Brainstorming - places to hide items

[Etinarg]

Assuming, you are the evil overlord who just stole some valuable items from the humans. Now you want to hide them, and watch adventurers struggling to retrieve the items.

Where would you put the items?

Dungeons are a classic choice. Towers, pyramids ... well, I'm looking for ideas, so just let me know

[reaver]

Depends on the scale of your hinding location?

Some smaller-scale examples:

Inside an empty tree trunk
Under a rock
In a crevice on a mountain
In the cave behind the waterfall
Buried in a grave
Feed it to your pet-dragon

Larger scale:

In the swamp
In the forest
In the {your_landscape_feature}

[Etinarg]

For my latest project I'll need bigger locations - actually themes for the maps. But the smaller scale ideas are fine as well

Feed it to your pet-dragon

A very interesting choice. But would't waiting be enough for an adventurer to "get" the item easily? If they have access to the pet dragon litter box

[tuturto]

Build a labyrinth/continent/world around it.

[Rickton]

In the ruins of an ancient city.
On a faraway island.
Underwater.
In a cave.
In a temple that's used by a murderous cult.
In a village of "evil" creatures.
In the sewer.
In an underground bunker.
In an enchanted forest.
In a non-enchanted, but still incredibly deadly, jungle.
On a ship (sea or air) that continuously moves across the world, never stopping to touch land for more than an hour to refuel and pick up supplies for its crew.
In a heavily-guarded museum filled with other things you've stolen.
In your vault at the Evil Overlord Bank.
Out in the open, surrounded by traps.
Under your hat.

And of course, you can combine many of the above for extra fun.

[Etinarg]

Underwater.

Thanks for the ideas! The "underwater" suggestion made me think about the moon (don't know why). It seems the moon seldom is used in magic tales and games.

Edit: I also like the museum idea. Juts had to imagine a big room filled whith dozens or more replicas of the item, and the real item within. Now that should be a challenge for the player - either carry all items back until they find the right one, oire have some magic means to indentify the right one - to acquire the "magic means" of course can be part of a quest of its own again.

[Endorya]

In a alien world or in an exotic portion of land which relies on a criteria to enter, like having a particular object in your inventory or maybe it's just a word that requires being said out loud in order to open a portal but in order to learn this word the player needs to uncover... mmm... I'll stop here as I just had an idea for my own project . Anyway, this world / land could be different from everything else. Maybe a restless place like the land of the dead? You could deny the player's resting ability in this area forcing him to resort on heavy tactics and superior gear in order to succeed. Just a thought, who knows...