Trolls
You can set a keyboard shortcut for “next NPC” — it cycles through all the things (including harvesting nodes) within reach of the [f] key. I just repeat that until selecting the NPC (or flax or ori or whatever node) I want.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Maybe if you zoom to first person view you can get close enough to click an edge of the chest? I’ve never seen a player-placed object that could completely obscure an environmental object, though having it up against a wall there doesn’t help.
“Next NPC” is the easiest if you have a spare keybind, however.