The Counting House is a location in the Lower City of Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s a massive bank where all of the wealthy Baldurians store their money, but the Counting House is also home to a very difficult puzzle.
The bank is the site of a plot to ambush the Stone Lord, a criminal kingpin who has been making trouble for Nine-Fingers Keene and the Guildhall. Through one way or another, you learn that the ambush is happening soon, and you need to reach the area as quickly as possible if you want to intervene. This goes double for players who want to recruit Minsc into their party.
Before you can get to the ambush and find Minsc, though, you will need to get past the vault puzzle in the Counting House. Find out how to do that in my Baldur’s Gate 3 guide below.
Solving the Counting House vault puzzle in Baldur’s Gate 3
The puzzle is in the area just after you pass all of the doors that hold different bank vaults in them. There is a plaque in front of the puzzle that says you have to talk with the head banker to retrieve the current codes. However, you don’t have time for that, so you can just copy what I did to get inside the vault.
Related: Baldur’s Gate 3: How to save Vanra and kill Auntie Ethel in BG3
The way the puzzle works is you need to step on the right tile in the correct order to light up each of the four lightning bottles. If you mess up even once, the entire puzzle gets reset. The way I did this was to have one individual character step on a tile one after the other. To do this, just separate your entire party so they move independently.
Below, you can see an image of the correct tiles to stand on to complete the puzzle as well as which tiles to step on first.
- Step on the top-left tile first
- Move to the top-right tile second
- Go to the middle tile third
- Finally, step on the right-most tile in the second row, which should be in between the middle and top-right tile
If you’ve done this correctly, all four lightning bottles will light up, and the vault will open. You have now completed the Counting House puzzle in BG3 and can move on to find out what’s happening with Minsc.
