Windrose: How to Find Traveler’s Camp Second Chest – Hidden Chest Guide

Why the Traveler’s Camp Second Chest Is So Easy to Miss

After wandering in circles for almost an hour at my first Traveler’s Camp in Windrose, I was convinced the game was bugged. The map insisted there were 2/2 chests, but I could only see and loot one decrepit chest by a tent. I chopped trees, dug random holes, even left and came back. Nothing.

The breakthrough came when I finally read the curio from that first chest properly and connected it with something I’d seen at another camp: a tiny red scrap of cloth tied to a tree. The “missing” second chest isn’t missing at all – it’s buried.

This guide walks you through, step by step, how to reliably find the second chest at Traveler’s Camps in Windrose, starting with the early Windrose camp and then applying the same logic to later camps. I’ll also cover the shovel recipe, digging controls, common mistakes (including several I made), and how to troubleshoot if your map stubbornly stays at 1/2.

Step 1 – Understand How Traveler’s Camp Chests Actually Work

At most Traveler’s Camps, the first chest is straightforward: a visible Decrepit Chest usually positioned by a tent or bedroll. Looting this often gives you a curio – at the Windrose camp, it’s the Twist of Fancy – that contains a note.

The key line in that first note reads something like:

“I’ll bury the excess gear nearby, beneath the tree marked with a red flag. Maybe I’ll visit this place again someday.”

That “buried” part is the whole trick. The second chest is a Unique Chest underground, not a visible container. Until you know to look for a marked tree and use a shovel, it feels like the camp objective is bugged. It isn’t.

Important things this implies:

• You must loot the first chest to get the clue.
• The second chest will not be visibly sitting in the open.
• You need a shovel to uncover it.
• The map’s “1/2” or “0/2” chest count only clears when both surface and buried chest are found.

Don’t make my early mistake of assuming the second chest is hidden behind some rock or up a cliff. Think treasure map logic, not “loot pile in a corner.”

Step 2 – Get or Craft a Shovel First (You Won’t See Anything Without It)

Before you can dig up the chest at all, you need a shovel. The game doesn’t scream this at you, so it’s easy to hit a wall hunting the second chest without even realizing you’re missing the key tool.

Shovel recipe and requirements

You unlock shovel crafting once you’ve done basic mining and smelting. At a Workbench, the standard shovel recipe is:

• 3× Copper Ingot
• 10× Wood

From experience, this is easiest to knock out right after you’ve started mining copper on the starting island:

• Mine copper ore from the orange-veined rocks.
• Smelt ore into ingots at a furnace.
• Chop a few trees for wood – basic logs are fine.
• Use the Workbench → Tools tab → craft Shovel.

Once crafted, put the shovel into your quickbar or equip it via Inventory → Tools. The biggest time-waster I had: crafting it, then forgetting to actually equip it and wondering why nothing happened when I pressed the dig button.

How digging works (controls you actually need)

With the shovel equipped, you can swap to dig mode:

• Equip the shovel in your hand.
• Press X (default) to switch to Dig mode.
• Move around until you see a faint orange circle on the ground – this indicates a valid dig spot.
• Hold the interact button to dig and reveal whatever’s buried.

That orange circle is the confirmation that you’re in the right place; if you don’t see it, you’re either a bit off or there’s nothing to dig up there. I wasted a lot of time digging random patches of dirt and getting nothing because I wasn’t paying attention to that indicator.

Step 3 – Read the Clue, Then Find the Marked Tree

Now that you have the shovel, go back to the Traveler’s Camp in Windrose that’s stuck at 1/2 chests. For most players early on, this is the camp in the southwest part of the tutorial island, but the logic works for any camp with a missing chest.

Re-read the Twist of Fancy curio

Open your inventory, find the Twist of Fancy curio (or whatever note you grabbed from the first chest), and actually read it. It’s easy to spam through this stuff, but the text is the design team literally telling you where to look:

“…beneath the tree marked with a red flag…”

At some camps, other notes describe similar logic but might say “marked with a scarf” or “with red cloth” instead of “flag.” Mechanically, it’s the same thing: there will be a nearby tree, trunk, or stump with a red marker attached.

What the marker actually looks like (and where it is)

Here’s where most players, myself included, get tripped up. Different camps and seeds can make the marker look slightly different:

• A full tree with a red flag tied around the trunk.
• A tree stump or broken trunk with a red ribbon or scarf.
• Sometimes the cloth looks more like a rag than a clean “flag.”

At the Windrose Traveler’s Camp specifically, I’ve consistently found the marker:

• Just west of the main campfire and tents, or
• On the fringe of the camp’s immediate clearing, slightly downhill.

Stand at the campfire, face west (use your compass), and do a slow 360-degree scan, focusing on tree trunks around the edge. You’re looking for that pop of red against the brown/green background. The cloth is small, so don’t expect a giant pirate banner; it’s more subtle than that.

If you’re playing on lower graphics settings or in shady lighting, that red can blend in. I’ve had runs where I only saw it when I walked almost right up to the trunk and changed my camera angle.

Step 4 – Dig at the Base of the Marked Tree (Not Somewhere Nearby)

Once you’ve found your red-marked tree or stump, the instinct is to dig a little bit away from it, like typical treasure maps where “X” is a few paces off a landmark. That’s where I burned a lot of stamina and sanity.

In Windrose’s Traveler’s Camps, the second chest is almost always buried right at the base of the marked tree or just a step south of it. You should be close enough that your character could almost touch the trunk.

• Equip the shovel.
• Press X to enter Dig mode.
• Walk slowly around the base of the tree, hugging the trunk.
• Watch for the orange circle on the ground to appear.
• When it does, hold the interact button to dig.

If you don’t see the orange circle, you’re either on the wrong tree or still slightly off. Circle the trunk, then step a little bit south and try again. You shouldn’t need to go more than a couple of meters away from the tree for it to trigger.

Digging in the right spot will make the Unique Chest rise from the ground. Open it to finally get that satisfying “2/2 chests” completion on your map.

What You Get from the Second Chest (And Why It’s Worth the Effort)

At the Windrose Traveler’s Camp, the buried Unique Chest usually rewards:

• 5× Healing Potion
• 5× Greater Healing Potion
• 10× Homemade Gunpowder

Early on, that’s a huge injection of survivability and crafting power. The potions smooth out tough encounters around the island, and the gunpowder feeds nicely into your early firearm and explosive crafting.

More importantly, this chest is your tutorial for buried loot in Windrose. Once you understand how this works, other systems suddenly make more sense – quest treasures like the pirate chest in “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest,” other Traveler’s Camps showing 1/2, and random curios mentioning hidden stashes.

Common Mistakes I Made (So You Don’t Have To)

• Ignoring the curio text. I spammed through the Twist of Fancy, then spent ages trying to “see” a second chest in the environment. Read the note; it’s not fluff here.
• Not having a shovel equipped. I crafted it and assumed the game would auto-use it. It doesn’t. You must equip the shovel and go into Dig mode.
• Chopping the marked tree down. In one camp I got paranoid that the scarf was a red herring and cut the tree. Don’t. If you chop it, you can make your visual marker harder to identify.
• Digging way too far away. I treated the note like a vague treasure map and dug dozens of random holes. Stay tight to the marked tree. The orange circle is your friend.
• Assuming all camps are identical. Some Traveler’s Camps won’t give you a note, just the map 1/2 hint and a red-marked tree nearby. The pattern holds even when the text clue doesn’t appear.

How This Applies to Other Traveler’s Camps

Once I solved the Windrose camp, I started checking every Traveler’s Camp icon I saw on the map. Many show 0/2 or 1/2 chests when you first arrive. The pattern has been very consistent:

• There’s usually one obvious surface chest in or near a tent.
• The map counter hints that there’s another chest.
• Some camps give you a written clue mentioning a marked tree, cloth, or flag.
• Others give you no note, but still hide a chest at a red-marked tree.
• The marker can be a full tree, half-trunk, or stump, but always with red cloth.

My routine now whenever I see a Traveler’s Camp stuck at 1/2 is:

• Loot the visible chest and read any notes or curios.
• Stand in the middle of the camp and slowly look around the treeline.
• Scan for any tree with red cloth on it.
• Walk to that tree, equip shovel, enter Dig mode, and circle the base for the orange circle.

The exact direction from camp to tree can change – sometimes west, sometimes closer to north or south – depending on how your map seed built that particular camp. But the red cloth on a nearby tree = buried chest rule has held up across my playthroughs.