Best to aid next person: ignore treasure chests of low lock level? Or consume & trigger respawn?

soelslaev · January 12

Here is why I ask this question. One basic activity I like to do is to just wander around killing and gathering. I do not need treasure chests in half the zones.

If I find a treasure chest of low lock difficulty, should I open it and gather the contents in order to trigger a respawn later with maybe a high lock difficulty?

Or should I leave it alone? Because maybe treasure chests that are left alone a long time magically go up in lock difficulty? Or some other reason to leave Simple and Intermediate treasure chests alone?

What action is best if my goal is the help whoever may wander along next?

El_Borracho · January 12

Loot it. They usually only contain overland items, so you're not really hurting someone by taking it. Some might be tied to a lead, like the ones in Alik'r. But you are neither hurting nor helping another player by ignoring them. The chances of someone following your exact footsteps aren't that high.

As for quality changing with respawns, I have no idea. The few times I have looted a chest, then jumped into a dungeon or trial, only to come back to the same place, the quality of the chest did not change. For example, the master chest that was there the first time respawned as a master when I returned.

LootAllTheStuff · January 12

El_Borracho wrote: »

Loot it. They usually only contain overland items, so you're not really hurting someone by taking it. Some might be tied to a lead, like the ones in Alik'r. But you are neither hurting nor helping another player by ignoring them. The chances of someone following your exact footsteps aren't that high.

As for quality changing with respawns, I have no idea. The few times I have looted a chest, then jumped into a dungeon or trial, only to come back to the same place, the quality of the chest did not change. For example, the master chest that was there the first time respawned as a master when I returned.

I once sat at one of the Geyser spots in Summerset for about an hour (don't ask). There was a chest, so I looted it every time it re-spawned. It did indeed change level several times in that process. Hard to tell from my limited observations, but I'd hazard a guess that simple locks are weighted more heavily, with progressively lower weightings as you go up in difficulty.

El_Borracho · January 13

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Loot it. They usually only contain overland items, so you're not really hurting someone by taking it. Some might be tied to a lead, like the ones in Alik'r. But you are neither hurting nor helping another player by ignoring them. The chances of someone following your exact footsteps aren't that high.

As for quality changing with respawns, I have no idea. The few times I have looted a chest, then jumped into a dungeon or trial, only to come back to the same place, the quality of the chest did not change. For example, the master chest that was there the first time respawned as a master when I returned.

I once sat at one of the Geyser spots in Summerset for about an hour (don't ask). There was a chest, so I looted it every time it re-spawned. It did indeed change level several times in that process. Hard to tell from my limited observations, but I'd hazard a guess that simple locks are weighted more heavily, with progressively lower weightings as you go up in difficulty.

Interesting. That may be the case. I remember trying to get a lead from chests in Coldharbor and the masters always stayed master, maybe that is the difference

Either way, the difference between a master chest and intermediate is the master will have 2 overland items and maybe some other goodies versus the intermediate having one overland item and less goodies. I don't really think that would harm or help someone outside of zones where there are leads in overland chests (versus treasure map chests)

LootAllTheStuff · January 13

I don't think the spot I was at ever coughed up a master while I was there, so they could be handled differently. It could also be a location thing - Coldharbour has some spots which are "overland" but also "quest stage boss", so maybe those have a set level?

allochthons · January 13

Overland chests, at least, can change level at respawn. I was at a Deshaan WB farming Night Mother's Embrace on a low toon for 2 hours once, and opened the nearby chest every time it spawned. It usually spawned as Simple, obviously, but it was all the other levels at lest once, including Master. I got the NME dagger from it.

My take is to loot it. Maybe leave a Master chest for others if you want.

soelslaev · January 14

allochthons wrote: »

My take is to loot it. Maybe leave a Master chest for others if you want.

Thanks. This is what I'll do.

Recent · January 16

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Loot it. They usually only contain overland items, so

I once sat at one of the Geyser spots in Summerset for about an hour (don't ask). There was a chest, so I looted it every time it re-spawned. It did indeed change level several times in that process. Hard to tell from my limited observations, but I'd hazard a guess that simple locks are weighted more heavily, with progressively lower weightings as you go up in difficulty.

I have to ask why you sat at a geyser in summerset for an hour? 😁

LootAllTheStuff · January 16

Recent wrote: »

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Loot it. They usually only contain overland items, so

I once sat at one of the Geyser spots in Summerset for about an hour (don't ask). There was a chest, so I looted it every time it re-spawned. It did indeed change level several times in that process. Hard to tell from my limited observations, but I'd hazard a guess that simple locks are weighted more heavily, with progressively lower weightings as you go up in difficulty.

I have to ask why you sat at a geyser in summerset for an hour? 😁

You can ask if you really must!

whitecrow · January 17

I force every lock so I don't think I even notice the difficulty.

Chests are prolific so I don't think you are taking anything away from anyone. I actually wonder who is leaving all these chests everywhere. Lazy pirates? The divines?

Danikat · January 17

There's no guarentee the difficulty will change when a chest is looted and respawned. Earlier I was semi-afk browsing the internet and happened to be next to a treasure chest so I saw it respawn 2 or 3 times and it was always simple difficulty. I've seen master and advanced chests respawn as the same difficulty as well.

If your top priority is making it more likely other players will be able to loot chests the best thing to do is just leave them alone. There's no guarentee the difficulty will change and not much difference in the possible contents if it does, and looting it yourself risks the worst outcome for other people, which is coming past when the chest isn't there, meaning they're guarenteed to get nothing.

But there's a lot of chests in each zone, they respawn regularly and you've got no way of knowing why anyone else is there or how important chest loot is to them, so the simplest solution (and the one other players would expect) is that you loot them when you feel like it and leave it if you don't want the loot or don't think it's worth the time required. If you do loot one and it reappears as a higher difficulty that's a bonus, but it's not worth going out of your way to try to set it up.

Zodiarkslayer · January 26

The mechanic for overland chests is the following:
On a timer the server checks how many chests in a zone are active (with either unopened, opened, but not empty ones or on cooldown nodes) and how many nodes are inactive. It counter checks these numbers against a target number for the given zone.
It there are less than the target number, the game will spawn a calculated number of chests at randomly determined node spots.
At the same time the difficulty level of the chest's lock is determined by RNG, too.
The chest will sit there until a player comes along and opens it. At this point and only this point the game will roll the RNG again to determine what the treasure chest contains. The content, its level, quality, quantity, etc remains fixed until the chest is totally emptied and the chest despawns.
The node will then go on a cooldown to prevent exploitation.

Remember! When it comes to game mechanics noone knows how they are really functioning, because ZOS does not share the code. It would be ridiculous to expect that.
But when the Oakensoul Ring dropped with High Isle, I and a small group of tech savvy nerds with varying degrees of IT background have done some tests and we came to the above stated conclusions.
There was a big problem back then with one lead dropping from lock boxes in Murkmire.