Image: Klei Entertainment via HGG / Jeffrey Hsu
My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.
Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
Don’t Starve Together features lots of helpful NPCs for you to discover and interact with. These helpful NPCs can range from pigmen to giant spiders, to strange shadow creatures. One of the more iconic ones you’ll find in Don’t Starve Together is Chester, a sentient chest monster who specializes in holding items for you!
If you’re new to the game (or just took a very long break), then chances are you don’t know where to find Chester and how to make the most out of him. That’s why we’ll be going over everything that you need to know in this here guide on How to Find & Use Chester in Don’t Starve Together.
Don’t Starve Together: Chester Guide
With that introduction done, let’s get right into the guide!
How to Find Chester
In order to find Chester, you are going to need to find an item called the Eye Bone. This is an item that will spawn naturally on the ground, usually inside of a grassland biome. Short of manually adding another via console commands, only one will spawn in the world.
The Eye Bone is also more likely to spawn near a cobblestone road, which are naturally generating roads that take you all throughout the map. They boost your movement speed while you’re traveling on them, so there’s a decent chance you’ll be naturally using them when you accidentally stumble across the Eye Bone.
Unfortunately, these methods aren’t a guaranteed way to find Chester. Luckily, the game does tend to place the Eye Bone within a relatively reasonable distance of the spawn point.
Once you do find the Eye Bone, all you need to do is pick it up and put it in your inventory. Doing so will activate it, and Chester will soon come bouncing up to follow the person with the Eye Bone!
How to Use Chester
Using Chester is very easy. All you need to do is approach and interact with him to open him up like a normal chest. You’ll be able to store and retrieve items from him whenever you want.
As mentioned above, you can get Chester to follow you simply by having the Eye Bone in your inventory. When you want him to stop following you, drop the Eye Bone on the ground and he will stay near it.
Chester will follow you anywhere in the above world as long as you have it on you. Sadly, he doesn’t follow you into caves. You’ll have to find his underground counterpart, Hutch, if you want to have a mobile chest with you while spelunking.
Chester has a decent amount of health, but no combat abilities whatsoever. It can be a bit risky to bring him with you if you’re traversing areas teeming with enemies, especially since they can aggro and fixate on him.
While he can survive a fair bit of hits, Chester is fully capable of dying. If he does die, he’ll drop everything that he was carrying within him, and the Eye Bone will close its eye. Luckily, Chester will respawn the next day and come bouncing up to wherever the Eye Bone is (which will also open its eye to signify Chester is alive again).
Chester’s health will regenerate automatically (at a rate of 22.5 HP every 3 seconds), so if he takes a lot of damage in a fight, just keep him out of harm’s way for a bit to heal up. While it’s not an incredibly reliable strategy, you can also use him as a pseudo-distraction in fights to buy yourself some time to (somewhat) safely deal with enemies.
Alternatively, you can also use Chester as a regenerating punching bag with the Bat Bat weapon to heal yourself up (just don’t accidentally kill him).
How to Upgrade Chester
Did you know that you can upgrade Chester? It’s true! Using some special items, you can turn him into one of two different upgraded variations. These transformations are permanent, unless Chester dies. In which case, he will respawn as his normal self.
Snow Chester
The first of these is called Snow Chester and basically turns him into a portable refrigerator. When food is stored inside of him, it will spoil at half the normal rate, allowing you to keep your food fresher for longer. You can even cool down a Thermal Stone in Snow Chester, which is great for surviving the Summer.
To get Snow Chester in Don’t Starve Together, you will need to wait until it’s a full moon, then place at least one blue gem in each and every one of the storage slots inside Chester. If done correctly, he’ll transform into Snow Chester!
Shadow Chester
The second upgraded version of him is Shadow Chester. This version will have three additional slots for storing goods, making him even better for long gathering or exploration trips. However, food will also spoil 50% faster within him.
Similarly to Snow Chester, you need to wait until it’s a full moon to get him. Except instead of placing a blue gem in each of Chester’s storage slots, you need to place one nightmare fuel in each slot.
Oddly though, if Shadow Chester dies with items inside him, they do not drop on the ground like normal. Instead, they exist in a pocket dimension until you turn Chester back into his shadow form, where you can access them again.
You can exploit this to have more storage on long trips by intentionally killing Shadow Chester when he’s full, use his normal form until you return to camp, empty him out, and turn him back into Shadow Chester to re-access your items.
Facts & Things to Know About Chester
While we’ve covered the bulk of important things to know about Chester, there are a couple more useful things you should be aware of.
- The Eye Bone will automatically be dropped if you try to enter a cave with it.
- If the player holding the Eye Bone logs off or disconnects, it will also immediately be dropped to prevent someone from permanently taking Chester.
- The Eye Bone can be stolen by Krampus if it’s left in a backpack. If Krampus despawns while holding the Eye Bone, you will permanently lose access to Chester.
- Incidentally, Krampus cannot steal from Chester.
- If the Eye Bone somehow sinks into water, it will reappear near the coast.
- Chester can only be transformed when he’s in his basic normal form.
- If you’re playing as Webber and are carrying the Eye Bone, friendly spiders will not attack Chester.
- If Maxwell is in your game and you have Shadow Chester, he will be considered linked to the shadow dimension. Thus, items stored within him can be retrieved via the Magician’s Chest/Top Hat (Maxwell’s unique buildings) and vice versa.
Get Chester in Real Life!
If you love Chester as much as most of the community, you can get a plushie version of him from the developer’s official store!
It comes with a replica of the Eye Bone and costs $40 USD (prior to shipping). Pricey, we know – but it’s actually quite nice and worth it if you’re a die hard fan of the game. Here’s a link to the Chester plushie if you want to take a look!
Join the High Ground!
We hope that you found this article explaining How to Find & Use Chester in Don’t Starve Together informative! Were you able to get your hands on him? Be sure to let us know with a comment. Also be sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter if you want more helpful guides just like this one.
Happy gaming!
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