Friend figured this out:

Program files>Steam>Steamapps>Common>Borderlands 2>DLC>POPremierclub>Lic>willowDLC.ini

Open up the WilloDLC.ini. You will see brackets that say "goldenkeys." Then next to numkeys, change the value from 1 to whatever you want below 546 (it seems to cap out around there.)

I'm sure they will find out about this and prevent it from working, but if you pre-ordered the game on Steam then might as well do this while you can. The golden keys open up the rare weapon golden chest thing in Sanctuary, and you get purple weapons that scale to your level.

wow ... a simple text file, really? /facepalm gearbox

Personally i don't want to break the game for myself this early, rather still be looking out for guns, so not gonna do this yet. Maybe at some later point when i'm done with the 2.5 playthrough and bored.

We really don't need to be advertising how to cheat the gold chest on pc do we? If you are on pc and want to basically suck 50% of the fun out of the game follow the op's advice. I have a dunce friend who did it so I know it works, but you will probably like the game alot more if you play it legitimately.

I would rather just play the damn game.

haha awesome. I am going to check this out. In my opinion, a game is not lowered in the level of fun because of something as trivial as this.... The story is the story, regardless of that stuff. If you want it to be harder, then simply do not do it

I'm gonna add another one. I accidentally used my first one because I didn't know what it was. Though the two guns I got were broken with how good they are. I've used them for 6 levels and they still oneshot a lot of stuff.

Don't see the big deal. Might do it at some point when I've beaten the game 3-4 times and have gotten bored.

I'm sure console players will hate on it tho, mostly because they won't be able to do it, "forced morality" and all.

Shit, take away looting and that game has very little to drive it. No thanks.

@mpgeist said:

Shit, take away looting and that game has very little to drive it. No thanks.

Yeah exactly this.

Why ruin it for ya?! Looting is the name of the game here!

I saw that a bunch of people had lost their keys. I was just screwing around on one of my characters...

sheesh

I learned a long time ago that cheating sucks the fun out of games.

People seem really uppity about this. You don't have to do it, if someone else does it isn't anything away from you. Just relax.

Yea I'm sure no one will get banned or have their game removed or be VAC banned or anything.

@avidwriter said:

Yea I'm sure no one will get banned or have their game removed or be VAC banned or anything.

What exactly does this violate that would cause a ban? Im curious to know.

@avidwriter: noone got banned for editing their borderlands 1 saves, so I doubt it. Hell, it doesn't even use VAC.

Must... Resist... I mean at first I was going to run to my pc before work to do this but then on second thought... This would probably just ruin the game for me. I got one golden key I'm waiting until until lvl cap to use, and then probably realize I already have better guns.

well thats a good way to ruin the game

@Tennmuerti said:

wow ... a simple text file, really? /facepalm gearbox

Personally i don't want to break the game for myself this early, rather still be looking out for guns, so not gonna do this yet. Maybe at some later point when i'm done with the 2.5 playthrough and bored.

Why hide it any better. If people have a desire to hack saves they will do so anyway.

@Karkarov said:

We really don't need to be advertising how to cheat the gold chest on pc do we? If you are on pc and want to basically suck 50% of the fun out of the game follow the op's advice. I have a dunce friend who did it so I know it works, but you will probably like the game alot more if you play it legitimately.

As you point out - it is personal preference. So why try to bury that info. This is something I could see me doing between finishing the game and deleting it for good. I like to suck all the marrow out of my purchases.

if you think about how smart the people who make games must be ... its amazing to see how dumb they can be sometimes.

Or just find one of 75 bazillion guns in the game and enjoy fucking around with those.

It's kind of the point of the game, no-one ever played borderlands for the story.

Joined a game last night where 2 dudes were just endlessly opening the safe and had filled the room with purple guns. This explains it I guess.

@Rowr said:

no-one ever played borderlands for the story.

Your right about that one, my daughters kiddy books have better stories than Borderlands.

I feel like I've been posting "two little things" a whole lot lately. Well, here's another one.

1) You don't have to do it.

2) Couldn't you just give one of your characters a ton of Golden Keys and just dick around with that one, and use a different character for more legitimiate purposes?

@believer258:

1) It's mostly the temptation of how super easy it is to do it that is annoying. In a game about loot you have basically on your lap an infinite supply of excellent loot forever with no effort. Ultimately yes, you don't have to do it, which is what a lot people are saying they will not do.

2) The keys are for the whole account.

@alternate Yeah, but really if you want you can hack and cheat your way through almost any SP PC game there is, a simplest of memory editors is usually all that's required. It's mostly to do with ease of access to it, the easier it is to do the more it tempts. It comes down to how big is the barrier to entry is: memory editor, save editor, simple text file. Plus I suppose Gearbox has stated that the keys will be like special rewards for shit, RL events, promotions etc, they kept talking like the supply is going to be limited and these were the rewards, now the supply is infinite and the keys as a reward are 100% useless to the PC crowd.

That said it IS a cool method to fuck around and mess with the game at some later point for me.

So somewhat off-topic, but the OP mentioned that the guns in the golden chest scales with your level. Does that mean that I can safely open my chest at low level, and potentially find a gun that I can keep up to level 50 that levels up with me? Or am I just bad at English and misunderstand something?

@Cincaid: No, they scale on opening, not perpetually. Which means if you are lvl 10 and you open it it will have lvl 10 gun or gear inside. Open it at lvl 20 and it will have lvl 20 gun/item inside. But that lvl 10 gun it's always going to be lvl 10 as soon as it is spawned/generated from the chest.

@Tennmuerti: Gotcha, thanks for clearing it up for stupid lil' me. :)

Well, it's nice to have the option I guess, but I'll pass. Don't see any problems in using this though, if you think you'll have more fun than, go for it.

@avidwriter said:

Yea I'm sure no one will get banned or have their game removed or be VAC banned or anything.

In a game that doesn't use Valve Anti-Cheat? Seriously doubt it.

I'll pass on this. As many have said, 95% of the fun in Borderlands comes from the loot. I didn't even know that these golden keys existed before reading this topic, actually.

I messed around with it some looted the chest like 5 times and because the loot is purple and at your level it by default becomes very powerful (at least on first playthrough). The temptation is huge. I got an eridian modified fire SMG in the last box i opened, it's every stat was better them my other purple Moxi smg, every stat, and the damage was triple, when most elemental smg's around that level are in the 60-80 dmg range the thing had a whooping 250+ dmg per bullet (like a sniper rifle). It's pretty much broken in how powerful it is at my level. If i was going to use it it would probably last me for the rest of playthrough 1, and honestly i would feel a diminished sense of accomplishment if i kept on using it to finish the game.

That instantly put a stop to my messing around with that chest. And i put that overpowered SMG in the bank for now, going back to using my legit guns.

@Tennmuerti: The same thing happened to me. I got a sniper rifle that did a shit ton more damage than my other one, went into the field, crit a bandit for like 7k, and felt extremely dirty. It's in the vendor now and I'm back to using my old rifle. Solidarity!

this is why pc gamers can't have nice things (i keed i keed)

think it'll be kinda obnoxious if i ever play multi with some random who had thousands of high level guns on him though.

This will probably come in handy when I finish playthrough 2 and am working on whatever the Crawmerax of this game is.

@ripelivejam said:

this is why pc gamers can't have nice things (i keed i keed)

think it'll be kinda obnoxious if i ever play multi with some random who had thousands of high level guns on him though.

Bah, people cheated the shit out of Borderlands 1. Editing and downloading "custom" guns was extremely easy, even on consoles. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens with Borderlands 2.

Huh. I might do this once I'm bored of the game.

Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn. Tell us the lesson that we should learn!

I actually looked at this file a while ago and didn't think about editing it. It's kinda sad they made it so easy to pretty much break the game. If there's no incentive to keep playing to get better loot, this kind of game loses a lot of its appeal.

This seems like it basically ruins the game. Not sure why anyone would do it. Giving yourself an extra key because you accidentally used one is fine but when you're giving yourself great weapons infinitely it seems like game would be fun for another hour or so.

There's also some more info on the golden key in the wiki:

Borderlands 2: Golden Key

Not gonna bother with it. Bought the game for the looting, and I know that I'll get bored very quickly if I use this. It'll be interesting to see if Gearbox does anything to undo the damage done.

I want to give myself an extra key, just because I blew mine on accidental clicking. But on the other hand, that seems like a dark, dark path.

"Haven't had a good drop in a while... maybe just one more key?"

"This fight is kicking my ass... just a couple of keys and I'll be good to go."

"PUT KEYS IN ME I AM THE GUN MASTER"

Etc.

If you're going to use this glitch, use it now. Create a new character, give him all the keys you want, save it, never use him again until later on if you feel like cheating. Otherwise, Gearbox are going to fix this.

@SomeDeliCook said:

If you're going to use this glitch, use it now. Create a new character, give him all the keys you want, save it, never use him again until later on if you feel like cheating. Otherwise, Gearbox are going to fix this.

unless tehy remove the keys from that character

Nope, not doing this.

@muktor said:

@SomeDeliCook said:

If you're going to use this glitch, use it now. Create a new character, give him all the keys you want, save it, never use him again until later on if you feel like cheating. Otherwise, Gearbox are going to fix this.

unless tehy remove the keys from that character

Which could also very well happen

Tried it because I hate fun, but I ended up selling the gun and went back to my old stuff. I probably should feel bad about the sudden huge influx of cash I got now.

Last night before I went to bed I added 500 keys, but I got to thinking, what is the point of playing the game if I can open a magic chest that gives me great weapons 10 times a level? so I think I will only keep one.

@Czarpyotr said:

I saw that a bunch of people had lost their keys. I was just screwing around on one of my characters...

sheesh

Thanks man. I am going to do this. The first time I saw that chest I thought "Wow. A chest in here?" And opened it and then said, "...Fuck." I'll give myself a couple of keys though. I just won't open the chest until certain points. I had a huge gap from the beginning to Sanctuary where I didn't have a good assault rifle and in the chest I found a great SMG. But still, I would have rather saved the key.

@alternate said:

As you point out - it is personal preference. So why try to bury that info. This is something I could see me doing between finishing the game and deleting it for good. I like to suck all the marrow out of my purchases.

It's kind of lazy that they didn't put this file in some sort of ecrypted archive.