As soon as you crash land onto the unknown beach at the start of Windrose, there’s a world of content just waiting for you to unveil. While you might be eager to breeze through the opening act to get your first ship and start sailing the open seas, there’s plenty to do on land as well. This includes completing some side quests, and one of the first side quests you can find in Windrose is called “Fifteen Men On A Dead Man’s Chest.”
This quest doesn’t seem overly complicated on the surface, but it’s not a simple fetch quest either. To see how to complete Fifteen Men On A Dead Man’s Chest, take a look at the full walkthrough below.
How to complete Fifteen Men On A Dead Man’s Chest in Windrose
For starters, you can start this side quest by searching through shipwreck salvage along the beach as soon as you crash land onto the island after the opening sequence of the game. One of the shipwrecks has a chest that contains a letter, which starts the Fifteen Men On A Dead Man’s Chest quest. You can view the quest in your journal by pressing “J.”
From here, you’ll have a quest marker on your map that tells you where to go to find the Dead Man’s Chest. However, if you have quest markers turned off through your world settings, then you need to head west into the jungle from the starting beach. Specifically, go to this spot on the map:
However, you actually won’t be able to do anything at this location, with or without a quest marker. The Dead Man’s Chest is buried beneath the ground, just like all good pirate treasure. In order to dig and reach the chest, you need a shovel, which isn’t something that you’ll have access to at the very start of Windrose.
A shovel requires Copper Ore/Ingots to be crafted, and that resource is only located within cave deposits sparsely spread around the map. Fortunately, the tutorial quest does lead you directly to a nearby Copper Deposit, so you’ll want to progress the tutorial until you reach that part. Once you see that objective pop up, open your map (if you have quest markers) and look for a pickaxe icon. That icon is the location of the deposit, so head there with your Stone Pickaxe and mine some Copper Ore.
Head back to your base and start smelting the Copper Ore through the use of a Charcoal Kiln and Smelting Furnace. After making Copper Ingots, go to your Workbench, and you’ll now be able to craft a shovel, which requires three Copper Ore and 10 Wood.
Now that you have your shovel, go back to the map marker for the Fifteen Men On A Dead Man’s Chest quest. Here, you’ll find four skeletons on the ground in a square shape. You need to dig directly in the center of the skeletons using your shovel.
After a few seconds of digging, you’ll uncover a chest, which you can interact with. Be ready for a fight, as doing this quickly spawns in four Drowned enemies, which immediately group up on you. Your best bet is to run away and deal with them one at a time, but they will start throwing rocks at you if they can’t get into melee range. You’ll also want to ensure you have some healing items ready to go.
Once all four Drowned enemies are dealt with, go back to the chest, open it up, and receive your rewards. You’ve now completed the Fifteen Men On A Dead Man’s Chest quest in Windrose. Your rewards are four Silver Ingots, five Guinea, and 50 XP Points.