Key

General
Keys are used to unlock chests across the world.

Keys are named (more or less obviously) after the geographic region where they are bought or found (eg. Ascalonian Key for Ascalon) and can only open chests from that region. For example Ascalonian Keys will only open Ascalonian Chests, Krytan Keys will open Krytan Chests and so forth. The value of keys increase as one progresses in the game, as does the value of the items found in the chests they unlock.

Keys of the same type will stack.

Note: There are no keys or locked chests in Pre-Searing.

Usage
Keys may only be used once, meaning players will have to gamble that the items found inside a particular chest will either be useful to them, or have a higher resale value than the key. Because of this risk, when you click on a chest, a confirmation message will pop up asking whether you are sure that you want to use a key to open it.

Each member of an exploring party will have to use their own key to open each chest, however, the items found from chests are not shared across the party. A chest opened by a player cannot be opened again by the same player.

Note: Updates since the release of Nightfall have made the Rarity of items in chests random for each player. Before the Update if a player opened a chest and the item was gold, it would be gold for all players who opened that same chest. Now it is random and just because one player received a gold out of the chest it will not guarantee that you will receive one.

Acquisition

 * Bought from merchants in the same region.
 * Random Loot from monsters of the same region. This includes monsters of the region which are encountered elsewhere. For example, Mahgo Hydras encountered in the Burning Forest of the Fissure of Woe will drop Darkstone keys (of the Ring of Fire Islands where they are originally from) instead of Obsidian keys of the Fissure (where they are). Likewise, Banshees encountered in the Fissure will drop Phantom keys of the Underworld, where they come from.

Value of Loot
While the keys are guaranteed to produce purple items or gold items, it is not guaranteed that these items will be perfect or have maximum statistics. In general, the key itself is worth more than the item produced from the chest if the item was sold back to the merchant. For example, a Shiverpeak Key costs but on average produces items that are worth 200- to a merchant. The real value is that in identifying an item, it might unlock upgrades or turn out to have maximum statistics (which can then be used or sold to other players for a lot more than selling to a merchant). In most cases, if you find expensive keys during quick farming runs, it would be more profitable to sell those keys to other players or to a merchant, rather than finding a chest in the region and opening it.

The value of items produced from chests is directly proportional to the value of the keys. Gold items found from chests unlocked with Obsidian Keys will be near perfect in their statistics, while those unlocked by a Krytan Key may not even have maximum damage.

The keys themselves can be sold for half their price to all merchants.

Related articles

 * Treasure
 * Chest
 * Lockpick
 * Treasure Hunter title track progresses when you open a high-end chest.