In a perfect world you’d crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and claim sweet loot off their corpses - a simple and righteous transfer of wealth and power, punctuating your improvement as an adventurer. Alas, sometimes treasure is stowed and worse, hidden, forcing you to seek out and recover it by more mundane means. A popular method of keeping you from the loot that rightfully belongs to you is by burying it, in which case you’ll need to bring the proper tool… namely, a shovel. This page will cover how to find a shovel in Baldur’s Gate and how to find and recover buried treasure.
(1 of 2) You can pry a shovel from Gimblebock’s cold, dead hands,
You can pry a shovel from Gimblebock’s cold, dead hands, (left), or you can buy one from Arron over at the druid grove. (right)
Shovel Locations in Baldur’s Gate 3¶
As you explore you may find your characters automatically performing Survival checks, and while there’s a number of reasons these could be triggering, one of them is the presence of buried treasure. There’s rarely anything amazing hidden in these underground chests, but just because every mound of suspicious dirt isn’t hiding a vorpal holy avenger of instant BBEG slaying +6 doesn’t mean it’s not worth scooping up. To do this, however, you’ll need a shovel - you’re adventurers, not moles!
Fortunately, there are a few places to get shovels. Gimblebock, one of the ne’er-do-wells found at the ruins along the eastern edge of the first wilderness area (southeast of the druid grove) possesses one, but he won’t relinquish it without a fight. Alternatively you can just head to the aforementioned druid grove at the northeastern edge of the first wilderness area, passing through the crashed 
Nautiloid, defeating some Intellect Devourers, recruiting Astarion, [
Gale] and possibly Lae’zel as you go before helping the druids defeat the goblins outside their gates.
It’s a fair amount of work, but you’ll need to do it to gather companions and advance the main questline. Once inside the druid grove, witness a confrontation between Aradin and Zevlor, then continue north to find a merchant named Arron. He’ll sell you a shovel for a measly 2 gold coins.
(1 of 2) When you get near buried treasure, your party will perform Survival checks to identify the disturbed earth,
When you get near buried treasure, your party will perform Survival checks to identify the disturbed earth, (left), if they succeed, you can dig up the buried treasure with your shovel. (right)
How to Use a Shovel to Find Buried Treasure in Baldur’s Gate 3¶
Once you have a shovel the process of claiming buried treasure is mostly automatic. As you explore, you may trigger Survival checks, and if these pass, a mound of disturbed earth will appear. As long as somebody has a shovel in their inventory, click on the mound and you’ll dig it up, revealing a chest. It’s important to save often, as if you fail with all your Survival checks you may not be able to get at the hidden treasure, at least in the short term. You could swap in new characters from camp, run over to the spot where the checks happened, and try again, but save scumming is a somewhat less disruptive option.
Once you’re armed with a shovel and ready to pry Faerun’s treasure from the clutches of greedy earthworms, check out these related pages:
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