers

Inside SaveData you'll find a subfolder with a long numeric name — something like 76561198…. That's your Steam ID (or your Epic account identifier). It's not random and you don't need to decode it; just open it. Your actual saves are in there.

If you see more than one numbered folder, that usually means more than one account has played on this PC — a family member, an old login. The one with recent timestamps and your characters in it is yours. When in doubt, sort by date modified.

Which file is my character?

Each character is a single file: Save0001.sav, Save0002.sav, and so on, numbered in the order you made them. Your level 80 Krieg might be Save0003.sav — there's no name on the file, so if you've got a stable of characters, the cleanest way to tell them apart is to open them in Gibbed and look (the editor shows you the name and class straight away).

You'll probably also see files ending in .bak, like Save0001.sav.bak. Hold that thought — those are a free safety net and I come back to them in the backup section.

profile.bin — the file Gibbed won't touch

Sitting right alongside your character saves is one more file: profile.bin. This is your account-wide profile, shared across all your characters — it holds your Badass Rank and its bonuses, your golden keys, and a few customization unlocks. It is not a character save.

Why does that matter? Because Gibbed's save editor deliberately doesn't edit profile.bin. So when people ask me "I set my Badass Rank in Gibbed and it didn't change" — that's why. Wrong file, wrong tool. That's a whole separate topic, and I'll point you to it: see why Gibbed can't edit Badass Rank.

The Epic Games version

Good news if you grabbed BL2 free from the Epic Store: it's the same folder. Epic saves land in that exact Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\WillowGame\SaveData path, under their own numeric id folder, in the same PC save format. The only thing to remember is to pick platform PC when you open the save in Gibbed — same as Steam. There's no separate "Epic mode." A save's a save.

Back it up — it takes ten seconds

I'm going to be a broken record about this on every page, because it's the one thing that turns "I lost my character" into a non-event. Before you open Gibbed:

1. Close the game

   If Borderlands 2 is running, it'll overwrite your edits on its next autosave. Quit it fully.

2. Copy the whole id folder

   Right-click that numbered folder → Copy → paste it on your Desktop or into a cloud drive. The entire thing, not just one file. Now you've got an untouched mirror of every character.

Steam Cloud will try to undo you

This one bites people who did everything right. You edit your save, close Gibbed, launch the game — and your changes are gone. Steam Cloud. If your local save and the cloud copy disagree, Steam throws a sync-conflict prompt at launch and asks which to keep. Pick the wrong one (the cloud version) and it cheerfully overwrites the file you just edited.

Moving saves to another PC

Same idea as a backup, in reverse. Copy the contents of your id folder from the old machine — that means profile.bin, every SaveXXXX.sav, and the .bak files — and drop them into the SaveData id folder on the new one. If the new PC uses a different Steam account, the id folder name will differ; just paste the save files into that account's folder rather than recreating the old number.

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