"There are 17,412 boxes in Baldur's Gate 3," reports Newbie Indie Game dev, a dedicated RPG fan who dug through Larian's code to find and tabulate every crate, chest, and barrel.
Sure, you could take that information and close out this window and just keep it in your back pocket for trivia night, but for me, the story of tracking down and finding every box in Baldur's Gate 3 is more interesting than the number itself. Yes, that is a lot of boxes, but how did Newbie arrive at that number with any degree of confidence?
Well, it started with a seemingly genuine fascination with just how many boxes are in Baldur's Gate 3. It's one of those things I subconsciously noticed but never took a moment to consider that, yeah, I guess it is kind of a weird amount of boxes.
"I couldn't stop thinking about it," says Newbie. "From a technical perspective, it's kind of wild. Who placed all those boxes? How did they fill them with loot. And more importantly, for some reason, exactly how many are there?"
Well, first Newbie had to decide what defines a box, and they stuck with this definition: "A container for objects, usually rectangular, possibly with a lid, and typically made from materials like wood, cardboard, or metal."
Then, Newbie considered the fact that, because there are so many different ways to play through Baldur's Gate 3 and impact the map and player route, there are boxes in the game that will never be seen or interacted with by every player. For their research, Newbie considered "every possible version of the game world. If a player could encounter a box under some set of conditions," it was counted.
Then there were a few gray areas to consider. One example is the boxes you find in companions' campsites that look identical. Newbie counted those as different boxes because they personally view the campsites as containing each companion's personal belongings, meaning in their view, they're separate objects. There are some map locations that are visually identical to one another, and for the ones with boxes, Newbie decided to scrap those duplicate boxes from the count.
With the rules of the count set in stone, the real work began. There's no way Newbie could just walk through the map and hand count every box, so instead it was all about "unpacking the game's archives and converting the binary files inside into something I could inspect," according to Newbie.
You might think at this point in the process Newbie could just CTRL+F the code and type in "box," but no, it's not that simple. Apparently there are "many different names for boxes in the game, but most of them share a few common keywords." Sorting through everything that could possibly be construed as a crate, chest, or barrel, Newbie eventually found that there are 438 "distinct box templates" making up the more than 17,000 individual boxes in the game.
Newbie said they "reviewed dozens of 3D models to fine-tune how the script assigns each keyword," and eventually narrowed down the field to 438 "distinct box templates" in the game. Not all of them are visually distinct, but in cases where they're visually identical, they have different names.
"Once all the filters were in place, I did the final math by combining the data," said Newbie. "Which templates qualify as boxes? How many instances of each appear in the world? How many visual boxes each template represents? Which levels are actually playable? And how many times each level and its boxes should be counted. That gave me the final total."
Newbie even broke down the percentages of how common each type of box is in the world, with your classic crate-like box representing 72% of boxdom, chests making up just 7%, and barrels being 21% of all Baldur's Gate 3 boxes.
Is there any application where this information might be useful? I can't think of a single damn one, I regret to report, but you have to respect Newbie's dedication to making the data available while also documenting their methodology and process. One thing's for sure, I'll never again play Baldur's Gate 3 without appreciating just how many damn boxes are in it.
