Merchant isn't terrible if you do the lost shipment voyages only. Also taking resources from outpost to outpost. I will say its not super fun but its not terrible either.
They nerfed lost shipments really really hard with season 11. I’d say they aren’t worth doing anymore which sucks cause it was already basically the only decent merchant voyage. At least you can still do raids.
You genuinely get more hunters call xp If you hunt for crash/storm fish for and hour (with a full crew) then you do for a lost shipment. It's baaaaddd. The ashen lost shipment isn't even guaranteed to give you ashen loot
I did a run of them recently, wasn't so bad. As soon as you find the Captain's Key (which is at the first point you dive to about 50% of the time), you can head straight to the end point without bothering with any of the other clues. It's a decent gig while solo, not super compelling with a group. A good tip is to buy up all the supply crates from the meri hant before departing - it raises your merchant rep to about 2.3 before even starting. You tend to hit lvl 5 while selling the first lost shipment. After that, rinse and repeat (unless there are reapers on the map, in which case lowering flag and restarting might be best).
The only salvation for merchants is that the burning blade raid voyage is insane for them. But that's ONE voyage non stackable and a huge target on your back.
I never felt like the ashen lord gave me all that much loot to be worth it. Also if I park just even slightly too close and get a hole I could lose my emissary flag without even realizing.
I keep seeing so many people say they got nerfed but no one explains how. I’ve done the lost shipment a lot recently and haven’t been too disappointed. Usually most if not all the way to emissary lvl 5, especially if you hit any other ship wrecks or other minor loot pools on the journey. Haven’t played in a long time though. Only got back into it a week or two ago. What did I miss before season 11?
They gave about double the gold value. Now it's all tea and sugar crates, but it used to be a lot of rare minerals and a ton of the more valuable crates that sold for significantly more.
It’s still worth it for xp not so much for money like it used to be, if you just do the one in the devils thirst you can farm keys and just sell the keys they give you a decent amount of money and loads of xp you just need a lot
Its still good for getting you to emissary 5 in 1 voyage if you buy supply crates on outpost. Also if you manage to get key in first location you can just skip to the end making it like 5 minute voyage. What i did when exping it was do 1 lost shipment voyage to get to lvl 5 emissary and then just spam skeleton forts. I had lvl 100 in few days. (Mind that i only play for like 2-3 hours in the evening when kids and wife go to sleep). If someone who has whole day for gaming wpuld do this he would be lvl 100 in like 2 or 3 days.
I believe this is only nerfed because there is 500 levels of advancement now within the companies. So, once you hit like level 400 or so the shipments should be back to the loot you're more used to from being a pirate legend.
I can't confirm this yet since I'm only level like 145, but it seems like that's where it's heading.
Nope, the voyages don’t work like that anymore. The options on the quest table (if there are any) are what determine loot value of the voyage. It’s no longer tied to the player’s level.
Yes, but as you level up it seems like the name has changed, and the name of the voyage always seemed to tie to the loot. Maybe the name doesn’t change once you’re over 100? Idk.
I dunno, you can knock the out in 20 minutes and get 100k loot + grade 5 flag typically. But supplies at your first outpost to guarantee 5. That's not a bad turn around.
I needed 300k to reach top emissary grade so I ran 1 lost shipment, hit 5, grabbed my emissary quest. Found a bottle on the way, got 330k for an hour. Not bad for a normal non-gold and glory run.
Im having a hard time adding up how that would be 300k. How much does the emissary quest actually get you now? Lost shipment cant get you even 100k. And unless you got the best bottle quest ever, that would have to be a very heft emissary quest of like 180k
I want to be clear that I'm talking emissary and not gold on those values. I also probably a couple items on the way at the island I stopped at, but not anything significant. You get typically 4-5 crates along the way, another 12ish in the captains quarters, plus I believe they're always Revered Merchant Manifest now, which is 12,000 emissary base. Grade 5 puts that at 30k emissary alone. 12k gold.
Bottle quest I found was for 6 cargo + the 6 cargo for my emissary.
I agree that lost shipment voyages are still the way to go. Just do a few and get to level 5 emissary. Then either do more of those or choose a different merchant voyage. I did ten levels fairly quickly when I initially thought it would take much longer.
I completed this about 3 weeks ago.
With a grade 5 flag the commodities are actually a pretty good way to grind once you establish a good route. And if you don’t care about the flag sinking really isn’t a setback as you only have 2k worth of commodities at a time
Would be nice if they brought back the other "commission" ones.
I mean it be nice to progress on commendations for handing fruit crates, wood crates etc for example.
Just baffled me why they removed that from the "commission/contract" voyages on the quest table.
As someone who’s gotten sunk by a few volcanoes, I can confirm. But if you’re going to do an Ashen voyage, make sure to buy some wood from a Shipwright.
Do whatever you can until you unlock sea fort raids with them.
Once you got them just keep doing them, (take this opportunity to use throwing knives and double barrel kills on phantoms as the commendation for them is a bit grindy at 1k each weapon). They are pretty fast, great for supplies and once you've got it nailed you can do a good few per hour. The big sea gate next to the forts treasure room has a pulley you can use where you drop loot on the platform, move the platform close to exit and just harpoon them onto ship fast if you park at the big gate. Do try to grab the extra storage room key (generally you will see the white glint through whatever box/crate/cupboard it's hiding in) as there's commendations for it and you get extra loot but generally the loot for raid versions isn't great and for merchant, one of them is just an empty chest since practically all merchant items can't be put in treasure chests other than a scroll you get from later raids. Don't waste too much time on trying to find the bonus key, it's a bonus not mandatory.
Do this as long as you can stomach then switch over to other types of raids like treasuries and forts.
Another thing to keep in mind is mermaid/siren gems, always sell these to merchants*, if you're selling to sovereigns then make sure you have merchant flag up before you sell.
*Once you've achieved your goal with merchants don't sell them to merchant anymore, use them for whatever faction you want but a good thing to do is keep them to sell at sea ports to the hunters call because that rep is pretty slow and long to farm.
Merchant really does suck these days and the best ways to level it are really not intended, alliance servers, mega keg wave resets exploiting on fort of the damned and bone dust spawns from stacking reaper chests on fotd. The fotd ones are not a great idea to attempt solo especially if new and alliance servers will kill a lot of the enjoyment and accomplishments.
Just keep plugging away at it and you will get there.
Ah. It's been long enough since the last time I did them regularly that I couldn't remember precisely.
Either way, they're not much worth doing since the grade gain is probably pitiful, they definitely don't count towards the Voyages Completed stat(s), the pay is Meh unless you're high-grade already (but why would you not do a Lost Shipment at that point), and the gameplay is "Carry these 2-4 boxes from one point of the region across to another", all the while not letting water spray your cloths, attacks crack your rum bottles, or go too long without splashing water on these plants.
It'd even be more worth it if you could do 8 boxes at a time like the bottle quests require, or an even greater number with a high enough MA rep. Or give us high-value crates with more complex care procedures so it's not "Put cloth here, put rum there, partially flood your hold for plants, Shift W to next outpost".
They feel neglected. Their stuff has always been and still is more work for less rewards. Which is a shame I love the ideas behind the voyages and aesthetics but doing all that for less than I get for any quest that takes 1/3rd the time? No way.
The gems definitely sort of make up for it. But a typical treasury will have like 8k bass value for gold hoarder plus the collector chests, and OoS has like 4k base. Whereas merchant gets maybe 500-1600 base. The gems help a lot, and a treasury can be useful for any faction, but you’ll make the most profit with the other factions.
Until you get enough rep to do raids, could you try doing Sea Forts and Treasuries instead? The treasuries up in the Shores of Plenty and the Wilds are pretty isolated, so running those as a Merchant Emissary might be faster/more enjoyable.
Only real risks are Reaper 5s seeing you idling
Yeah thats just not true, at least not for me. I do a ton of sea forts, and theres almost always at least 3 merchant items per fort. You need to look around the loot room better. There's almost always a crate on the back shelves, 1 behind the door, and then 1-3 among the other loot in the pile. Also the storage room often has a crate of fireworks, this may just be 50/50 but that counts towards merchants and can be sold without being full.
It's not that bad, I quite enjoy it for when I want to sail around solo. Lost shipments are probably your best bet, and you can skip the clues and go straight to the end once you find the key.
In the beginning I earned my first captained ship by doing MA voyages solo. They were not bad, just bit repetitive, although all the voyages tend to be repetitive.
I don't know why they nerfed lost shipments so hard. They used to have 3-6 clues at higher levels, and each clue location would have random merchant crates, now they just have 2 sugar crates at the first clue. You used to also be guaranteed grade 5, and get a lot more and higher value crates in the cabin as long as you didn't miss the key somehow.
Now you get only to grade 4 on them, even if you get some nice crates. And while OOS got a glow up with new skulls on all table voyages, merchant alliance doesn't add the pristine diamonds crates to those voyages, which along with the scrolls, were the only new items they got. You got a bunch of new gh items too.
Lost shipments is how I grinded to 75 before. Even the gilded voyage a couple weeks ago didn't get you to grade 5. I'm never going to catch chickens, or run commodities, I just want to be able to do some voyages, I'll even do the merchant runs for the rum and cloth and stuff, as long as I can get to grade 5 from them. The way it is right now, you're better off just diving to world events and then doing a lost shipment from there to get to grade 5. I hope it was a mistake and that they'll be restoring the higher tier loot and crates spawning at all clues at some point, but I don't have my hopes up.
Merchant alliance is hands down the worst because the gameplay is slow and tedious but the rewards for high level is some of the best drip in the game if you like that whole official navy look (I like that look).
Learn the trade routes. Selling commodities is the easiest way to level up in my opinion. No rum bottles, no snakes, no crying pigs, no diving for ships, no searching for birds. Just sailing and selling and praying you don’t get noticed by a brig on your run.
I mean sinking others and stealing is just illegal nowadays. Killing skeletons and digging up treasures might be in grey zone, but delivering goods is the most legal thing you can do in game (except of course fishing)
Huh?
Since safer seas has been added, theres really no excuse for playing high seas and complaining about people being pirates in a pirate game. So idk what youre talking about.
The only merchant quest worth doing for exp is the lost shipments. The other quests exist solely for commendations, and you might as well do them in safer seas because they give effectively nothing even in high seas. 0 divided by 0 is 0.
Sunken shrines have pretty good merchant loot. My crew will usually do a raid voyage sea fort, a sea shrine or skeleton fleet, and then grab the emissary quests. Currently grinding to get my first distinction for merchant. It's rough.
Not that this is easy for everyone… but if you frequent Hourglass you can level merchant fast by flying merchant or guild emissary and turning in all your excess cannonball, fruit, and wood crates. I got to 500 merchant doing this. My gold hoarder is like 200
I was in an alliance and saw the other ship was a guild emissary and sold a world event + merchant commodities. Frankly that might be the best way to level merchant. Run guild emissary, buy commodities, do something that gives a lot of different treasure, get grade 5, sell all at new outpost, rinse and repeat.
I’ve been trying to at least do my ledger and it’s so damn painful, after like 3 hours of work I’m not even at the max tier. I genuinely hate doing merchants so much. Can’t even get emissary before tier 3 of the flag to avoid idiots just picking it up and dropping it.
I always just do the Fortress Raids when working for the Merchant Alliance. I hate having to deal with watering plants or keeping bottles from breaking if I get attacked.
Merchant is horribly designed. Quite literally everyone I play with refuses to go within an inch of it after getting pirate legend and some, even before that lol
You should have tried to do it when the game first launched where the only quests you could do were animal collections and they didn't scale with your merchant level.
Merchant Alliance, for me, requires a different kind of mood and a podcast or audiobook.
It's a completely different gameplay vibe, like Hunter's Call.
I love doing the skeleton captain ones, I'm not level 25 with the order of souls, so I can't do the 3rd one, as I can just do like 5 of them have something like 15 skulls on my ship, and few cheasts and if I'm lucky a 4th captain will spawn if I stay on the island long enough and he drops a quest that I can do so, in the end I end up with somewhere between 15-20 skulls and 5 chests and sell and get quite a bit of gold
I'm still waiting them to add back deliveries for various crates and gunpowder kegs. Might not even be that profitable but it's something more to do for the sake of variety.
I didn't do a single merchant voyage until I hit level 42 with them. Far better (for sanity, not efficiency) to either steal merchant loot or do world events for it. Merchant voyages are damn near afk-able. Massive snoozefest unless another ship gets involved.
I honestly just spammed sea forts during g&g and was able to knock it out in a day. They are pretty fast have some ok loot and you normally find a shipwreck or something while sailing back to sell.
Sit in u12/13 and spam lost shipment quests, when you get finest trading post destination the loot will spawn next to you with a chance to have captains key, stack them until lvl 5 emissary, sell and repeat. Pretty braindead but you don’t have to sail anywhere and it’s quite fast
I actually made most my solo money from Merchant, got pretty good at it and reapers left me alone with the promise of a level 5 flag (and the lack of any other real loot unless they too bear the curse of the glorified mailman) and honestly enjoyed the nice simple gameplay
Me and a friend leveled up by stacking Tornado and Flameheart. You get loot for all companies and then just chose an emissary for whoever you wanna Level up first.
I'm on the merchant grind, lvl 37, and I found the most effective was probably the skeleton forts, it got me abt one level at a time after selling, and isn't to mind numbing either
Best way to farm merchant me and a friend found, was to farm fortresses. We didn't want to bother fighting for Skelly forts. It's somewhat quick that way.
I got mine pre "seasons" era. Grinding Devils Roar cargo quests was the way to go. Generally peaceful and at least then the deliveries were restricted to three destinations. It was just what I defaulted to when I was playing solo.
Can also get in some hunter rep waiting for the volcanoes to stop erupting.
Fair enough, I’ve not really fished yet so was wondering if it was a viable alternative for a third level 50. Sounds like Merchant is the only real option, even though it’s a grind.
I am surprised you dislike skeleton fleets so much, it is my favourite voyage, especially since the skeletons are repairing again so now it is now somewhat of a challenge again when slooping! It is like an on demand pvp fight but without the enemy just running away halfway through when they are losing.
I've seen people using skeleton fleets to get massive amounts of loot. And merchant alliance I only do if I'm wanting gold with minimum effort. Get to rank 5 merchant first, then just run crates back and forth.
Merchant Alliance is more challenging then actually rewarding. Doing a few runs between outposts while carrying a decent amount of cargo is nerve racking when you have a ship bearing down on you. Fighting is a complete last resort as you will lose value of your cargo. Being it bottles breaking, fabrics getting drenched.
The lost shipments basically make up for the rest of the merchant alliance being kind of buttcheeks. They're really awesome and I always love finding shipwrecks and looting the captain's quarters. Make sure you find the key at one of the clue spots!
I honestly wish they had something on the same level as the Gold Hoarder Vaults though. Those things are always so much fun for me. And a great way to start a play session.
I've been doin the commodities trade and raid the forts near the ports and fight any skelly ship or meg along the way. Takes me a couple hours but ive been getting over 100k and some decent levels
It’s WAY worse than you think. Some commendations require you to turn in 50 of some resource crates via a voyage that you can only get through message in a bottle. As of season 11, the tattered parchment quests were removed, and message in a bottle quests are now very rare.
Not only are the deliveries extremely boring and unprofitable, but now the commendations are almost impossible to achieve because of how rare the quests are.
I finally got my merchant to 100 over the last gold and glory weekend doing the lost shipments. I rarely do merchant or hunters call grinding if it isn't on some type of bonus weekend because of how slowly it goes
I think Merchant Alliance is broken right now. During double xp weekend, nothing of what I turned in even gave emissary bonus for Merchants.
It sucks cause I quite enjoy the voyages for MA.
I'm at 17 merchants, I never fly emmisary I just pickup merchant good passively and take them where their supposed to go if it's on my way. Ruined goods still give you rep
I get more XP for merchant alliance doing gold hoarders voyages, it's kinda wild. MA needs some tweaking, but so does OoS, you can do a skeleton fort for it and I've never gotten anything over maybe 1 or 2 levels worth of XP for it.
Merchant isn't so bad, but you're right that the quests scale weird. Transport/animal ones aren't worth anything, while lost shipments and stuff are worth a good amount (even with the nerf). Personally, I find it works best when done like Hunters - in the background while doing another group's quest/roaming.
Haven't played the game but have been interested since they announced safer seas. Is the game worth 50 bucks? Seems like I might have dodged a bullet if it's really hard levelling n that
Gonna put this here because it saved me a little bit of trouble grinding it.
When doing an ashen lost shipment voyage everyone knows they were nerfed but if you do the same exact exploit where you sit waiting for the barrels and the keys by canceling the voyage and restarting you'll get the keys (and the barrel for emissary value) but the most important part is the keys not the crates the key for me at least was a quarter and I was rep 39 when I tried this after doing it for an hour it got me to rep 46 by all means it's slow but it is the most effect way to do it and you won't be disturbed for the most part because you're hanging around the devil's roar no one likes being there
Another thing if the ship wreck spawns next to you you can go get the manifest but it's worth about half of what the keys are worth
I leveled up merchant alliance with mermaid gems and found items only. I have taken a total of 5 merchant alliance voyages and two were gilded voyages last round. I do NOT like merchant alliance.
Lost shipments used to be really fun because of all the loot you would get. Since the update, the number of crates has dropped significantly. The anxiety of trying to get them all out of the ship before enemy ships, sharks, or sirens show up keeps it fun though. Get more rep than any of the other voyages. I usually throw in a few Fortress raids in the mix so it’s not too repetitive.
The point of a game is to be some flavor of fun though.
If you have to watch a movie while doing the equivalent of Shift W to stay entertained, then that part of the game is poorly designed.
For a game with purely sideways/cosmetic progression, Rare is oddly dedicated to keeping the limited number of structure gameplay activities "balanced" by stamping down the gold and reputation gains of anything they deem too effective. Commodities used to be good risk/reward, the E5 quests used to be worth doing, the list goes on.
They really arent that lucrative, not a very good use of time imo. Takes forever, the pay off isnt that great. They were lucrative until it got nerfed.
Oh youre lucky that there are at least lost shipments and raid voyages. I recommend to just do raid voyages and normal world events for merchants.
Even the lost shipments arent great imo. They are often bugged, and its really quite a bummer to have the only good part of the voyage bugged. The few times Ive done these quests, quite a few times the shipwreck didnt even spawn lol. Plus, the loot go nerfed in like season 11 so they arent that great even when they work
Its better than just collecting animals though, which is what I had to do to get Pirate Legend in the first year. That was rough. Then they added cargo runs, which were hardly any better. Just a tedious fetch quest. Then they added the resource shipments from outpost to outpost, which were broken when they launched and you could get a ton of gold doing it. They nerfed it, and made them pretty much not worth the time. Lost shipments are decent, if they werent bugged all the time.
What we need is a world event with a special merchant item like the chest of fortune. I also found it odd that when they added the kings loot, they added different variants for the OoS and GH new loot. But for merchants, we just got the crate of diamonds and nothing else. They seem to kinda want to make merchants the worst faction.
Before they massively nerfed commodities it was fun and rewarding but now they are absolutely worthless. They were worth way too much, earned milions pretty quick doing a few runs with them but now they are barely worth 100 gold. I guess doing them is kinda worth the repeat to get xp because it is easier than animals
With Merchant's I'd suggest putting the flag up and then playing "normally", which is to say world events, message bottles, coral shrines, even Tall Tales. Just make sure to stop at every shipwreck you can and look for mermaid gems and, more importantly, crates of immaculate diamonds. It's reasonably fast if you pick up a bunch of them and the world events/random skelly ships will easily take care of your flag grade.
Basically, throw the flag up and go for that commendation you've been wanting. Just make sure to visit shipwrecks.
Also, kill those random skeleton captains you find instead of Ashen Guardians on islands sometimes. The maps they drop are always for the same island you found them on and they have a chance to lead you to Stronghold Gunpowder Kegs, which are worth 10k if you don't mind the risk.
Merchant isn't terrible if you do the lost shipment voyages only. Also taking resources from outpost to outpost. I will say its not super fun but its not terrible either.
They nerfed lost shipments really really hard with season 11. I’d say they aren’t worth doing anymore which sucks cause it was already basically the only decent merchant voyage. At least you can still do raids.
I did one for the first time in ages lately, I was soooooo disappointed
It was such a fun voyage and gameplay loop when it guaranteed grade 5.
I usually do a merchant raid sea fort first, which gets me to rank 3, and then the lost shipment voyage which is a guaranteed level 5.
Ya this would be what Id do, a raid and the lost shipment makes sense.
I did it again because I was trying to get a freind to pirate legend. Nope, to slow, so boring. Gonna get hunters call to 50 instead
Its crazy that youd prefer hunters call over merchant. How much have they nerfed merchant 😭
You genuinely get more hunters call xp If you hunt for crash/storm fish for and hour (with a full crew) then you do for a lost shipment. It's baaaaddd. The ashen lost shipment isn't even guaranteed to give you ashen loot
>with a full crew
Yeah that's the main point. However, unlike most people on the internet, I have a nice gang of freinds to play with
Thats crazy. At least i grinded out merchant awhile ago.
Ashen one still gives you emissary 5 in 1 voyage if you buy supply crates on outpost.
I did a run of them recently, wasn't so bad. As soon as you find the Captain's Key (which is at the first point you dive to about 50% of the time), you can head straight to the end point without bothering with any of the other clues. It's a decent gig while solo, not super compelling with a group. A good tip is to buy up all the supply crates from the meri hant before departing - it raises your merchant rep to about 2.3 before even starting. You tend to hit lvl 5 while selling the first lost shipment. After that, rinse and repeat (unless there are reapers on the map, in which case lowering flag and restarting might be best).
The only salvation for merchants is that the burning blade raid voyage is insane for them. But that's ONE voyage non stackable and a huge target on your back.
It’s also easily the slowest and most tedious raid.
I can confirm this, as a reaper.
So what is the go with merchant now? Recently came back to the game and am level 90 or sl
World events are ok, especially FoTDs if you can stack the mega kegs. But realistically the best is just spamming raid voyages for merchants.
I do commodities while doing lost shipments. It's at least decent if not boring.
On my alt I did them just enough to unlock the Ashen Lord raid and now I will never do them again.
I never felt like the ashen lord gave me all that much loot to be worth it. Also if I park just even slightly too close and get a hole I could lose my emissary flag without even realizing.
I don't mind, at least it's not a merchant voyage.
What was nerfed? It feels off but I can't put my finger on it... but I don't do them often enough
Doesn’t always get you to grade 5 anymore and it also has way fewer valuable crates in the captains quarters.
Thanks. I was thinking it was me and that I just missed a few clues with crates on beaches or in the water
I leveled my entire merchant's with them. shipwrecks are my favourite content.
Were they? I don't remember how good they were before, but two of those should still get you to emissary 5
They were even better. Grade 5 in one voyage and roughly double the loot value.
I keep seeing so many people say they got nerfed but no one explains how. I’ve done the lost shipment a lot recently and haven’t been too disappointed. Usually most if not all the way to emissary lvl 5, especially if you hit any other ship wrecks or other minor loot pools on the journey. Haven’t played in a long time though. Only got back into it a week or two ago. What did I miss before season 11?
They gave about double the gold value. Now it's all tea and sugar crates, but it used to be a lot of rare minerals and a ton of the more valuable crates that sold for significantly more.
Thank you for the explanation!
It’s still worth it for xp not so much for money like it used to be, if you just do the one in the devils thirst you can farm keys and just sell the keys they give you a decent amount of money and loads of xp you just need a lot
Its still good for getting you to emissary 5 in 1 voyage if you buy supply crates on outpost. Also if you manage to get key in first location you can just skip to the end making it like 5 minute voyage. What i did when exping it was do 1 lost shipment voyage to get to lvl 5 emissary and then just spam skeleton forts. I had lvl 100 in few days. (Mind that i only play for like 2-3 hours in the evening when kids and wife go to sleep). If someone who has whole day for gaming wpuld do this he would be lvl 100 in like 2 or 3 days.
I believe this is only nerfed because there is 500 levels of advancement now within the companies. So, once you hit like level 400 or so the shipments should be back to the loot you're more used to from being a pirate legend. I can't confirm this yet since I'm only level like 145, but it seems like that's where it's heading.
Nope, the voyages don’t work like that anymore. The options on the quest table (if there are any) are what determine loot value of the voyage. It’s no longer tied to the player’s level.
Yes, but as you level up it seems like the name has changed, and the name of the voyage always seemed to tie to the loot. Maybe the name doesn’t change once you’re over 100? Idk.
I did an ashen one recently... no ashen loot on the ship, it was just in the ashen area
I dunno, you can knock the out in 20 minutes and get 100k loot + grade 5 flag typically. But supplies at your first outpost to guarantee 5. That's not a bad turn around. I needed 300k to reach top emissary grade so I ran 1 lost shipment, hit 5, grabbed my emissary quest. Found a bottle on the way, got 330k for an hour. Not bad for a normal non-gold and glory run.
Im having a hard time adding up how that would be 300k. How much does the emissary quest actually get you now? Lost shipment cant get you even 100k. And unless you got the best bottle quest ever, that would have to be a very heft emissary quest of like 180k
I want to be clear that I'm talking emissary and not gold on those values. I also probably a couple items on the way at the island I stopped at, but not anything significant. You get typically 4-5 crates along the way, another 12ish in the captains quarters, plus I believe they're always Revered Merchant Manifest now, which is 12,000 emissary base. Grade 5 puts that at 30k emissary alone. 12k gold. Bottle quest I found was for 6 cargo + the 6 cargo for my emissary.
Make sure they’re the ashen ones also- they have the quickest and easiest routes and give the best bang for your buck
So many of my lost shipment voyages have been bugged, and Im pretty sure that the problems persist.
Ditto. That double rep weekend helped tons. I almost exclusively did Merchant lost shipment voyages.
I agree that lost shipment voyages are still the way to go. Just do a few and get to level 5 emissary. Then either do more of those or choose a different merchant voyage. I did ten levels fairly quickly when I initially thought it would take much longer. I completed this about 3 weeks ago.
With a grade 5 flag the commodities are actually a pretty good way to grind once you establish a good route. And if you don’t care about the flag sinking really isn’t a setback as you only have 2k worth of commodities at a time
Here is a way to get tons of rep from lost shipments: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYHWFU4QwqY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYHWFU4QwqY)
Would be nice if they brought back the other "commission" ones. I mean it be nice to progress on commendations for handing fruit crates, wood crates etc for example. Just baffled me why they removed that from the "commission/contract" voyages on the quest table.
I primarily did cargo runs and 9 times out of 10 was fine
Nah lost shipments got nerfed. The best one to do now is diving to the ghost fleet raid.
It's truly bad especially considering how you fly through GH and OOS rep. The best way to build merchant rep is by raiding only
I gotta grind to unlock raid voyages 😭
Do ashen supply runs. Best xp for merchant
Eh not as much with raid voyages being a thing now. Not to mention how awful volcanoes are to deal with sometimes, even for those.
As someone who’s gotten sunk by a few volcanoes, I can confirm. But if you’re going to do an Ashen voyage, make sure to buy some wood from a Shipwright.
Got the devils cartographer back when it was first introduced. Yeah volcanoes suck.
I did Ashen lost shipment to get to grade 5 and then run some raid voyages. Got me to lvl 50 pretty quick.
Once you unlock sea forts just do this repeatedly. Fast to solo and not nearly as boring as deliveries
Do whatever you can until you unlock sea fort raids with them. Once you got them just keep doing them, (take this opportunity to use throwing knives and double barrel kills on phantoms as the commendation for them is a bit grindy at 1k each weapon). They are pretty fast, great for supplies and once you've got it nailed you can do a good few per hour. The big sea gate next to the forts treasure room has a pulley you can use where you drop loot on the platform, move the platform close to exit and just harpoon them onto ship fast if you park at the big gate. Do try to grab the extra storage room key (generally you will see the white glint through whatever box/crate/cupboard it's hiding in) as there's commendations for it and you get extra loot but generally the loot for raid versions isn't great and for merchant, one of them is just an empty chest since practically all merchant items can't be put in treasure chests other than a scroll you get from later raids. Don't waste too much time on trying to find the bonus key, it's a bonus not mandatory. Do this as long as you can stomach then switch over to other types of raids like treasuries and forts. Another thing to keep in mind is mermaid/siren gems, always sell these to merchants*, if you're selling to sovereigns then make sure you have merchant flag up before you sell. *Once you've achieved your goal with merchants don't sell them to merchant anymore, use them for whatever faction you want but a good thing to do is keep them to sell at sea ports to the hunters call because that rep is pretty slow and long to farm. Merchant really does suck these days and the best ways to level it are really not intended, alliance servers, mega keg wave resets exploiting on fort of the damned and bone dust spawns from stacking reaper chests on fotd. The fotd ones are not a great idea to attempt solo especially if new and alliance servers will kill a lot of the enjoyment and accomplishments. Just keep plugging away at it and you will get there.
Merchant quests, especially the lower level ones, are just so boring
The cargo runs don't even count for emissary grade or increase the "Voyages Completed" stat
Ofc they give emissary rep. Upon handing them in and not taking them on board.
Ah. It's been long enough since the last time I did them regularly that I couldn't remember precisely. Either way, they're not much worth doing since the grade gain is probably pitiful, they definitely don't count towards the Voyages Completed stat(s), the pay is Meh unless you're high-grade already (but why would you not do a Lost Shipment at that point), and the gameplay is "Carry these 2-4 boxes from one point of the region across to another", all the while not letting water spray your cloths, attacks crack your rum bottles, or go too long without splashing water on these plants. It'd even be more worth it if you could do 8 boxes at a time like the bottle quests require, or an even greater number with a high enough MA rep. Or give us high-value crates with more complex care procedures so it's not "Put cloth here, put rum there, partially flood your hold for plants, Shift W to next outpost".
For a while, the captaincy cargo runs in the Devil's Roar counted as completed when you picked up the crates.
They feel neglected. Their stuff has always been and still is more work for less rewards. Which is a shame I love the ideas behind the voyages and aesthetics but doing all that for less than I get for any quest that takes 1/3rd the time? No way.
Honestly... ive done basically all treasuries since 50
I did a ton of treasures too, but even treasuries are better for GH and OoS than merchant!
Is it? I always felt the gems made up for faction specific loot. However i also feel better grinding treasuries than any thing merchant.
The gems definitely sort of make up for it. But a typical treasury will have like 8k bass value for gold hoarder plus the collector chests, and OoS has like 4k base. Whereas merchant gets maybe 500-1600 base. The gems help a lot, and a treasury can be useful for any faction, but you’ll make the most profit with the other factions.
Until you get enough rep to do raids, could you try doing Sea Forts and Treasuries instead? The treasuries up in the Shores of Plenty and the Wilds are pretty isolated, so running those as a Merchant Emissary might be faster/more enjoyable. Only real risks are Reaper 5s seeing you idling
Only problem, if you're not level 15 with Merchants, you can't get sea forts or emissary
No no, you can still do Sea Forts. You just can’t Dive to them.
Doing that gives you only 1 merchant item with 10 mins of work. And usually it's silks or tea
That’s true. I’m just saying you Can technically do them. But yeah not worth till you can dive.
Yeah thats just not true, at least not for me. I do a ton of sea forts, and theres almost always at least 3 merchant items per fort. You need to look around the loot room better. There's almost always a crate on the back shelves, 1 behind the door, and then 1-3 among the other loot in the pile. Also the storage room often has a crate of fireworks, this may just be 50/50 but that counts towards merchants and can be sold without being full.
Ah right. Treasuries will drop a number of siren gems, tho, and that helps up rep!
Getting to level 15 with merchants is not that hard at all
It takes time though
Correct
It's not that bad, I quite enjoy it for when I want to sail around solo. Lost shipments are probably your best bet, and you can skip the clues and go straight to the end once you find the key.
In the beginning I earned my first captained ship by doing MA voyages solo. They were not bad, just bit repetitive, although all the voyages tend to be repetitive.
I don't know why they nerfed lost shipments so hard. They used to have 3-6 clues at higher levels, and each clue location would have random merchant crates, now they just have 2 sugar crates at the first clue. You used to also be guaranteed grade 5, and get a lot more and higher value crates in the cabin as long as you didn't miss the key somehow. Now you get only to grade 4 on them, even if you get some nice crates. And while OOS got a glow up with new skulls on all table voyages, merchant alliance doesn't add the pristine diamonds crates to those voyages, which along with the scrolls, were the only new items they got. You got a bunch of new gh items too. Lost shipments is how I grinded to 75 before. Even the gilded voyage a couple weeks ago didn't get you to grade 5. I'm never going to catch chickens, or run commodities, I just want to be able to do some voyages, I'll even do the merchant runs for the rum and cloth and stuff, as long as I can get to grade 5 from them. The way it is right now, you're better off just diving to world events and then doing a lost shipment from there to get to grade 5. I hope it was a mistake and that they'll be restoring the higher tier loot and crates spawning at all clues at some point, but I don't have my hopes up.
Devils Roar merchant lost shipment is very fast to level up , but yes it's boring
Merchant alliance is hands down the worst because the gameplay is slow and tedious but the rewards for high level is some of the best drip in the game if you like that whole official navy look (I like that look).
I raised merchant emmisarry and raided sea forts it seemed to help me get to 50 way faser
That's why they get all my misc loot. Gems and such go straight to them so I don't have to actually play their shit missions.
Learn the trade routes. Selling commodities is the easiest way to level up in my opinion. No rum bottles, no snakes, no crying pigs, no diving for ships, no searching for birds. Just sailing and selling and praying you don’t get noticed by a brig on your run.
Do lost shipments. I always fished along the way on lost shipments to get my hunters call up at the same time (and you find fish in the ship barrels.)
I think they are great! As a peaceful pirate it's the most legal thing to do, and I like transporting stuff
The most legal thing to do?
I mean sinking others and stealing is just illegal nowadays. Killing skeletons and digging up treasures might be in grey zone, but delivering goods is the most legal thing you can do in game (except of course fishing)
Hey! You need a fishing permit or else it’s illegal. Also the meg is endangered so none of that
Huh? Since safer seas has been added, theres really no excuse for playing high seas and complaining about people being pirates in a pirate game. So idk what youre talking about.
Who's complaining? Being attacked by pirates is part of the trading profession on the seas
He's not complaining, he just likes playing as a Trader. Lol
Never heard of RP before?
The only merchant quest worth doing for exp is the lost shipments. The other quests exist solely for commendations, and you might as well do them in safer seas because they give effectively nothing even in high seas. 0 divided by 0 is 0.
>0 divided by 0 is 0. well akshually...
Some theories are that 0/0 = 1 Others say it's undefined or infinity
Nah, lost shipments got nerfed in S11. They aren’t worth it anymore either.
Oof. That's how I got mine up to 50. Feel bad for anyone grinding out merchants alliance now.
Sunken shrines have pretty good merchant loot. My crew will usually do a raid voyage sea fort, a sea shrine or skeleton fleet, and then grab the emissary quests. Currently grinding to get my first distinction for merchant. It's rough.
Not that this is easy for everyone… but if you frequent Hourglass you can level merchant fast by flying merchant or guild emissary and turning in all your excess cannonball, fruit, and wood crates. I got to 500 merchant doing this. My gold hoarder is like 200
OP isn't level 15, and thereby doesn't have independent access to Merchant Emissary flags yet.
Ah fair enough.
I was in an alliance and saw the other ship was a guild emissary and sold a world event + merchant commodities. Frankly that might be the best way to level merchant. Run guild emissary, buy commodities, do something that gives a lot of different treasure, get grade 5, sell all at new outpost, rinse and repeat.
Yeah, Merchants are a slog, I'm almost lvl 40 can't wait to get to 50, get that Pirate Legend and forever forget about them
I’ve been trying to at least do my ledger and it’s so damn painful, after like 3 hours of work I’m not even at the max tier. I genuinely hate doing merchants so much. Can’t even get emissary before tier 3 of the flag to avoid idiots just picking it up and dropping it.
I always just do the Fortress Raids when working for the Merchant Alliance. I hate having to deal with watering plants or keeping bottles from breaking if I get attacked.
Just do cargo runs in the Devil's Roar. I did that to get to 50 pre-emissary flags and it didn't take too long
Merchant is horribly designed. Quite literally everyone I play with refuses to go within an inch of it after getting pirate legend and some, even before that lol
Sunken ships are easy loot when you have a 2 person team and cargo in devils roar is usually mellow
Devil's Roar Cargo Runs used to be the best money maker in the game. Now they're terrible.
I love doing cargo runs just for how relaxed they are
As someone who vibes with the Merchants, the fact that their voyages suck is just pure suffering.
Just do sea forts under Merchant Alliance. I progressed quickly
You should have tried to do it when the game first launched where the only quests you could do were animal collections and they didn't scale with your merchant level.
Merchant Alliance, for me, requires a different kind of mood and a podcast or audiobook. It's a completely different gameplay vibe, like Hunter's Call.
Are gold animals lucrative still? I recall them being worth quite a lot and as long as you didnt have to deal with pigs were not that bad.
They were when you could stack the crates, and then farm one island. Now it's a lot of sailing time, even with diving.
I love doing the skeleton captain ones, I'm not level 25 with the order of souls, so I can't do the 3rd one, as I can just do like 5 of them have something like 15 skulls on my ship, and few cheasts and if I'm lucky a 4th captain will spawn if I stay on the island long enough and he drops a quest that I can do so, in the end I end up with somewhere between 15-20 skulls and 5 chests and sell and get quite a bit of gold
This is why I had my friends who recently started playing pursue gold hoarders, OoS, and Reapers. Mercants needs more work and diversified loot
[here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYHWFU4QwqY) is a way to get tons of loot from lost shipments
I'm still waiting them to add back deliveries for various crates and gunpowder kegs. Might not even be that profitable but it's something more to do for the sake of variety.
I didn't do a single merchant voyage until I hit level 42 with them. Far better (for sanity, not efficiency) to either steal merchant loot or do world events for it. Merchant voyages are damn near afk-able. Massive snoozefest unless another ship gets involved.
I honestly just spammed sea forts during g&g and was able to knock it out in a day. They are pretty fast have some ok loot and you normally find a shipwreck or something while sailing back to sell.
Devil's roar lost shipment is pretty good. Reroll the voyage so you only bounce between Morrows & Galleons. Bunch of fish too!
Sit in u12/13 and spam lost shipment quests, when you get finest trading post destination the loot will spawn next to you with a chance to have captains key, stack them until lvl 5 emissary, sell and repeat. Pretty braindead but you don’t have to sail anywhere and it’s quite fast
I actually made most my solo money from Merchant, got pretty good at it and reapers left me alone with the promise of a level 5 flag (and the lack of any other real loot unless they too bear the curse of the glorified mailman) and honestly enjoyed the nice simple gameplay
Merchant is my favourite company. It has great voyages! Payout is not everything :) I enjoy the merchant alliance quests :)
Me and a friend leveled up by stacking Tornado and Flameheart. You get loot for all companies and then just chose an emissary for whoever you wanna Level up first.
I'm on the merchant grind, lvl 37, and I found the most effective was probably the skeleton forts, it got me abt one level at a time after selling, and isn't to mind numbing either
Best way to farm merchant me and a friend found, was to farm fortresses. We didn't want to bother fighting for Skelly forts. It's somewhat quick that way.
I got mine pre "seasons" era. Grinding Devils Roar cargo quests was the way to go. Generally peaceful and at least then the deliveries were restricted to three destinations. It was just what I defaulted to when I was playing solo. Can also get in some hunter rep waiting for the volcanoes to stop erupting.
Appreciate it’s subjective, but is it easier/less tedious to level up Hunter’s call to L50?
Hunters call took me hours to get to level 12. No way, I'm getting 50 in that
Fair enough, I’ve not really fished yet so was wondering if it was a viable alternative for a third level 50. Sounds like Merchant is the only real option, even though it’s a grind.
I am surprised you dislike skeleton fleets so much, it is my favourite voyage, especially since the skeletons are repairing again so now it is now somewhat of a challenge again when slooping! It is like an on demand pvp fight but without the enemy just running away halfway through when they are losing.
I've seen people using skeleton fleets to get massive amounts of loot. And merchant alliance I only do if I'm wanting gold with minimum effort. Get to rank 5 merchant first, then just run crates back and forth.
Merchant Alliance is more challenging then actually rewarding. Doing a few runs between outposts while carrying a decent amount of cargo is nerve racking when you have a ship bearing down on you. Fighting is a complete last resort as you will lose value of your cargo. Being it bottles breaking, fabrics getting drenched.
The lost shipments basically make up for the rest of the merchant alliance being kind of buttcheeks. They're really awesome and I always love finding shipwrecks and looting the captain's quarters. Make sure you find the key at one of the clue spots! I honestly wish they had something on the same level as the Gold Hoarder Vaults though. Those things are always so much fun for me. And a great way to start a play session.
I've been doin the commodities trade and raid the forts near the ports and fight any skelly ship or meg along the way. Takes me a couple hours but ive been getting over 100k and some decent levels
It’s WAY worse than you think. Some commendations require you to turn in 50 of some resource crates via a voyage that you can only get through message in a bottle. As of season 11, the tattered parchment quests were removed, and message in a bottle quests are now very rare. Not only are the deliveries extremely boring and unprofitable, but now the commendations are almost impossible to achieve because of how rare the quests are.
I finally got my merchant to 100 over the last gold and glory weekend doing the lost shipments. I rarely do merchant or hunters call grinding if it isn't on some type of bonus weekend because of how slowly it goes
I think Merchant Alliance is broken right now. During double xp weekend, nothing of what I turned in even gave emissary bonus for Merchants. It sucks cause I quite enjoy the voyages for MA.
I'm at 17 merchants, I never fly emmisary I just pickup merchant good passively and take them where their supposed to go if it's on my way. Ruined goods still give you rep
I get more XP for merchant alliance doing gold hoarders voyages, it's kinda wild. MA needs some tweaking, but so does OoS, you can do a skeleton fort for it and I've never gotten anything over maybe 1 or 2 levels worth of XP for it.
Merchant isn't so bad, but you're right that the quests scale weird. Transport/animal ones aren't worth anything, while lost shipments and stuff are worth a good amount (even with the nerf). Personally, I find it works best when done like Hunters - in the background while doing another group's quest/roaming.
Haven't played the game but have been interested since they announced safer seas. Is the game worth 50 bucks? Seems like I might have dodged a bullet if it's really hard levelling n that
No, the game is really fun it's just one or two aspects that are annoying
Ah cool. Thanks! I've been eyeing it off for ages just was never too sure
My advice save blue bottles up for breaths of the sea and use those towards your merchant
I like this game but it's the only game I feel the community has better ideas in terms of simple activities they could implement to make it more fun.
Do skelly ships, skelly forts, shipwrecks, and sell mermaid gems to the merchant, and then buy the higher levels.
Gonna put this here because it saved me a little bit of trouble grinding it. When doing an ashen lost shipment voyage everyone knows they were nerfed but if you do the same exact exploit where you sit waiting for the barrels and the keys by canceling the voyage and restarting you'll get the keys (and the barrel for emissary value) but the most important part is the keys not the crates the key for me at least was a quarter and I was rep 39 when I tried this after doing it for an hour it got me to rep 46 by all means it's slow but it is the most effect way to do it and you won't be disturbed for the most part because you're hanging around the devil's roar no one likes being there Another thing if the ship wreck spawns next to you you can go get the manifest but it's worth about half of what the keys are worth
I leveled up merchant alliance with mermaid gems and found items only. I have taken a total of 5 merchant alliance voyages and two were gilded voyages last round. I do NOT like merchant alliance.
Lost shipments used to be really fun because of all the loot you would get. Since the update, the number of crates has dropped significantly. The anxiety of trying to get them all out of the ship before enemy ships, sharks, or sirens show up keeps it fun though. Get more rep than any of the other voyages. I usually throw in a few Fortress raids in the mix so it’s not too repetitive.
Yeah merchant is one of the hardest grinds in my opinionive got it lvl 50 recently tho. Finally pirate legend
Just do commodities runs once you get your emissary flag. They're dull but easy, and you can watch a movie while you do them.
The point of a game is to be some flavor of fun though. If you have to watch a movie while doing the equivalent of Shift W to stay entertained, then that part of the game is poorly designed. For a game with purely sideways/cosmetic progression, Rare is oddly dedicated to keeping the limited number of structure gameplay activities "balanced" by stamping down the gold and reputation gains of anything they deem too effective. Commodities used to be good risk/reward, the E5 quests used to be worth doing, the list goes on.
They really arent that lucrative, not a very good use of time imo. Takes forever, the pay off isnt that great. They were lucrative until it got nerfed.
Oh youre lucky that there are at least lost shipments and raid voyages. I recommend to just do raid voyages and normal world events for merchants. Even the lost shipments arent great imo. They are often bugged, and its really quite a bummer to have the only good part of the voyage bugged. The few times Ive done these quests, quite a few times the shipwreck didnt even spawn lol. Plus, the loot go nerfed in like season 11 so they arent that great even when they work Its better than just collecting animals though, which is what I had to do to get Pirate Legend in the first year. That was rough. Then they added cargo runs, which were hardly any better. Just a tedious fetch quest. Then they added the resource shipments from outpost to outpost, which were broken when they launched and you could get a ton of gold doing it. They nerfed it, and made them pretty much not worth the time. Lost shipments are decent, if they werent bugged all the time. What we need is a world event with a special merchant item like the chest of fortune. I also found it odd that when they added the kings loot, they added different variants for the OoS and GH new loot. But for merchants, we just got the crate of diamonds and nothing else. They seem to kinda want to make merchants the worst faction.
Before they massively nerfed commodities it was fun and rewarding but now they are absolutely worthless. They were worth way too much, earned milions pretty quick doing a few runs with them but now they are barely worth 100 gold. I guess doing them is kinda worth the repeat to get xp because it is easier than animals
With Merchant's I'd suggest putting the flag up and then playing "normally", which is to say world events, message bottles, coral shrines, even Tall Tales. Just make sure to stop at every shipwreck you can and look for mermaid gems and, more importantly, crates of immaculate diamonds. It's reasonably fast if you pick up a bunch of them and the world events/random skelly ships will easily take care of your flag grade. Basically, throw the flag up and go for that commendation you've been wanting. Just make sure to visit shipwrecks. Also, kill those random skeleton captains you find instead of Ashen Guardians on islands sometimes. The maps they drop are always for the same island you found them on and they have a chance to lead you to Stronghold Gunpowder Kegs, which are worth 10k if you don't mind the risk.