Chest

Locked Chests
The landscape of Tyria is dotted with randomly positioned locked chests, which are guaranteed to contain uncommon or better items. Whenever your party finds a new, locked chest, multiple party members can each use their own keys to unlock the chest and get their own loot. Monsters randomly drop chest keys, and you can also buy chest keys from Merchants. Chests differ in regions and can only be unlocked with the appropriate key.

Unlocked Chests
In Pre-Searing, players will find lots of unlocked Hidden Stashes. But Post-Searing, unlocked chests are very uncommon now.

A player can open a chest with the corresponding key (i.e. a Krytan Key will open a Krytan Chest). Whoever opens the chest is granted a piece of loot. Therefore, if you open a chest it is not possible for the loot to be assigned to anyone else in your party. Usually, the farther through the game you are the better the loot becomes. The best being a rare (gold)item.

Unlocked chests are chests that do not require a key, and can be opened by anyone. However, the loot can be assigned to anyone in your party, including henchmen. Examples of areas that still have unlocked chests include Icedome and Dreadnought's Drift. In the Realms of the Gods, completing a quest will usually reveal a chest near the reward giver that is also an unlocked chest.

Note: While doing the quest Kilroy Stonekin, Sorrow's Furnace will produce three unlocked chests. These chests are not normally part of the area and will not be there without that quest.

Mission/Quest Chests
Several quests include chests (e.g. the quest "The Royal Papers"). These are unlocked and reveal quest items when opened.