One Console, Four Games: The Infinity Engine Cheat Commands

Between 1998 and 2000, BioWare and Black Isle shipped four RPGs on the same engine. They look different, they play differently, and underneath they carry one identical debug console — switched on the same way, opened with the same keys, driven by the same five commands.

Learn it in one game and you have learned it in all four.

Step one: switch the console on

None of these games ships with the console enabled. You turn it on by adding one line to the game's ini file, under the [Program Options] heading:

Debug Mode=1

The only thing that changes between games is which file you put it in:

• Baldur's Gate — baldur.ini
• Baldur's Gate II — baldur.ini
• Icewind Dale — icewind.ini
• Planescape: Torment — torment.ini

Edit it with the game closed, save, then start the game. If the console does not open, some copies of Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment want Cheats=1 on the line below instead — adding both does no harm.

Step two: open it

Ctrl + Space, during play. That is the same in all four.

The five commands

These are case sensitive. CLUAConsole has to be spelled with those capitals, and the command after the colon does too.

• CLUAConsole:AddGold(1000) — adds that much gold to the party.
• CLUAConsole:SetCurrentXP(50000) — sets the selected character's experience total.
• CLUAConsole:CreateItem("SW1H01") — spawns an item by its code into inventory.
• CLUAConsole:ExploreArea() — uncovers the whole of the area you are standing in.
• CLUAConsole:EnableCheatKeys() — turns on the shortcut keys below.

That last one is the one people forget, and it is the most useful of the five. Once it has been run:

• Ctrl + R — heals and revives the selected character.
• Ctrl + Y — kills whatever is under the cursor.
• Ctrl + J — moves the party to the cursor.

Ctrl + Y kills anything. It does not ask, it does not check whether the thing under your cursor is a companion or the one NPC a quest needs alive, and there is no undo. Save first. Every time.

What genuinely differs between the four

Less than you would think, and it is worth knowing exactly what:

• Item codes. SW1H01 is a long sword in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Baldur's Gate II uses its own list — our page for it uses SW2H10 as the example. A code from one game will not reliably spawn anything in another.
• Money. Planescape: Torment has no gold. AddGold still works; what it adds is copper commons, which is what that game spends.
• Experience caps. Each game clamps SetCurrentXP to its own level limit, so a large number does not break anything — it just stops where the game stops.
• Reveal. ExploreArea() uncovers the area you are in, not the world map. You run it again in the next area.

One note on which of these we have actually run

Every code on this site carries one of two labels, and this is a good place to show why that matters.

The five commands on our Icewind Dale page are marked tested — someone here entered them, in that game, and watched them work. The same commands on the Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II and Planescape: Torment pages are marked reported working, because nobody here has run them in those games yet.

They are the same engine and they will almost certainly behave identically. "Almost certainly" is still not "tested", and we are not going to print the stronger word for the weaker fact. You can see every code that has earned the stronger one on the tested list.

The pages

• Baldur's Gate cheats
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn cheats
• Icewind Dale cheats
• Planescape: Torment cheats