the community discussed some facts about chests in this thread:
I doubt that chests will spawn more often along your path when not having keys/lockpicks with you. As far as we know, spawn position is totally random over a map with some rules, for example the maximum number of chests per map, distance of chests to each other, etc.
It is hard to test this because you need lots of runs with and without keys and your test set should be always the same (which is hard as we still don't know all factors that can influence chest spawns, chest drops, etc).
I think you are good to go with "it is just random and maybe you just realize the situations without keys".
But the community is always happy to get proven wrong.
It's just how the Human mind works or Murphys law or how u wanna call it.
A jelly toast allways lands on the jelly side.
Because only when u have clean up the mess and make a new one u save it in your brain. So having a key and opening the chests feels just normal and is not worthy of beeing saved/stored in your brain
BUT
standing in front of a juicy Chest that may contain a OS Treasure, that u now can't find out or get because u don't have keys. That's soen thing worth to store in your brain.
So u remember every chest u didn't get. But u won't remember every chest u got.
The only thing why your brain does this is to hurt you with that bad emotions until u finally have at least 1 stack of lockpicks on every of your chars so u will never have to stand in front of a chest and not beeing able to open it. And once ur got that lockpicks on all chars and are able to open all chest your brain just improved you, your drops and saves u from bad emotions in the future. Science Baby. Stonks. Mr. Clean out 
Display MoreIt's just how the Human mind works or Murphys law or how u wanna call it.
A jelly toast allways lands on the jelly side.
Because only when u have clean up the mess and make a new one u save it in your brain. So having a key and opening the chests feels just normal and is not worthy of beeing saved/stored in your brain
BUT
standing in front of a juicy Chest that may contain a OS Treasure, that u now can't find out or get because u don't have keys. That's soen thing worth to store in your brain.
So u remember every chest u didn't get. But u won't remember every chest u got.
The only thing why your brain does this is to hurt you with that bad emotions until u finally have at least 1 stack of lockpicks on every of your chars so u will never have to stand in front of a chest and not beeing able to open it. And once ur got that lockpicks on all chars and are able to open all chest your brain just improved you, your drops and saves u from bad emotions in the future. Science Baby. Stonks. Mr. Clean out
Wise words from clean
