Chests can't be open

[Giggleanthropisticon]

So I was mining down in the lava layer and teleported back to my home pad and nearly all of my chests weren't able to be opened. They're a mix of iron and arctec chests and they all had custom labels, but the labels all had their original labels instead. Nearby, there were some other iron and arctec chests that weren't affected.
Also, the affected ones could be picked up and placed back down, but then they would be empty and basically like a new chest. I had other people in the public server try opening them and they had the same results even after restarting the game. Some of the affected chests had the perms set to everyone, some to admins, and some to just me. I'm hoping this is just a glitch from server updates or something, as this happened at about 20:00 MST. Otherwise, I just lost about 20+ hours-worth of gathering, which kind of makes me not want to play anymore out of fear of wasting so much time and effort again.

[stefliew]

Definitely a glitch, but made worse than it ought to have been :(

I've seen this happen once when I was unable to interact with a chest, and the wood sign above it had the default text. I didn't touch them, and after relogging I was able to open that chest again with all the stuff still inside.

Whenever you can't interact with chests, picking them up and putting them back down is NOT the way to go. That basically tells the server that whatever was supposed to be inside is now overridden with a new chest.

[TheRemyD]

This is a known bug and is called the Lockdown Bug by the community. If anything becomes stuck, or unable to be interacted with, you should immediately log out and back in. In most cases that alone will fix the issue and everything will return. If that does not fix the issue then you should leave the area alone for a short time (It can sometimes take 20 minutes for things to become normal again).

You should never harvest the chest and place it back down. As brioche235 said the game will register it as a new chest that is supposed to be empty in this situation.

The Devs are aware of this bug and are tracking down the exact reason for this situation to arise. Thank you for your report, and sorry for your loss.

[Giggleanthropisticon]

So good news. After letting it sit for the night, the chests are back to working. Even the one I picked up and placed back down in the same spot and consequently showed empty, is now showing back to normal again too.