Dexter's Chest — Location, Lock Setup & Solution

Where the chest is

Dexter runs the thieves in the Old Camp market. His chest sits in his market area, near the stalls, so you can walk straight to it once you are inside the camp. No quest is required to reach it, but you do need a lockpick in your inventory. If you are short, Dexter himself sells lockpicks, which makes this a convenient first chest in more ways than one.

Pick a quiet moment. Lockpicking does not pause the game in Gothic 1 Remake, and getting caught in the middle of the market is a real risk. Save first; if the pick breaks, reload instead of buying a new one.

Dexter's chest is also the natural first lock for most players. It is the smallest lock in the game at four plates, it sits in a busy but reachable market area, and the chest itself holds nothing required to progress, so a botched attempt only costs you a pick. Practice here before tackling the five- and six-plate locks elsewhere in the Old Camp.

One more note on the four-plate size. Small locks are the best training ground for the coupling matrix: with only two active links, you can watch every reaction as it happens and build the habit of testing couplings one at a time before you trust a matrix you entered yourself.

If you are ever unsure which plate you are turning, turn each one a single step and watch which reaction matches the matrix — that is the fastest way to confirm you read the entry correctly. A four-plate lock lets you do this without risk.

The lock: four plates

Dexter's chest uses a four-plate lock, the smallest size in the game. Each plate carries one pin, and the lock opens when every pin sits on the center notch — hole 4 on the in-game dial, position 0 on the solver's rail.

The couplings are few but real. Turn plate 1 and plate 2 follows it in the same direction; turn plate 4 and plate 3 moves the opposite way. Plates 1 and 4 only move when you turn them yourself. Read the matrix below as columns = the plate you turn, rows = the plate that reacts.

The configuration printed here comes from the site's chest registry, the same data that powers the preset picker on the home page. Load the preset and the solver shows the same numbers you see in the table.

Reading the matrix: the columns are the plate you turn, the rows are the plates that react. A 1 means the row plate moves in the same direction as the column plate; a -1 means it moves opposite; a blank cell means they are independent. With only four plates, Dexter's lock has just two active couplings, which makes it an ideal example for learning to read a matrix before you meet denser locks.

Because the lock is small, entering it by hand takes about ten seconds — but the preset does it for you with one click, and the "Open this chest in the solver" button below loads the exact state shown in this table, so what you see here and what you solve are guaranteed identical.

Edge-safe unlock sequence

Computed with Fewer Plate Switches: six turns in total, three plate switches, and no move ever pushes a pin into the wall. Follow the order exactly. If you prefer the fewest possible turns regardless of switches, switch to Shortest Moves before solving — the answer stays edge-safe either way.

Step 1 — turn plate 1 2 times to the left.

Step 2 — turn plate 2 2 times to the right.

Step 3 — turn plate 3 once to the right.

Step 4 — turn plate 4 once to the left.

The sequence is generated by the solver on this site (mode: Fewer Plate Switches, edge-safe) and re-verified by running the same input again. It applies to the starting holes in the table; if your lock differs, enter your own state and re-solve.

A reported variation of this lock

Community sources do not fully agree on this chest. The most detailed published guide for Dexter's chest reports the pins starting at holes 1, 1, 7, 7 (positions -3, -3, +3, +3) and lists a fifteen-turn sequence for that version. The two reports trace back to the same fan-tool ecosystem, so neither independently checks the other, and we could not confirm which layout the shipped game uses.

This chest is therefore marked community-reported and conflicted, per the site's verification policy: nothing here is official. If your lock does not match the starting holes in the table, you are likely looking at the alternate layout. Enter what you actually see and solve again — the solver works from the state you type in, not from this page.

How do you tell the two layouts apart? Check the starting holes before you touch anything. If the pins sit at holes 2, 4, 6, 3, you are looking at the version this site models; if they sit at 1, 1, 7, 7, you have the alternate layout described by the published guide. Enter what you actually see — the solver does not care which variant you have, only that your input matches the lock in front of you.

Whatever the variant, the same rule applies: never turn a plate against the wall at -3 or +3. The solver's sequence is edge-safe by construction, but if you improvise beyond it, every hit against the wall counts against your mistake budget (2 untrained, 4 trained, 6 master), and a break resets the lock to its starting holes.