I was lucky enough to get seven treasure chests in my first couple of days of playing New World, despite them being a rare item.

Well, I say “lucky”, I grinded my heart out, and being rewarded with a New World treasure chest was one of the few perks that I had whilst doing so. Whilst you’re enjoying playing the game, I’m here desperately trying to figure every single thing out about it that I can in order to report back my findings!

Fortunately for you, I found a great way to find treasure chests in New World and that’s what I’m going to talk about in this post, with a few tips for you thrown in for good measure.

Finding Chests

There might be additional methods for finding treasure chests, but the way I obtained all of mine was via fishing — I was trying to level up my fishing rank quickly whilst also trying to see if I could finally find large salmon.

Whilst all fishing locations will be different and have differing catch rates, I did all of my fishing at the Broad Fishing Hotspot in Windsward. I believe that’s one of the best places to catch a treasure chest in New World.

Do note that since it’s a quest, you’ll only need to catch one to complete the Treasures of the Deep New World quest.

Broad fishing hotspot in Windsward

Catching Chests

I tested fishing in all water depths at the Broad Fishing Hotspot across the catching of hundreds of fish, going up to level 44 in a single fishing session. Yes, I did say it was a grind!

For the ones looking at figuring out how to catch a treasure chest in New World, my findings indicate two things.

To catch treasure chests, you’ll want to:

  • Use Firefly Bait
  • Land your fishing line in deep water
  • Or, land your fishing line in an active hotspot — where fish are jumping out of the water

I did manage to hook a Treasure Chest in regular shallow water (i.e. not an active hotspot) but the rate of catching them here was lower than in deep water.

I didn’t manage to find a Treasure Chest even once when not using bait, or when fishing in very shallow water. This isn’t to say you can’t get them, but it does appear that bait is a good tactic to use for chests.

I’ve heard from other people that you can find treasure chests in very shallow water, but as my testing shows that fishing is significantly less efficient in very shallow water, I’d recommend avoiding this.

You can try upgrading your fishing pole to catch more rare fish too, but I don’t have the data to say whether this includes only fish or all items found under water.

What’s Inside?

treasure chest open

In the majority of the chests I’ve opened, I’ve received seven items like the ones pictured above. In one chest I was unlucky and only received five items.

You’ll mostly receive goods for smelting and jewelcrafting, as well as coins.

The majority of the items you get will be common, but you’ll usually get at least one uncommon item in a chest and you can get rare gems if luck is on your side.

Trading

You can’t trade treasure chests in New World as their behavior is set to ‘bind on pickup’, meaning it’s bound to you as soon as you find it.

This is probably to discourage a gambling aspect of the game where people sell chests and people risk their coins without knowing what’s inside. This means you can only find them and cannot buy them.

The good news is that you can trade and sell the contents of chests, just open them up first and hope to get lucky with what’s inside.