Oh I hope you got a party of spellcasters.
Some divination, scrying and arcane eye might get you that egg.
Or a dwarf with a keen eye for minerals who can spot an ole dragon eye at 30 paces!
But if he's really good at roleplaying, he'll just subtly try to steer the party clear of it.
Dwarves instinctively get the fuck away from dragon eggs.
It's not in the quarry. It's in an expected spot, but the DM will throw random stones (possibly even a magical one) at them for a few sessions.
You have entered THE VULTURE DIMENSION!!!
A ranger whose favored enemy is Dragons could probably find the egg without much effort. Not sure you want them to though if you don't want the egg scrambled.
I thought he was going to say "It looks like a rock to everyone else around you and they're constantly making interventions about your apparent obsession with overprotecting your 'pet rock' "
Fighting off the destructive investigative methods that murder hobos usually instigate.
Hmm. Detect Magic might be a good shout; dragon eggs ARE magical. Also depending on if your DM uses Draconomicon egg sizes or modern, then the size of the 'rock' might be a giveaway. (Modern eggs are always 4ft long and 3ft wide, Draconomicon eggs are 1ft long for White, Black, Copper and Brass, 2ft for Green, Blue, Silver and Bronze, and 4ft for Red and Gold). Also remember, gem dragons like to use Stone Shape to just seal their eggs inside walls, because good luck finding them in there before they hatch. The kids can break their way past some stone easily enough.
Still, props to that DM. They've created a player that's going to exhaustively examine every last bit of their dungeon, because they know the reward will be worth it. That's how you get your players engaged and invested for the long haul
What DM would deliberately sabotage their own game like that? No one actually wants to spend a session waiting for someone to examine an endless supply of rocks.
On the contrary, this is a great way to teach a player that making a Perception check when they enter each new room is a really good idea, and allows you to establish how you run said checks (how easy it is for players to give Help for skillchecks, whether or not you allow rerolls when the party has time for it, what circumstances the players are allowed to make checks under, etc)
Having highly motivated players makes it ten times easier to get players to learn the rules, learn how to handle the game's rules quickly and easily, and to get them to all become genuinely invested in the story you're telling.
Training my players to constantly make perception checks is the last thing I want to do. Nothing bogs down a game faster. If there's no point in rolling the dice, don't make them roll. If you're worried that calling for a roll will make them metagame paranoid, call for an occasional pointless roll, don't make it a constant expectation.
Ritual detect magic on at all times!
At. All. Times.
Bruh, just look for the egg shaped rock
detect magic, locate object: egg (2nd use type). Or fill the quarry with water and scoop up the floating rock
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