
Post Sections ⇅
- Buried Treasure Event Dates 2023
- Be Considerate!
- Treasure-Hunters Picks, Cave-Claws and Dowsing Gems
- Berries – 15min Cooldown
- Treasure Hunt – 15min Cooldown
- How Buried Treasure ‘Rounds’ Work
- Buried Treasure Event Rewards
- Buried Treasure Token Rewards
- Rich! Plugin
- Cave-Claw Wrangler Deed Title
- TL;DR All sorts found in the ground during the LOTRO Buried Treasure Event!
The LOTRO Buried Treasure Event is a great way to spend down time from questing, or life! A repetitive chance at unearthing tokens, cosmetics and sometimes even mounts.
I suggest you pick a couple of characters to do it at the same time so you always have something to do. But let’s follow the Dwarves to the Low-lands of Ered Luin and see what we can find!
Buried Treasure Event Dates 2023
As per the LOTRO Events Schedule, the dates for 2023 are:- From: 18th May 2023 at 10am /servertime, To: 30th May at 3am /servertime.
- From: 22nd November 2023 at 10am /servertime, To: 28th November at 3am /servertime.
Be Considerate!
This Event, like many others attracts a lot of players. It also often means logging and re-logging characters. As the base camp can get busy, please be considerate of other players:
- Please do not stand, mounted or otherwise, over the Quest-givers or Vendors. It can make interacting with them very difficult.
- If you see someone heading to a bush for Berries, don’t race them for it.
- If a player is releasing a Cave-Claw in an area of dig sites, try someplace else.
- Please dismount at the base camp. It can get crowded and anything that helps it load quicker for players is good for everyone.
- Please also consider limiting, or not using: Cosmetic Pets, Lore-Master Companions and Captain Heralds. They take up space and increase load time.
- Please don’t use involuntary Emote items around quest givers (e.g. mass fainting – e.g. Such as Essence of Toad and Swamp-Cabbage).
Treasure-Hunters Picks, Cave-Claws and Dowsing Gems
There are three main items that are your ‘treasure hunting equipment’. these are Treasure-Hunter’s Picks, Trained Cave-Claw Cages and Dowsing Gems. Here’s what they are, how you obtain them and how to use them effectively.
Treasure-Hunter’s Picks
These are your precious resource and are Single Use! Don’t use them without knowing you are putting them to good use first!
Obtaining Treasure-Hunter’s Picks
- If your character has never done the LOTRO Buried Treasure Event before, you have an intro quest that grants 10 Picks.
- After that, the best way to amass them is to speak to Quest-Giver Aldúlf. You can complete Treasure Hunt every 15 minutes. You receive 2 Picks for this quest.
- Every 15 minutes you can interact with the Cave-Claw Quest-Giver and obtain the Berries Quest, which also grants 2 Picks
- You can also find Picks when out digging for Buried Treasure.
- If you wish to, you may purchase extra Treasure-Hunter’s Picks from the LOTRO Store, but you really don’t need to
Using Your Picks
Right-click on a Dig Site to use one of your Picks. You may also add them to your quickbars and use them that way. You could also consider using the Rich! Plugin to keep all your Buried Treasure items in one separate window: Read More ↓Trained Cave-Claw Cages
Trained Cave-Claws are clever little beasts that, when released, will sniff out the best Dig Site from ones nearby so you know which Dig Sites to use your Treasure-Hunter’s Picks on. Or, importantly, which ones to avoid! They are also Single-Use.
Obtaining Trained Cave-Claw Cages
- You receive 1 × Cave-Claw by completing the Quest Berries
- Cave-Claws may be purchased for 5 ×
Buried Treasure Tokens from Sigtír. If used properly you often dig up more tokens than you spend on them!
- Extra Trained Cave-Claws may also be dug up from Dig Sites
How Do I Use Cave-Claws?
- Only use Cave-Claws early in a Round
- Releasing a Cave-Claw within a ‘circle’ of Dig-sites minimises your chance of wasting one.
- Ensure you release one when there are a good number of dig-sites nearby
- If another player is near you and appears to be releasing a Cave-Claw, I advise you head somewhere else on the map. Both the Cave-Claw Cages and Dowsing Gems uses a kneeling emote/action.
How Far Can Cave-Claws Sniff?
A huge thanks to @JThornshield for this tip on maximising the use of your Cave-Claws!

Opinion: It is far better to wait for a new round to start than release a Cave-Claw in an area with few Dig Sites remaining.
How They Detect Dig Sites
Trained Cave-Claws will tell you what size dig site it is: Small, Medium, Large or Huge. It is rarely worth using your Picks on Small Dig Sites as at best they give you a couple of tokens, maybe three at a push. Other sized dig sites are worth using your picks on, for their
Dowsing Gems
Dowsing Gems are like magic crystals. You can use a Gem on a single Dig Site and it will return a “reading”. Here’s how they equate to the size of dig site:
- Very Weak Reading: Small Dig Site
- Slight Reading: Medium Dig Site
- Strong Reading: Large Dig Site
- Very Strong Reading: Huge Dig Site
Berries – 15min Cooldown
Pick Up the Quest
Collect Buries
Get Supplies
Once you have all 5, return to the Cave-Claw. Rewards:- 2 × Treasure-Hunter’s Pick
- 1 × Trained Cave-Claw Cage
- 1 × Dowsing Gem
Treasure Hunt – 15min Cooldown
However to manage cool-downs on this and Berries, do not turn it in straight away. Complete Berries, then turn in “Treasure Hunt”.
Reward:
- 2 × Treasure-Hunter’s Picks (remember you can get 2 every 15 minutes).
How Buried Treasure ‘Rounds’ Work
During a round you can use your supplies and picks to investigate dig sites. A round lasts until someone has found a Huge Dig Site. There is a short delay while the Field re-sets. Don’t use your items or picks after you receive the on-screen text of Current Round Has Ended. You may waste your precious!
Buried Treasure Event Rewards
Unlike other LOTRO Events, you can get some rewards at the Barter Vendor, but others can be found in Treasure Caches that you unearth. as well.Treasure Cache Rewards
Inside treasure cache’s you can receive various things- Buried Treasure Tokens
- Various Cosmetic Items
- Housing Items: Treasure Chest, Dig Site
- Mounts: Cave-Claw Steed, Treasure Laden Goat and Treasure-Laden Steed.
Treasure Cache Steeds
Update: As of Update 25.4.5, Treasure Cache steeds are Bound to Account not bound on acquire so if you dig up a steed in a box (ew!) feel free to gift what you dug up to another character of yours.Misc Treasure Cache Rewards
You can acquire all sorts of other items for no tokens from Treasure Caches: Cosmetics, Decorations and Emotes for example! Note: if your current character already has an Emote they have dug up, you can send it to another one of your characters. They are Bound to Account, so share the love! Pro Tip: If you have a Rune-Keeper, the Treasure Hunter’s Satchel doubles up as Rune-Keeper’s Satchel. It is technically a “back” item but it appears attached to your belt.
Emotes
Some emotes fall from treasure caches, some from the Barter Vendor and some can be obtain via either of those methods. I’ve recorded ones I have so far. If you want to see these Emotes in action, I’ve given videos below.- Gold Panning: 100 Tokens, Medium Cache rewards
Buried Treasure Token Rewards
Mount: Harvest-Brew Goat
There are a LOT of things available from the Barter Vendor. There is, however, just one token-barter mount:↑ Guide Menu
Cosmetics
All cosmetics listed here can be acquired from Treasure Caches. So only use tokens to purchase them near/at the end of the event so you can use your tokens for other things. For more information see my Buried Treasure Cosmetics page, or click/tap into one’s you’re interested in.Pets
As Hobnanigans pets were imported into the Buried Treasure Event, there are now loads of pets to collect!Cave-Claw Pets
There are various Cave-Claw pets you can barter tokens for. Note these are cosmetic pets and do not actually help you with finding Treasure. You need the Trained Cave-Claw Cage items for that. All Cave-Claw Pets cost 500 ×
Buried Treasure Tokens:

Chicken Pets
The Dwarves have imported the chickens from Hobnanigans, and there are six different chicken pets to acquire. I don’t own all these chickens, so I have linked to LOTRO Wiki’s entries below to help you.
- White Chicken – 150 Tokens
- Red Chicken – 225 Tokens
- Dorking Chicken – 300 Tokens
- Scrapper Chicken – 375 Tokens
- Black-Foot Chicken – 450 Tokens
- Orange Wyandotte Chicken – 525 Tokens
Carrying Chickens
Each of the six Chicken Pets comes with an equivalent “Carrying Chicken”. As the name says, it’s a consumable that lets you carry a chicken for quite a long time. As a bonus, if you “consume” 50 × Carrying Chicken of the same variety, you get the permanent skill for that bird.- White Carrying Chicken: 5 Tokens Each (250 Tokens for the Deed)
- Red Carrying Chicken: 6 Tokens Each (300 Tokens for the Deed)
- Dorking Carrying Chicken: 7 Tokens Each (350 Tokens for the Deed)
- Scrapper Carrying Chicken: 8 Tokens Each (400 Tokens for the Deed)
- Black-foot Carrying Chicken: 9 Tokens Each (450 Tokens for the Deed)
- Orange Wyandotte Carrying Chicken: 10 Tokens Each (500 Tokens for the Deed)
Facepaint Stencils
Facepaint is like a temporary tattoo. There are 8 Facepaint designs and cost 5 x
Bee
Bow
Butterfly
Feather
Flower
Pipe
Star
Sword
Facepaints have a 20-second cool-down but last for 1 hour each usage.
PS: the last Bullroarer session showed these had 2-hour durations.
Facepaint Deeds
Facepaint Consumables have related deeds. If you use the same stencil 50 times, that character will get a permanent skill for that stencil! As Facepaints only cost 5 ×
Motes of Enchantment
You can barter 200 Buried Treasure Tokens for 300 ×
Decorations
Since 2020, previous Hobnanigans decorations have been made available at the Treasure Hunt. Full details, screenshots and token prices of these can be found at Déco Du Milieu .See Event Decos ↑ Guide MenuCooking Recipes

What’s an Unearthed Sack?
Good question! For a mere 500 Tokens you can get a mysterious Unearthed Sack. This is basically a “lucky dip”, so its contents are random. You can see a selection of possible items over on the Wiki. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it’s worth the price tag!Rich! Plugin
One of the LOTRO Plugins available has been designed purely to help you manage your resources at the event. The Rich plugin is very useful at this event. It
- Tracks the cooldowns of Berries and The Treasure Hunt quests
- Lets you see how many
Tokens you have
- Provides an easy toolbar enabling you to use the event consumables
- Allows you to open unearthed chests without opening your bags.
Cave-Claw Wrangler Deed Title
You can obtain the Cave-Claw Wrangler title at this event. To do so you will need to:
- Barter for single-use Domesticated Cave-Claws
- Hug one of each type (target the cave-claw and use the /hug command, or quick-slotted emote from Collections.
TL;DR All sorts found in the ground during the LOTRO Buried Treasure Event!
From tokens, to cosmetics – from homestead decoration to free mounts, the LOTRO Buried Treasure Event is full of rewards. If you’re patient! And one final tip: Play some music in the background so that the looping Dwarf-tune doesn’t send you loopy, enjoy! All my content will always be freely available. However, if you'd like to support myself and my family, please consider buying us a virtual coffee. Either way, thank you for visiting, I appreciate it!
