After 2 years and 8 months, patch 2.6 has finally been released for the Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Siege of Dragonspear and Icewind Dale.

The patch fixes a very large number of bugs, updates the games to be native 64-bit applications, and includes some new character portraits, voice sets and language localizations. Character movement and pathfinding also feels a lot smoother too.

If you're playing a modded version of the game then be sure to make a copy of your existing game folder before downloading the patch. Trying to patch a modded version of the game usually won't work, so you'll need to maintain your modded copy in a different location.

The patch is now live on GOG indeed (you need to use the GOG Galaxy for that)!

GOG will create offline installers in due time.

Patch notes can be found here: https://www.beamdog.com/news/patch-26-launches-today/

No, you don't need to use Galaxy to update. The offline installers have already been updated by GOG and were available to download when you posted.

After upgrading Baldur's Gate - EE from v2.5 to v2.6.5 the game stopped working normally. The load time to get to the main menu changed from not noticeable to more than a minute. The sound is very choppy. And the game keeps transferring me to Windows desktop, while game tries to load. I couldn't get past animated sequence right after the main menu.

Please contact our support and we'll help you out: https://beamdog.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals

Patch 2.6 for Mac was not uploaded for GOG.com.

Not the original poster, but I felt I should point out: that page is not usable. It's titled "Jira Service Management", but no content loads. Is there a way to contact Support to point out that the normal method for contacting Support is itself broken?

You would think Beamdog would update the libraries used along with all the other changes (for the Linux versions). All EEs (own both BGs, PST and IWD) still use libssl.so.1.0.0 but many distros have moved on to other versions. There is a fix (copy the needed libraries into your /game folder) but that no longer seems to work with ver2.6.

One change in the patch notes that I *really* don't like: Raise Dead and Resurrection can only be cast on dead characters. The problem with this change is that it breaks what I consider to be valid strategies, and if applied there it hurts the usefulness of Mass Raise Dead, which is already an ability that players don't seem to find useful. Also, it means that Clerics no longer have a 7th level healing spell that works on living characters (while Druids still do, for some reason, if I remember correctly about Regeneration).

that is the Beamdog support forum and you need to log in in order to use it which makes it worthless for most Gog customers

as someone that owns \ plays both Beamdog and Gog copies of the game I can confirm the patch installs correct at my end on Windows 10... its too early to say what works or is busted by this patch yet but I'm not getting any issue booting the game

@wondererdragon are you using a 32bit system perhaps?

Will there be an update for 32-bit users, or will they have to remain with 2.5? (the 32-bit version 2.5 is now listed in the Extras section of Offline Downloads).

I was wondering if Beamdog could also update the changelog for patch 2.6?

I would be nice to have the changelog here GOG and not only on Steam:

Patch Highlights
Upgrade to 64-Bit | A much needed upgrade for modern machines— this improves system compatibility
7 New Character Voice Sets | New player voice sets, including two from the legendary Mark Meer reprising his roles as Alveus Malcanter and Baeloth Barrityl
11 New Character Portraits | New character portraits to customize your hero’s look
Hundreds of Bug Fixes | Includes scores of fixes to spells and hero abilities
Improved Pathfinding | Smoother party movement and navigation
New Localizations |
Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition | Added French text localization (beta)
Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear | Added French (beta), Italian, German, Ukrainian and Polish text localizations
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition | Added Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified) text localizations

I noticed a curious omission from the changelog: whether savegames are compatible between v2.5 and v2.6. I see exactly two hits for the word "save" and both talk about fixes in how saves are handled, but both read like that particular thing was always a bug, and will now always work. I am curious about, if someone has a save from partway through one game, can they install the new version, and Continue their existing game in it, retaining location, characters, quest completions, etc., or do they need to start over? For simplicity, assume no mods before or after.

> this improves system compatibility

This is an interesting one, since it's actually exactly backward. Switching to offer only 64-bit binaries means that anyone playing on a Windows x86 (not Windows x64) system cannot run the new version at all. Perhaps Win32 has truly died out, but for several years after 64-bit became available, many people continued to use Win32 on their 64-bit capable hardware because they needed some software, usually a driver, that was only usable on Win32. I wouldn't be surprised if this led at least some non-technical users to just always pick Win32 because "Everything works."

The incompatibility with Win32 is probably why GOG already has an "Extra" that is labeled as the last 32-bit build.

Still not available. Any mods on this forum to update us on when it will be posted?

saves do not work... at least saves from Sod don't
I have a party of 6 currently finishing off Sod on my laptop without any mods... when I transferred this save to my desktop system which has just been upgraded they load but all the spell scripts are busted so start a new game [honestly thats always been the standard anyway] when you install the patch