Impulse - Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights

The complete collection of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights are now also available on Impulse and are DRM free too.
More information.

Sloppy seconds

Same prices as currently offered on GOG.com - but the more direct download services there are offering them the more often we'll see them included in sales. I prefer services that do not require downloading through an installed client, but maybe some people prefer the convenience. Impulse does run regular half off sales just like a few of the other sites out there.

Anyways it's always good when we here "DRM-Free" and "worldwide" in conjunction with RPG titles sold as direct downloads.

I signed up with GOG recently to buy BG2 (which is excellent). I had a lot of trouble with their downloader. I had to keep quitting and relaunching it to get the game to load. It kept stalling out. I probably relaunched it at least a dozen times for the BG2 download which made it take forever.

Eventually I got it installed and it works fine. But has anyone else had problems with the GOG downloader?

Originally Posted by Ovenall
I signed up with GOG recently to buy BG2 (which is excellent). I had a lot of trouble with their downloader. I had to keep quitting and relaunching it to get the game to load. It kept stalling out. I probably relaunched it at least a dozen times for the BG2 download which made it take forever.

Eventually I got it installed and it works fine. But has anyone else had problems with the GOG downloader?

Used GoG a few times over the last 2 years and no issues. Then again I've downloaded some of their older (read: smaller file count) titles.

On GOG, I don't use their downloader, but just my browser function. Big downloads are split into 2G pieces, so it's no problem at all. It works pretty quickly, too.

Since I have some games from impulse, that is the easiest way for me but I have one question:
Icewind dale II, do you get the same version from impulse as you get from GoG?

It says e complete on GoG but not on impulse, is that just an oversight?


/C

There weren't any expansions for IWD2 so I would assume it is the same at each place.

Originally Posted by Turjan
On GOG, I don't use their downloader, but just my browser function. Big downloads are split into 2G pieces, so it's no problem at all. It works pretty quickly, too.

Same here. I tried their downloader and couldn't get it to work properly.

Yeah I've had issues with the downloader as well. Annoying, but eh, browser works fine. They're working on a new version so I'm good until then.

Regarding Icewind Dale II, GOG lists the Adventure Pack as included, whereas the Impulse version does not.

Originally Posted by chautemoc
Regarding Icewind Dale II, GOG lists the Adventure Pack as included, whereas the Impulse version does not.

That's not exactly true. ALL versions of Icewind Dale II contained the contents of the adventure pack - which are just 11 bonus items (10 of which have heart of fury alternatives) sold by two merchants. Even in the unpatched release version of the standard version of the game only required you to either:

Placing a 1k overide file in the override directory

or

Changing a variable in the console


Oh and the final patch added the items in to all versions of the game. The only item that was left out was the Avarine Decanter (the only one that didn't even have a Heart of Fury mode alternate version). The override or console command will still spawn the item in a shop inventory in the "Wandering villager" who sells it though. Nym is that merchant in the wandering village and he's in the base game too as a merchant and important plot NPC; the variable does in-fact only add the item to his shop inventory rather than control whether he appears or not as it did with the BG2 bonus merchants.

It's really disingenuous to advertise the game as containing the "adventure pack" which only differs from the patched vanilla version by a single item; not even that, it only varries by whether the variable enable the item in a briefly accessible NPC merchant who sells it is set to spawn by default or not.

Of course I can't really blame GoG for that one - there was almost no documentation on what the "adventure pack" added even before the official patch turned all the useful content from it on - content that was present in all the installations already but merely suppressed by disabling the 2 merchants in the initial release version. I doubt the realize themselves that the sole remaining "bonus" content is the Avarine Decanter. Black Isle's choice in naming the bonus content for that was… questionable. "Adventure Pack" = a bottle as of 2.01 patch.

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IWD2/index_mods.php
-First item on the page explains it; you can either use the 1k override (changes that one global on startup) or use the console command to tell the game to spawn the NPC who sells the only bonus item not added by the official path vanilla game. In all cases besides simply cheating the lone missing bottle can only be purchased during a brief portion of the game assuming you have the gold though as the wandering villager Nym only spawns during a short portion of the game. It is also the least useful of the formerly bonus items and was probably left out of the patch because most people who had the collector's edition w bonus pack never used it in the first place.

Now the whole reason the avarine decanter is useless in the patched version is because what it does is spawn a Genie NPC merchant - who can be summoned 3 times before he just goes bezerk and attacks you. While he does sell some really great items - these items are purchaseable shortly thereafter from the "Tower Merchant" who does not require you to buy the right to buy from him. Again - probably was intentionally left out of the patch since the items you could buy from him were simply added to a more normal store and because there were a few known bugs that could happen as a result of using the decanter at certain times and in certain places. In my original collector's edition copy of the game I used it somewhere I think the game decided I should not have and my saves in that area were rendered corrupt.

This potential can be avoided without losing access to the real items the genie in the bottle sells you but just not installing the "pack" that spawns Nym. I did experience this issue even after the patch - the decanter was not fixed by it - although they bypassed the issue in all versions by simply adding his items to a later normal-ish store. As the final patch did not remove the decanter from games it was active in - nor did it prevent people from changing the variable in non-collector versions - I would suggest simply avoiding the problem and not getting the decanter that spawns 3-use shopkeeper but instead just buying the items for a lower total cost in the normal stores they added them into for "Adventure Pack" and non "adventure pack" users alike.

This was probably one of the least impressive pre-order or collector bonuses I can personally remember - and it would have been just as much of a joke even if it hadn't been so easy to enable with a console command.

Thank you for the clarification!

Impulse it is then.

(though I really should finish the games I have first..)

C

I'll still buy it from GoG out of loyalty, theyre my pals

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
I'll still buy it from GoG out of loyalty, theyre my pals

Im sure GoG is good and what they have done is excelent, but with steam, gamersgate and impulse I cant stand having yet another download shop. Steam is by far the most expensive.

C

Ok i dont like cheating and i dont normally do this but i have a serious situation. i dont know how this happened but i'm playing through baldur's gate tales of the sword coast and i'm well on my way. Problem is i dont know what happened but i lost my bracers of archery and i've looked everywhere for them now what i thought i could resort to was using a cheat to get them back in my inventory. Now i downloaded the game from impulse and i'm trying to figure out how to use cheats and i found a guide that said go to the 'baldur.ini' file and do something but i cant find that file?

baldur.ini should be in the same directory as the game executable (where the game is installed). I don't own Impulse so I can't tell you where your game is installed (although it might be under ProgramFiles/Stardock/Impulse).

Originally Posted by azarhal
baldur.ini should be in the same directory as the game executable

Exactly. I don't have the Impulse version, but if you have a Baldurs Gate icon on your desktop, you can with the right mouse button choose "Proprieties" option and then choose "Find Target" in case of XP. A window will be open with the location of the exe, and in the same folder you'll find baldur.ini.

Isn't there something like shadowkeeper out for BG1? Or does shadowkeeper only work for BG2? There should be an item list where you can add items like 'bracers of archery'.

Originally Posted by aries100
Isn't there something like shadowkeeper out for BG1? Or does shadowkeeper only work for BG2? There should be an item list where you can add items like 'bracers of archery'.

Afaik Shadowkeeper only works with BG2.

I know there's an editor for BG1 though, I think it's called Gatekeeper iirc.

Gatekeeper.