This was talked about on Order the other night soI thought I would share it as I thought it was a cool idea. Some people were talking about to add to the adventure side and explorer side loot-able randomly placed chest. After talking about how to do it as loot-able corpses with keys as loot rights and such it popped into my head why not make them "node"s that you "mine" with a Adventure level requirement instead of a crafter requirement. Could even have nodes based off magic skill, for disarming magical traps, or Melee based for Bashing, or ranged roguish type skills to open.
It was talked about placing them using the random node method that is in already all around the world, just in very limited supply, or in bandit or WA camps. The thought was to have random Bandit or even WA scout camps that spawn around the world like the Blight anchors. They appear have a set number of mobs in them and once they are cleared out and the chest is "mined" the camp is gone till the next spawn is found.
I had a thought on keeping people from just running in to "mine" the chest is to have it on a long timer. That way if their are any mobs in the they will be drawn to you as you try to open the chest so need to clear the area first. The text instead of you gather x could be "You spend a few minutes opening the chest and searching through the cloths and other personal items of no value to find X."