Skyrim Has a Hidden Chest We Were Never Supposed to Find

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is full of many mysteries, and some can be a lot more perplexing than others.

Whether you’re playing on PC with over a hundred mods installed, or starting a fresh playthrough on console that doesn’t have a lick of custom content, bugs and glitches are bound to occur if you play for long enough.

One Skyrim player in particular discovered this too while playing on PS5, as they suspected they came across a strange glitched chest they were never supposed to find.

Posting on the Skyrim Reddit page in 2024, user Terrible-Ruin-6313 managed to buy an odd item from a merchant.

It looked like a regular in-game chest, except it was named “Do Not Delete”. Confused, the user posted this to Reddit and asked what it means.

The truth is that the Do Not Delete chest is located inside many homes and businesses in the game, but are only found out of bounds so as not to be disturbed during regular gameplay.

They’re used to set your bounty for illegal actions performed during specific Thieves’ Guild quests. They can also be used to set the total gold value that merchants hold.

However, Skyrim being Skyrim, there exists a glitch in the game that merchants may sometimes stock the item and allow you to acquire one.

As for what the item does should you manage to get one, the answer is “not much”. They can be useful in getting out of bounds, as the item doesn’t have any physics, but they don’t really function as proper chests.

You learn something new every day. It's possible that deleting the chest from your inventory could result in some funky behaviour with the merchant, and potentially even stop them from being able to buy or sell things from you.

So, I’d take the game’s advice and just not touch it if you don’t want your game to start behaving erratically.