Relying on helltidesdotcom which provides accurate placement of living steel
HOWEVER,
if it is not there, you need to either do the following:
Plus its easier to farm varshan mats than living steel (just my 2cents)
I might be alone in this but the entire helltide gamplay mode needs to be updated/changed.
More bosses, more events, more density and yes more living steel.
Yep the bug is a joke and the fact that it is still not fixed is even a bigger joke⌠Unless you use the website you have a big chance to just miss the chest because you are not able to see them. Also why is Lord Zir and the Best of Ice not dropping any mats for Duriel, they give the same items as the other bosses and capped on level so they just become useless to farm. Either add some other items to their drop rate (not the uber uniques) or just make them give some matts, even if is half the mats the order 2 bosses giveâŚ
i agree that lord zir and the beast of ice should also drop mats to summon duriel
Search for a really like REALLY big dude named âhe-grins-wide-and-waitsâ and thatâs the chest youâre looking for
I mean couldnât be more obvious
At this point I think people are just obsessed with succeeding everything at first attempt, itâs not that itâs not a âwaste of timeâ but is not much, like a few mins tops
Just get ~230-240 cinders run around on a horse a bit and youâll see the dude - thatâs where a bit later should go 
Thereâs currently a bug in the game where the chest does not appear even if you are in the correct location and it requires you to port to town an back again (often multiple times) for it to appear as OP pointed out.
Yeah Iâve met the dude. Someone on the dev team is trolling with that nameâŚâŚ. Easy enough to hack apart with animosity and malice, usually come across him when thereâs 6 mins left on the clock and not enough embers.
I agree, but on a more fundamental level:
The third point is the most mind-boggling to me; it tells me that theyâre making it annoying on purpose, and is giving me flashbacks to every other change Blizzard has failed to make until the end of an expansion.
Theyâre making it a pain on purpose so that they can make a major change in the expansion, if I were to guess. My cynicism has been fed by their doubling down on hidden chests, as itâs clear theyâre keen on pretending thereâs not an innate flaw with it.
I already hear âthatâs just your opinion.â Well, if someone thinks that after reading my reasoning, I do not care what they think of my opinion. I really donât.
Uhg, I really need to go back into apathy mode. Gonna log out and attempt getting over the fact that this wonât change until the next expansion.
I think they initially designed the game that way and everyone quit so S2 the jackknived back to get everyone playing again⌠anything that was not addressed in S2 (glyph leveling and helltides stand out), is still annoying by design IMO.
I agree I HATE HATE HATE losing cinders, I have lost several hundred because I alt tabbed to check where the chests were, came back and I was dead. The whole design reminds me of torghast from wow⌠which was also an epic failure.
I personally think losing them is fine since the added danger makes it interesting early on, but it needs to be balanced out in a positive way if you play wellâŚsuch as carry-over between Helltides. Some may argue that not dying is your reward, but ânot losing somethingâ isnât what Iâm referring to.
Although I guess it isâŚjust not in that way. Iâd elaborate but am kinda out of steam now. =P
FWIW - when invisible, if I portal out of the zone where helltide is and back (e.g., HT is in Fractured Peaks, port to any of the other 4), 100% of the time itâs become visible. If I port within zone itâs much lower odds (for me) to become visible.
helltidesdotcom has saved me so many times. OMG, The amount of times I walked up to where the 300 chest is supposed to be but it isnât there. 
Imagine if I didnât use helltidesdotcom. Iâd run around the entire map and never find the chest because it simply isnât there. At least I can find out where it should be and then TP to town and back, all thanks to a 3rd party site.
get rid of the demerit on cinders when a player dies. This really pisses me off too a 40% demerit is really high for a redo on a 250-300 chest for a single player. all the other players that like to boast that can do 600+ in 1hr good for you since you donât have a family or donât even clean your teeth. Yeah Iâll go there your team concepts are really poor and they donât even meet up on patch day. So get with it! Use that BRAIN!! Stop asking for our specs and routines. Is Blizzard a Hospital now since you go with psycho therapy analysis??
i detest time locked content with a passion, hts should be up all the time imo.
The mob and the chest is just plain not showing up for some people (myself included) unless you TP and come back or re-log. Itâs not an issue of missing the chest, itâs an issue of the chest and the guardian not being there.
The lack of receiving the same amount of cinders toward the end of a helltide bothers me. When you first start practically every mob drops one. Toward the end, you get one per group and sometimes not even that.
I donât mind losing them though. Thatâs an ingrained Mario type feature that makes sense. It sucks obviously but usually you can prevent it.
Elite packs and up only show up for certain levels and above? Or is it based on attack power or time spent not getting smacked around?
I agree with everything you said except being on horseback.
It is such a detriment.
Only get on a horse if you are running out of time or have 300+ and want to b-line to the chest.
But it is so much easier just to kill as you run around and to the chest you get a head start for the next one.
I do use helltides.com so if he is not at the one I went to I go to one of the other ones. I have never had him not be at two. I thought it just meant someone had just beaten him. And will circle back to that location later.
Every dead hardcore character in the history of Diablo just rolled over in its grave.
I agree with this. Originally, I thought the periodic appearance of helltides was a fun thing, which could help break up your routine when it appeared. But popping over for a 5-10 fight with a world boss or legion event is a lot more of a fun distraction than popping in for a
lengthy helltide. Even if you just drop in to farm one chest, it takes a long longer than other periodic events. And now it is a required part of the endgame loop because it has the living steel.
Losing some from dying is a totally separate form of penalty compared to having to spend them during a helltide. That said, letting them carry over is probably the right call if they replace it with some other time-pressure mechanics like the expiring whispers or perhaps some form of acclaim-like progression that resets each time to reward really good clear speeds.
I disagree with this completely. I donât understand why gamers insist on cheesing themselves out of fun. It is fun to find a mystery chest and then know where it is, just like it is fun to find a random Lilith statue or to run across a random Butcher encounter. This stuff breaks up the routine of playing.
What they need to do is to put them in different locations for different people so the dumb 3rd party maps donât work, not guarantee that one spawns in every area every helltide so that people donât just make a circuit of all the locations constantly to find them, and if they allow carryover, then probably put a cap on the amount of cinders you can take out of a helltide (at, say, 200) to prevent people from just only looking for the mystery chests.
Then they should just add a small chance of living steel to all the chests so the big one is still a big prize but isnât required if all you want is the mats.
The problem with this dichotomy is that youâre either cheesing yourself out of the scavenger hunt or sucking yourself into a scavenger hunt where the time invested could have been better put towards getting gear that will empower your character faster.
I can see how some people like the adventure, but it kinda gets old by the 50th statue. Not to mention this was mostly done during a time when the horse controls were hot garbage â that didnât help.
When it comes to helltides, youâre a time table so you get your cinders and get your chest, you donât have time to be âpleasantly surprisedâ into getting your mystery chest.