I bought a magazine that had NWN patches on it, yet when I unzip the patch it only contains these files:
-2dasource.zip (which contains a few .2da files)
-iniupdate.txt
-nwn_pc_english_from1106710_to1266743.rtp
-NWNv126.txt
-patch.txt

shouldn't there be an exe or something to install it all or am I supposed to know what to do with everything ?

No that's for manual installation. The recommended and *easiest* way to patch is to simply click the 'Update' button when you first startup...you know, the black bar that has 'Play' on it.

I tried to update through the game and kept getting errors telling me that patch was not downloaded correctly. Any ideas? Has anyone else experienced this?

If you press the update button while connected to the internet, NWN will download a program telling it whether or not you have the latest update. If you do, you're done. If you don't, it'll let you know and you just hit the update button again if it doesn't download the latest patch right away.
It should download correctly, if it doesn't and doens't at a later time, I'd assume the problem lay somewhere with your own internet connection. I'm not entirely sure though, nor do I have any idea what you should do to fix that.

well for a start its a 20mb download, so if i can get it off a CD I will. (we dont all have broadband, and some that do have download limits)

more importantly I worked out how to do it, so I thought I would post it incase anyone else has this problem.

1. went to nwn homepage and clicked the patch links -> manual update link.
2. found out it's meant to be left in zip format.
3. worked out the correct naming system from the download links on that page.
4. followed the instructions listed there:
---a) put correctly named zip file in NWN base folder
---b) click on auto-update button
---c) the updater will find the patch and install it automatically, the same way it would do it normally, except the file is already downloaded.

and tada! game successfully patched

But won't SoU make obsolete the NWN patches anyway? So why bother patching now?

what is SoU ???

1. I dont even know what it is
2. the patches came on a magazine CD, so why not ?
3. why now ? cause I just got the game

SOU = Shadows of Undrentide the upcoming expansion to this game.

Well because from now until the time that game is released (can you say millenium?) you won't be able to enter any mods online as most servers update immediately.