Anthem Treasure Chests explained: How to find chest locations
How to start opening Treasure Chests will exploring Bastion in Anthem.
Anthem Treasure Chests are a source of loot you can find while exploring the world of Bastion.
Not only are they a bonus source of weapons and other equipment, but finding Treasure Chest locations is required to advance in the Anthem walkthrough - so learning how they work is important to progress past the game's story bottleneck.
If you've played other shared world shooters and role-playing games such as Destiny, Anthem Treasure Chest locations work in a similar way - but you might still need a guiding hand to help you narrow down where they might be.
Anthem Treasure Chest locations: How to find chest locations
First, it's worth explaining how Anthem's Treasure Chests work. There are two methods in finding them:
- Appearing as a reward for completing World Events
- Found when exploring the world
Completing World Events
The easiest and most reliable way to find Treasure Chest locations is by completing World Events. These will occur as you explore Bastion in Free Play mode, with your handler pointing out when they are available, adding their location to the map.
Completing them will then see an Anthem Treasure Chest appear as a reward. Open it up and voila, the loot inside is yours, and if you are doing a challenge, one will be added to your total. (It's worth noting an early-game bug saw only the person who opened them get the credit, but this has changed since the game's Early Access period.)
Found when exploring the world
Not unlike Ember Pieces, Treasure Chests will appear throughout when exploring - whether during missions or in Freeplay mode. These will spawn at random, but at set locations - meaning there are set places where chests will appear, but they won't always be there. Return to that location later, and it might well be.
Which locations are these? These can be anywhere that's unique or interesting - against the foot of high cliffs, underwater, in caves, at small camps or ruins.
The best way to find Treasure Chests is to simply get exploring. You'll see it when you get reasonably close, as they are highlighted by the game's interface with a chest symbol, and when closer still, a button prompt to interact with it.
If you find a Treasure Chest location, try and remember it. A chest can spawn there again in future, so if you are flying past or performing an activity nearby later on, check it out again as chances are it'll appear there again.
Looking for more Anthem explainers like this? Our Anthem tips page is a great place to start, or our Anthem guide and walkthrough mission list hub, which has all our Anthem pages in one place, including in-depth looks at Anthem Javelin classes, how to unlock Javelins and some Colossus, Storm, Interceptor and Ranger builds, another in-depth look at Combos, Primers and Detonators and Elemental Effects and debuffs explained, or specific advice on how to Deactivate the Barrier for the Triple Threat puzzle solution. Here's where to find Anthem Collectibles, Anthem Ember Pieces and Anthem Treasure Chests, and how to get your Anthem Legion of Dawn armour and other pre-order bonuses, how the Anthem Alliance system works too. Finally, for levelling and grinding, here's an explainer of Anthem Pilot Level, XP and how to level fast, Anthem loot, gear, and the loot system explained and finally a deep-dive on Anthem Masterwork and Legendary gear explained, a Masterwork list and how to farm them.
The fastest way to get Anthem Treasure Chests
Though the best way to find Anthem Treasure Chests is by either completing World Events or keeping an eye out as you are performing other activities, you might want to find them as soon as possible - such as if you are in need of loot, or want to progress past the Trial of Yveria's specific Treasure Chest challenge as part of the Anthem walkthrough.
It's in these instances that following an Anthem Treasure Chest farming route. This means following a path where Treasure Chests are likely to spawn, maximising your chances of interacting with them.
There are many out there, but one we found useful in the game's launch period was this:
Start by launching into the starting point west of Valley of Tarsis, then dive into the water ahead, where you might find your first chest.
If you do, great - but if not, keep following the route, and eventually some of the chests will also appear in your game.
For us, following this route resulted in a handful of Treasure Chest locations, making that part of the Anthem walkthrough go by much quicker. If you need more, simply repeat it over and over until you are done.
If you find it particularly boring, or if RNG (the random number generator, or good old fashioned luck) is not in your favour, then it still pays to remember the locations shown in the video - you can always come back to them to try again as you continue to perform other tasks.
Remember that as patches roll out, the above route might be become less (or more!) efficient, but we'd bet it'll still result in one or two Treasure Chest locations. Better than searching in the dark, right?