I’m not a big gamer by any standard. I have quite a few computers games but they mostly fall into five categories:
- LEGO games—I love these, as do my three boys.
- Call of Duty/Battlefield first person shooters—I only play the story-mode versions on easy level for the cinematic experience.
- Story/walking simulator style games (Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, Firewatch).
- Multiplayer, party-style games for my children (Screencheat, Sonic All-Stars Racing, Mini Motor Racing Evo).
- Baldur’s Gate family Dungeons & Dragons’ role playing games.
Apart from the LEGO games—which are part adventure, part puzzle games—for the most part, I enjoy games for their cinematic and story-telling properties. I want escape and entertainment rather than spending hours building an empire or working out some kind of complex strategy.
Cheat / debug mode
So, for the last few years in Baldur’s Gate (in the few moments that I’ve had a chance to play it) I have activated the cheats (or debug mode). This gives me access to the entire game inventory to equip my character accordingly and a better chance to survive the adventure.
Clue: I have never yet completed Baldur’s Gate, despite owning it since about 1999 (I still own my original copy on five CD-ROMs).
Having just reinstalled my PC, I was disappointed to discover that the old way of activating cheat mode (by editing baldur.ini) had changed. This is how I managed it today (on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, with OneDrive installed).
- Locate the folder at Documents > Baldur’s Gate – Enhanced Edition. On my desktop PC this was in the default Windows 10 Documents folder within OneDrive; on my laptop it is in C:\users\<username>\Documents. It will depend on how your computer was set up.
- In a proper text editor (e.g. Sublime Text or Notepad++ or TED Notepad) open the file Baldur.lua.
- Add the line SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Debug Mode','1').
- Save and close the file.
Now when you run the game, you can enter the game console by pressing Ctrl + Spacebar. It looks like this, at the bottom of the screen:
This allows you to enter codes that generate items, amongst other things. For instance this code allows generates a set of Ankheg Plate Mail armour for your current character:
C:CreateItem("PLAT06")
The older versions of Baldur’s Gate used the code CLUAConsole: but this has now been shortened to a single, uppercase C: followed by a colon.
Here’s how my intrepid fighter character started his adventure in Candlekeep:
Download the cheat codes
Feel free to download my full list of cheat codes, arranged by type (clothing, jewellery, weapons, magic, and miscellaneous).
You can look up what each item is on the Baldur’s Gate Wiki.
Baldur’s Gate EE cheat codes (DOCX, 30 KB)
Updated
2017-04-17 Updated the location of Baldur.lua as it was in two different locations on two PCs running Windows 10. It depends, I guess, on whether Windows 10 is told to use OneDrive as the default save location.
It wants to save the .lua as an .rtf
Not sure how to counter this.
With what application are you editing the document? I recommend using a text editor such as Notepad, rather than Microsoft Word or other word processing application.
If you’re using a text editor that doesn’t recognize programming languages, it will try to save it as a “normal” text file instead of a .lua file. If you use a program like Notepad++ (which is free), it will properly format the file as a .lua file and save it as .lua
I should also mention that there is a difference between a “text editor” and a “source code editor” (as I like to call them). Most text editors will not format a .lua file correctly as it doesn’t always have the capability of recognizing a programming language. This can also cause issues when saving your changes.
is there a way to gain multiple items at once? Arrows, etc?
Hi Larry, not that I know of but I’m no expert on this. Certainly, whenever I’ve done this I’ve had to add the items one-by-one.
If you enter ,[number] after the item it will create that many. For example C:CreateItem(“SCRL75”,5) creates 5 Identify Scrolls
The link to the list of items for the cheat codes isn’t quite complete. For example, it doesn’t have all the pantaloons as there are 2 more you can get. If you collect all 3 and then go to the right armor forger they can make into an suit of armor that essentially turns you into the D&D version of iron man. 🙂
I found a file called Baldur.ini – Notepad and added the lines in that. I’m not too computer savvy and trying to figure this out.
The game crashed….deleted what I added and, thankfully, it started up fine. I’m going to keep trying to figure this out. 🙂
I think I figured it out…WOO HOOOO!
Thanks for this, I also just like to play and it gets really boring when you get stuck on one baddie. (I try not to use the cheats but sometimes you just need a little help).
I also still have my original disks from a long time ago and I love being able to play again as I don’t have a machine to run them on anymore.
I hear rumors of a BG 3 so really looking forward to that.
Thanks again and happy gaming!
You’re welcome. Baldur’s Gate III is more than a rumour, see their website for a (slightly disturbing) trailer and more information: https://baldursgate3.game/.