Nomad Drive Rare Chest: What’s Inside and How to Open It

In the Nomad Drive demo, the rare chest is a buried objective: find a rare key, dig with the shovel, and open it for randomized loot.

Table of Contents

The rare chest is one of the objectives in the Nomad Drive demo. The task reads along the lines of "unlock a rare chest," and it is one of the last things players tick off before the demo runs out of objectives. Getting it open takes three things: a metal detector to locate the buried spot, the shovel to dig it up, and a rare key to unlock it.

What's inside is not fixed. One player dug up a chest and found a common number plate; another opened one and found nothing but pills. So "rare" describes the chest itself rather than what's inside — players report the contents differ from one chest to the next.

The two player accounts this page draws on are demo playthroughs: Unlocking the RARE Chest! | Nomad Drive Gameplay Ep. 4 and Nomad Drive Demo — Rare items, just when I thought there was nothing new. They're reported experience from the demo build, not official documentation.

Finding the chest

The search loop reported by players is: sweep with the metal detector, dig where it points, then unlock. The metal detector is described as loud, which is why one player deliberately put off using it until after looting the surrounding buildings. The shovel is what actually gets the chest out of the ground — see the related page on the shovel's location if you don't have one yet.

Buried spots can sit very close to where you're already driving. In one playthrough the player realised they had literally driven over the treasure spot before finding it, and in the other the player made a point of not parking on top of a chest. Sweeping the area around a stop, including the ground you rolled over on the way in, is something players report doing — a habit, not a confirmed rule.

Nomad Drive official screenshot

The rare key

The chest itself needs a rare key, which is a different item from the ordinary keys used elsewhere. One player called it "a rare key — that's the first one of those I've seen," and in the other run the key that opened the chest was a golden key picked up while looting. In that second account the key and the chest turned up at the same stop, which is worth knowing if you're deciding whether to keep driving or search one more building.

What's inside

Reported contents so far are modest:

A common number plate. One player found a plate and was able to fit it to the van, though they noted it doesn't really change anything mechanically.
Pills. The other player found only pills and described the result as disappointing.

Two outcomes is not enough to describe a full loot table, and as of 2026-10-16 neither playthrough above lists a complete rare chest loot table for the demo. If you're chasing the chest specifically for its contents, go in expecting a small item rather than a major upgrade.

Nomad Drive official screenshot

Practical tips

Bring both tools before committing to a search. Without the shovel you can locate a spot but not open it, and the metal detector's noise is something players prefer to deal with on their own schedule.
If the detector seems to be pointing at nothing useful, widen the sweep around the stop before moving on — players report treasure buried right where they parked or drove.
Keep a rare key spare if you find one. Since the chest and key don't always appear together, holding a key means you can open a chest the moment you dig one up.
Finish other objectives first if you want a clean stopping point. One player treated the rare chest as the natural end of the demo, because once it's done there was nothing else left to do.

Version and scope notes

Everything above is demo-era player experience. Neither playthrough states a build number, so it isn't possible to pin the reports to a specific demo version, and loot behaviour in the full game may differ. As of 2026-10-16, the official Nomad Drive Steam page does not list rare chest contents or drop rates.