Man, finding this little Black Diamond item in BG3 drove me absolutely crazy for a bit there. It’s one of those things that you know is around, but the guides online are all over the place, and half the videos just show some dude jumping around for five minutes before finally clicking the right spot. I’m writing this down so the next guy doesn’t have to waste an entire Saturday like I did.

The Initial Hunt: Clearing Out the Wrong Guys

You start searching for this thing, and what do you do? You hit up the places that just feel right. I spent hours clearing out the Sahuagin nest—nothing. Then I figured it had to be a drop from some big heavy-hitter boss, maybe the one that was giving me trouble in the Grymforge area. No luck. I actually re-cleared that entire zone twice. Twice! That’s how desperate I was getting. I was running a build that was cash-poor, and I needed the diamond for a specific trade, or honestly, just the gold. I was constantly running low on supplies, constantly short on arrows, and my main character kept failing persuasion checks because I was relying on junk scrolls.

I swear, the official documentation for this stuff is like the company manual at my old job—just a stack of contradictions. One guy says it’s a random drop in Act 2, another swears it’s only available if you side with a specific faction. It’s a total mess, an absolute nightmare of conflicting information.

The Real Deal: Pinpointing the Location

After wading through the garbage online, I decided to just put my head down and systematically search the areas I knew were high-tier loot zones but often overlooked. I went back to the Underdark. Not the main pathways, but the absolute corners.

Here’s the simple path, the one that worked:

• Get yourself to the Selunite Outpost in the Underdark.
• Head North/Northeast from the fast-travel point, aiming for the area near the Spectator Beholder encounter, but before you engage it.
• There’s a small, slightly hidden, destroyed archway leading into a cramped stone corridor. It looks like nothing, just background junk.
• This is the key: Follow that tiny path. You need to use a character with high Perception, or just spam the highlight button.
• What you are looking for is a small, easy-to-miss, ornate Gilded Chest tucked behind some debris or a broken column.
• And boom. There it was. The Black Diamond. Took me less than ten minutes to find once I stopped listening to the internet clowns and started just looking behind the scenery.

The Reason Why I Went Full Detective Mode

Now, you might be asking: Why in the hell did this mature, stable guy spend over four hours getting absolutely furious about one single item in a video game? Shouldn’t I be doing laundry or something?

Well, this is where the real story starts. It’s the same reason I get obsessed with finding a stupid workaround for a bug at work instead of just reporting it. It was about pride, and more importantly, it was about proving my idiot friend, Mike, wrong.

I had just started this new playthrough—a really tough, self-imposed challenge run. Mike, who played the game once through, decided he was suddenly an expert. We were on a voice call, and I was explaining my gold shortage, how I needed this exact Black Diamond for a key transaction I was trying to pull off to save my run from total collapse. I mentioned I couldn’t find it easily.

Mike just laughed. Not a friendly laugh. A full-on, condescending, wheezing laugh. He said, and I quote, “Dude, if you can’t find the Black Diamond, you should probably just uninstall the game. It’s the easiest item to spot in Act 1. You must be blind.”

That sentence flipped a switch. This wasn’t about the game anymore. This was a direct personal insult to my intelligence, wrapped up in a gaming context. I told him I’d find it, document the location, and rub it in his face. He bet me a week’s worth of coffee that I’d fail and eventually have to just buy it from a random vendor in the city like a commoner.

So, I hung up on him. I didn’t even say goodbye. I pulled up my notes and started treating the game like a job. I was focused. I cleared zones, checked every corner, and reloaded saves just to try different dialogue paths that might yield a clue. I skipped dinner. I ignored my phone. This little virtual gem became my personal white whale.

When I finally found that Gilded Chest, I didn’t even pick up the diamond first. I took a screenshot, zoomed in hard, and sent it straight to Mike’s phone with the simple caption: “Enjoy your week of Starbucks, loser.” I did eventually get the diamond, complete the transaction, and save my run—but the real win wasn’t the loot, it was sticking it to Mike. He hasn’t mentioned the diamond since, but he’s been buying the coffee. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes you gotta get obsessed with a tiny, stupid thing just to prove a point.