How does channel 47's caches work?

[Matmartinez]

I saw that there was a cache in the shallows and figured that I should try to go find it. I looked for a while and found a crate that people describe as the caches, but it was empty. Is that a thing to where if you don't find it fast enough it empties? And also I have a really hard time finding them, but I won't ask where the locations are.

[Esiwok]

I'm also interested in this, channel's 47 told me there was a medical cache in Bywater and there was bonus loot but after exploring the whole area, there was no cache, and very very few loot (like 4 or 5 keyboard and a broken rifle), on day 10

[Matmartinez]

I think the caches are just incredibly hard to come by, but I just don't understand why it was empty when I found it.

[GwanGwanish]

The supply caches have never been empty in my experience. They usually look like military storage lockers on the ground and are stamped in white with the icon for the item they contain. If you get near one, it cannot be missed. There are other containers that resemble the supply caches, but they do not have the icon stamp on them.

They seem like an excellent boost of supplies, because they usually hold several of those tiny multi resource crates: "Box of Stuff." For example, I recently looted a food supply cache, and it gave me something like 30+- each of protein, water, sugar, fiber and bindings. It had three or four of the orange "Box of Stuff."

Some other tips on supply cache locations:

Each zone seems to have a few set spawning locations, and each time you enter or restart the zone, the spawn randomizes.

In the Shallows, I've found them to spawn in three different obvious, open areas near the main blue house. Right in front of the window with the climbable facade; around the corner from there alongside the porch and towards the right side sciff; down the street in the opposite direction from the climbable facade in a parking area. If you walk straight down the street, you would dead end at that spawn. I would surmise that each zone has three or so spawn locations.

[Matmartinez]

I don't know why, but the one I found was an open wooden crate with a gun stamp on the lid, and it was empty when i walked up to it.

[ColdNhungry]

Everyday, caches might spawn on some maps (same as death squad patrols and other events which might be combined). When you wake up, these new events pop up as "???" on the travel map and tuning to channel 47 reveals where they are (you can switch channels when she stops talking). The caches are open wooden crates that spawn somewhere on said maps, you just have to locate them. They might be in buildings, houses, in the streets etc., so depending on how large the map is, you might run out of time before you find them if you don't explore everywhere.

The only time I found empty crates was because the "Extra Loot" events were bugged (still bugged?) and ironically would actually despawn all or most of the loot on said map, including items inside cache crates. So, if you get a Cache map + Extra Loot combination, you might not find anything at all anywhere. Just wait for the Extra Loot events to wear off before visiting the maps that have caches to avoid missing loot. I'm not sure if they fixed this though, I haven't played in a couple weeks or so.

[Esiwok]

Oh no, Cold, the bug's stillbhere don't worry, that's exactly what I got in Bywater :')

[ColdNhungry]

Damn. If that's still the case, I'm really surprised the devs haven't gotten around to fixing something like that. I mean a bug where "extra loot" has the opposite effect and renders maps empty? C'mon guys.. It's one of the only 4 events that can occur and happens quite often. Luckily that one seems to stop after 50 or so days, at least in my case it did.

[Matmartinez]

I haven't gotten an "Extra Loot" event yet. I've heard of them but only ever get caches and squads.