Borderlands 3 is a literal vault of rich content with insane replay value that easily convinces you to go for multiple playthroughs. The main story campaign alone takes around 30 hours on average to beat. With all the side missions and post-release DLC packs thrown into the mix, you can expect to spend over 100 hours to achieve a 100-percent completion playthrough. Now imagine losing your character saves in BL3 after spending that amount of time playing. It would be nothing short of a disaster. However, if this happened to you, do not create a new character just yet. There is a way to recover your (seemingly) lost character.
Strangely enough, Borderlands 3 is pretty prone to corrupted save files due to power cuts or accidental system restarts, way more than the other action RPGs on the market.
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How to Recover Corrupted Save Files in Borderlands 3
While Borderlands 3 features several powerful bosses, none proves to be as much of a nightmare as a corrupted save file. Thankfully, there is an easy fix to the problem. Rest assured that all the time you invested in building your Vault Hunter is not permanently lost.
The first thing to do is head into your local game directory, which should have the following path by default: \User-Name\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 3\Saved\SaveGames\
Back up the entire "Saved" folder in case something goes wrong, and then open the "SaveGames" folder. It should have two save files: one with a.sav extension and another with a.tmp extension. If you are playing BL3 with multiple characters, browse through the folder of the one you want to recover.
Delete the.sav file and then rename the.tmp file exactly as the deleted.sav file. For example, in the screenshot below, you must delete "1.sav" and rename "1.sav~RF25baff.tmp" to be the new "1.sav" file.
Finally, launch Borderlands 3 and your corrupted character save file should be completely restored. Unfortunately, if your save folder does not contain a.tmp file, your character is as good as lost. There is nothing else you can do to recover your character apart from contacting 2K Support, and even that has no guarantees.
There are two things to be aware of while dealing with a corrupted save file in BL3. Firstly, corrupted character saves cannot be repaired by verifying the integrity of the game on Steam. Secondly, make sure not to overwrite the corrupted file with a new cloud save.
Borderlands 3
- Released
- September 13, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Gearbox Software
- Publisher(s)
- 2K Games
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
