I've never heard you needed the chainstate files.
I did not say chainstate files.
The files in database/ are not for the chainstate, they are the BDB log files and used for
Write-ahead logging.
Im assuming there is a way to salvage the private keys from the wallet.dat without chainstate files otherwise I would be screwed.
There is no such guarantee. The log files will contain data that has not been written to the database file yet. Depending on when the wallet.dat was copied, the data may not yet exist in the database file and therefore losing the log files is catastrophic data loss.
Would actually be insane you need these files to backup your keys but I will try to find them anyway.
Would be insane to continue to use a database system that requires that.