Sometimes, the most mundane things are the most magical. Here’s how to find the Mundane Chest in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Chest of the Mundane Location in Baldur’s Gate 3
The Chest of the Mundane can be found on the first-floor balcony of the Arcane Tower. More precisely, at the coordinates X:37, Y:265.
If you’ve found your way into the Underdark, there’s a very good chance you’ve encountered the well-guarded Arcane Tower. This magical fortress has turrets out of the wazoo. And yet breaking through its defenses is well worth your time.
To get to this first-floor balcony, you’re going to have to sneak past the magic turrets guarding the Arcane Tower, which can’t be destroyed by normal means. Fortunately, there are quite a few ways to do this.
I opted to ungroup my characters and have only one of them sneak in. I made this even easier for myself by using the spell Invisibility to avoid detection. If you don’t have Invisibility or Misty Step to help you navigate around the turrets, you can also enter turn-based mode and crouch. By staying aware of the red zones, you can dash to cover and avoid any fire from the Magic Turrets.
Once you’re at the Arcane Tower, you’ll need to find your way in. Fortunately, you don’t have to burst through the front door. There’s a perfectly good window open to the left you can jump through.
Unfortunately, the first floor also has its fair share of turrets. Continue avoiding them however you like, then find the balcony door to your right. On this balcony, you’ll find the Mundane Chest.
When you approach the Mundane Chest, you’ll get a Perception check. Pass it, and you’ll note that it’s absolutely steeped in magic. And while it isn’t apparent when you open it up (it looks like it’s filled with absolute rubbish), the magic happens when you loot it.
Everything you take from the Mundane Chest will reveal its true form in your inventory. The real contents of the Mundane Chest are a Scroll of Protection from Evil and Good, Mystra’s Grace boots, Scroll of Mage Armour, a Gold Ingot, and a Hearthlight Bomb.
How to Use the Mundane Chest Like a Bag of Holding
UPDATE: BG3 has since been patched and the Mundane Chest no longer functions like a Bag of Holding. You can still place items into the chest, but the Mundane Chest will no longer reduce the weight of items placed in them. It also seems that you can no longer remove the chest from the Arcane Tower and carry it around with you. As such, the Mundane Chest doesn’t have much utility anymore other than being a novel storage item you can loot.
Before Patch 1, the Mundane Chest also offered one other utility: it reduced the weight of everything in it to a weight of .05. And if you were hoarding every item you came across, this was exceptionally useful. But note there was a weight limit. I hit it after shoving 125 items into it, at which point it stopped reducing the weight of the items inside.
Once you’ve reached that point, it was a good idea to find a merchant. Or start using your other characters as loot mules. Sorry, Lae’zel!
To use the Chest of the Mundane, you just needed to pick up the Mundane Chest, which weighed 20kg at the time, and add it to your inventory. From there, you needed to select the items in your inventory that you wanted to store and drag them over the chest. You could fit a seemingly infinite amount of items within.
How to Find the Underdark and the Arcane Tower
While all of the above might be very useful, if you haven’t found your way to the Underdark or the Arcane Tower you can’t really benefit from the Mundane Chest. Fortunately, there is no shortage of ways to get into the Underdark.
- In the Blighted Village, jump down the Whispering Depths chasm beside the Matriarch Phase Spider.
- In the Goblin Camp, sneak into the Defiled Temple.
- In Waukeen’s Rest, find the Zhentarim Hideout and take the lift down.
- In the RIverside Teahouse, find Auntie Ethel’s teleporter in her basement.
Once you’re in the Underdark, you’ll need to follow the southernmost path to reach the Arcane Tower.
It’s quite the trek, but it’s well worth it to find what was once the only Bag of Holding in Baldur’s Gate 3, masquerading as the Chest of the Mundane.
