The journal dates in Icewind Dale are wrong - can it be modded?

Nainyt

It's clearly true, and yet I can't find anyone else talking about it.

Everyone is talking about the coming winter. Arudnel mentions it being 'halfway through Leafall' (October), yet the journal says you start the game in Mirtul (May - the same as Baldur's Gate).

I know it doesn't affect gameplay particularly, but it's immersion-breaking for me nonetheless. Is there no mod that fixes it? Or, can anyone tell me what to mod? I suppose just changing some value for the starting date could do it, but I don't know where to look.

argent77

I don't know if there are mods for that. The starting date is defined in a simple text file and can be changed very easily without the help of mods though.

You can either use Near Infinity to open the file "YEARS.2DA" and change the value after STARTTIME to 2016000. Or create the file manually in the override folder of the game with the following content:

2DA V1.0
0
                        VALUE
STARTTIME               2016000
STARTYEAR               1281
NORMALDAYMONTHFORMAT    15981
SPECIALDAYMONTHFORMAT   16001

This will change the starting date to Marpenoth 8 (October 8th). Add or subtract multiples of 7200 to/from the value to increase or decrease the date by one or more days.

You don't have to start a new game to see the changes.

Nainyt

Thank you so much! That's fantastic!