Just started playing Baldur's Gate, and only recently found out about the blasted pixel hunts to find certain items in the overworld. Are there any clues at all leading to these, or should I just keep a cheat sheet on standby?

That depends on which version of the game you are playing, and/or which engine (BGT/TuTu for BG1). The BG2 engine allows you to hold the TAB key to highlight interactive elements. There are very few actual 'pixel hunts', though. Most interactive elements are very easily seen. Only the easter-egg-like instances require any semblance of searching, and you will easily remember them when/if you get them.

There are absolutely no clues.

Whatever version the GOG version uses, that is what I am using. I seriously hope you are right; after learning that I had missed out on a diamond and a ring of protection that could only be located by panning my mouse across each pixel, I almost pulled my hair out upon realizing that this might be a trend later on. Well, that certainly makes my dilemma a whole hell of a lot easier; if a game is going to cheat like this, then I have no qualms about cheating in return. I know that RPGs back in the day tended to be designed to sell as many walkthroughs as possible, but this is just ridiculous.

You'd be using the base BG engine, then, so no fancy tab key highlighting for you. You can easily look up the exact locations using DSimpson's guide on GameFaqs, though.

It depends on how you view the situation. There is not one single item you HAVE to pixel find to finish the game. All these items are bonuses, rewards for players willing to put in the extra effort. If the game includes a hidden ring of godmode, does that mean all gamers deserve to have it, simply because it exists?

There were several items I never found in my very first play over a decade ago, including that diamond. In every game since I have never taken these items, even though I now know where they are. If you feel that overpowered, overgenerous rewards are perfectly acceptable for low-level characters by any means necessary, then perhaps the console might be helpful to give you more of what you want.

Firstly, the only "effort" involved here is pixel hunting. Even when I knew where the stuff was, it took me forever to find it. There is no deduction, puzzle solving, or anything else that leads to discovery except for either looking it up online or otherwise cheating.

Secondly, I take umbrage at your insinuations regarding my attitude toward the hidden nature of these items. If the game wants to stick items in an out of the way part of a dungeon, terrific; I have hunted elusive stuff in games since Wolfenstein 3D and loved it. If the game wants to dump an item in the middle of the woods, excellent; again, with the elusive hunting, especially in games that take place largely outdoors such as STALKER (and, to a lesser extent, the Half Life series) where caches with ungodly amazing stuff inside are readily visible only once you are on top of them and are virtually invisible beforehand. I love scouring the map in a grid search, trying to find anything that will help me get a leg up; but when discovering such items involves me literally unable to find anything after a *very* thorough search because I missed the 2X2 square of pixels that would have told me something was there, I call bullshit. Challenge is one thing, and rest assured, I know it intimately, and I relish each game that tests my mettle while at the same time requiring skills other than cheating in order to locate the gear I need to survive and thrive in a universe that wants me dead and incinerated (hell, I almost squee with joy whenever I find a game that can kill me). I delighted in scouring environments in the Fallout series for gear that would help me on my adventure. Note the part where those games made that stuff visible for those who cared to keep an eye out for it, and even then, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for you to miss something; here, it's virtually guaranteed you will fail to find anything unless you cheat.

Thirdly, these items are not akin to a ring of god mode; I concur, such an item is so grossly overpowered that it is clearly meant to be an easter egg. The items in question, however, are valuables for sale and rings that improve AC (among other things, doubtlessly), items that a player is expected to find and make use of in order to succeed (especially in a game such as D&D which is largely, albeit not entirely, based on luck, thereby necessitating gathering every such item possible); to put this in perspective, it's akin to System Shock 2 hiding Cybernetic modules behind a hidden wall that will only retract upon pressing an invisible button that measures 2X2 pixels (or, to take a leaf out of not so current events that are somewhat related, Doom 3 placing guns, ammo, and health in lockers whose combinations can only be guessed by agonizingly slow brute force or by going online to a site that won't always be around for the combination).

Finally, let us admit this kind of practice for what it really is; a mercenary exercise in selling game guides in an era before the internet was the popular mode of finding secrets like this. There is no strategy involved in finding these items, unless you are willing to draw your cursor painstakingly over each pixel in each map (I kind of lost count after a while, but rest assure, that's a lot) and quadruple checking on the off chance that you accidentally skipped one (which is virtually guaranteed). If not wanting to play along with this kind of nonsense makes me stupid, then call me Retard McSpackypants, but I expect difficulty in locating supplies in a game to flow from exercising skills that are developed during the natural course of the game, not by playing along with some outdated moneygrabbing scheme or by resorting to pixel hunting that no sane person in their right mind would ever do (yes, not even in Wolfenstein 3D; at least there, the hotspot was larger than a flea's genitalia).

Then I apologize if you felt slighted. I will admit a disdain on my part for gamers who whine because they can't have uber powerful items at the start of a game, crow about how they beat the end boss in 2.4 seconds after cheating in countless ways, and then complain about what a shitty game it was since it was so easy. Maybe the devs should do better next time? I don't know anything about you but your comment seemed to suggest such a player, so I'm sorry if my tone was inappropriate. I would very much love to hear you squee. : ) See, this was my point. I do not believe they WERE all meant to be found, nor were they put there to sell strategy guides. They were very valuable rewards for players who wanted to put in the time to scour an area. I do not believe it was felt that the typical player would find all, or even any of them.

IIRC there are only two diamonds in the game. One hidden, and one the party may or may not get near the end of the game, depending on player actions.

There are two rings of wizardry in the game. One hidden, and one the party may or may not get near the end of the game, depending on player actions.

There are two powerful suits of plate (AC 1). One hidden, and one the players must defeat a powerful enemy and then spend a ton of gold to get.

There is also a hidden wand and a ring +1. These are weaker, but more easily found.

I see these items as training wheels for players who, unable to proceed in the game, start looking for hidden loot to help them continue. There is no logical reason powerful gear is strewn about the land for 1st level folks to find except as candy and assistance. I'd like to mention also that there are a few mods out there that replace or eliminate these items since many other gamers feel them inappropriate. I don't know how old you are but you may be surprised at what gamers back in the day would do. Many today may think an automap feature is essential yet back in the early days of gaming, not only were there no automaps, but that was intentional. People enjoyed mapping dungeons on their own, and even complained when games started to offer automaps. Ask a gamer about that today though and they can't believe that people actually enjoyed mapping themselves.

Pixel hunting is a pain by modern standards, but wasn't so back then. People enjoyed getting really into a game, and spending lots of time on minor or silly things, things we have no patience for today. I'm not saying you have to do it, since the whole point of games is to have fun, but I disagree that these goodies were intended to all be found.

I am old enough to be well acquainted with pixel hunting. I know very well that it was a thing in older games, and, as I may have mentioned, I have done it in a few games. My expectations for the source of difficulty do not spring from a history and tradition of game design choices, but by developing a philosophy of gaming. Firstly, gaming should be fun. Taking the time to map out a dungeon and testing the walls for secret passages captures the sense of being trapped in a dangerous place and being forced to rely on my wits to escape, something that is fun. Going off the beaten path in search treasure likely to be guarded by monsters, environmental hazards, or simply the fog of darkness creates the same sensation as going off on a random adventure without any clue what might happen, and is also fun. Clicking on each individual pixel in a game in order to locate an item is not fun, as it does nothing to immerse me in the game or create any sensation that could be tied to anything other than brain wracking metagaming tedium. If I wanted to achieve boredom of this kind, I might download a custom designed spreadsheet with each cell reduced to 2X2 pixels in size and taking a shot every time I find a cell that tells me I found gold, but I would not play a game.

Secondly, a game should only test skills that are relevant to progression in the game; this is why in games where the acquisition of equipment is needed to survive, gear is either in the open or accessible only by carefully searching for hidden passages (ex: Wolfenstein 3D, which told the player about the existence of and methods of finding hidden passages), solving puzzles (from Doom to Legend of Grimrock), or sneaking/fighting one's way past a formidable foe (ex: Thief, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex). At no point during the regular course of a game is a player expected to engage in a pixel hunt in order to proceed through the game, let alone find additional gear that will help them; to the extent that games today require this, it is derided as bad game design, as it arbitrarily asks the player to utilize skills that bear no relation to their skill at the game. Where the impediment only blocks the acquisition of additional standard gear, I go one further and hold that this is bad design as the game is now testing skills that are irrelevant to the actual game itself, as if a test on Algebra included questions about history; one need not get all of the questions right in order to pass, much as one need not get all the gear in a game in order to win, but at no point is the test-taker prepared to answer questions such as these, therefore giving them a crippling disadvantage that all but ensures they will not get that question right, removing any reasonable possibility of success for those questions. Where the answering the questions correctly in the hypothetical test is something that is not strictly speaking required but is generally acknowledged to be something that a test-taker should have a reasonable opportunity to do (provided that they have studied), so to should a player be able to find items of the kind which they generally make use of in order to survive and thrive in a game (again, provided that they have developed the relevant skills; here, pixel hunting is a skill that is relevant to no other part of the game).

I know very well that pixel hunting was a thing back then. I will also go one step further and state that for the reasons I have stated above, games that include pixel hunts, both old and new, are poorly designed in that regard. The only reason they got a free pass back then was because the gaming community simply didn't realize that this was bad game design, much as it initially insisted that adventure games that required you to randomly throw a bridle onto a snake in order to create a winged horse made total sense. Now that we have seen improvements in game design, the only thing that results in anyone defending these design choices is not the ignorance of the community, but nostalgia goggles and misplaced relativism; we may recognize that a history and tradition exists of designing games a certain way back then, but nothing is served by using that history and tradition to deny that those features do not hold up and were probably never good design choices to begin with.

Well its not that i dislike automapping, but my problem is i dont know how to draw maps expacily games like ishar, ultima where it is a world where you play in.

There is an item under a tree, on the grounds just in front of the FAI.

One of the characters in the FAI tells you that "An old mage came to the FAI, questioning everybody, and digging up Bentley's shrubs in front of the inn", or something like that.

I do not know if there are any clues for the other items (like the one in Nashkel); if there are, I never encountered them.

The suicide on the first Ch 1 map tells you of the diamond.
Somebody tells you of the general location of a prize on the FAI map.
You're told of a prize on the Nashkel Mines map
I think you're told of a prize on the Nashkel map.
I can think of at least two other prizes, but don't remember if there were hints for them.