If you’re switching between different consoles or swapping between online and offline play, you might experience a serious progression issues in Borderlands 3 — your Guardian Rank is reverting to a previous state. Essentially, you’re losing Guardian Ranks when you login to your online account. This problem seems to happen when playing offline; instead of saving your progress, any progress you made while offline is instantly deleted when you jump into multiplayer.
Obviously, that’s a very bad thing. If you’ve experienced this issue, there are some fixes that can save your lost progress before the developers at Gearbox issue a more permanent solution to the on-going problem. There’s already a bug fix for PC cloud saving, but that doesn’t help the offline players on console or PC that still have negative Guardian Ranks. Scroll down and try some of the fixes players have discovered below.
More Borderlands 3 guides:
- Borderlands 3: 10 Tips & Tricks To Become A True Vault Hunter| Beginner’s Guide
- Borderlands 3: The Best Unique Guns & How To Find Them | Easter Eggs & Secrets Guide
- Borderlands 3: All SHiFT Codes List | How To Get Golden Keys
- Borderlands 3: Vault Insider Program Codes List | VIP Guide
- Borderlands 3: How To Get More Legendary Weapons | Rare Gun Tips & Tricks
- Borderlands 3: How To Fix Low FPS, Stuttering, White Screen & More | PC & Console Tweaks Guide
- Borderlands 3: How To Dupe Weapons | Infinite Guns Guide
How To Fix Negative Guardian Rank & Lost Progress | Offline Bug Guide
The negative progress Guardian Rank bug can effect all platforms — PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The problem seems to occur when playing offline, gaining Guardian Ranks, then switching back to online. When going back online, players are losing the Guardian Ranks earned while offline.
It is possible for some players to recover their lost Guardian Ranks. Follow these steps on PS4.
- Launch and continue to play Offline.
- Gain 1 Guardian Rank.
- Exit and launch Online.
After going back online, the game will ask if you’d like to exit for an ‘update’ — this is not a real update. Decline the prompt. If you accept, you’ll go online and revert back to the ‘negative’ Guardian Rank number.
Playing offline to fix this issue on PC is a little trickier. And some players report that this fix only works temporarily, forcing a restart on Epic that reverts the changes.
- Start the Epic Game Launcher.
- Disable Cloud Saves in the EGL.
- Relaunch EGL and start Borderlands 3.
- Close EGL and disconnect from the internet.
- Gain 1 Guardian Rank.
- Reopen EGL and don’t sign-in.
- Close Borderlands 3 and reconnect to the internet.
- Sign-in on EGL and launch Borderlands 3 using Local Saves.
It’s a complicated process, but it seems to work for some players. It might not work for you — if that’s that case, send a ticket and report this bug to Gearbox. Hopefully there’s a permanent fix coming down the pipe soon.
