Merchant voyages

Agreed. I've seen lots of threads on this subject recently and I totally agree. I went searching for message in a bottle the other day. I checked almost all of the ancient isles and shores of plenty collecting every bottle and journal I could find. I filled 2 wheels of stashed quests with not one of the relevant merchant ones.

There's been lots of great suggestions regarding how to improve the situation. I'm quite partial to adding them to the Merchant Emissary quest. The current quest is somewhat underwhelming and having a few more Merchant V flags in the world certainly can't be a bad thing.

I also quite like the idea of increasing the number of items that each quest requires. Currently when I get a cannonball quest, I got to the relevant outpost, collect the crate, buy a full crate from the merchant, transfer the balls and sell. Super easy. Imagine the quest required 5 crates of cannons. It would actually require some moderate effort to gather the requisite supplies. Same with the wood and fruit. Having to carry multiple gunpowder kegs to deliver would add a nice bit of danger to the quest also,.

@itz-majman sagte in Merchant voyages:

They were always crazy rare except the Gunpowder one. I liked the fact it took time to get them but seems like Rare is bending the knee and will make them easier to get in a near future, which I think is the wrong move since people tend to complain about things that requires you to spend a lot of time to complete and Rare listens (too often) and changes it.

Its much harder now than before season 11.
They should revert all the merchant changes they implemented in season 11 and everything would be fine, but right now its pure agony.
I wish i had done it before season 11, would have been soooo easy.

@itz-majman sagte in Merchant voyages:

@dermasterbob

Why is it harder now than prior to S11? I actually don't remember what happened at that point

They removed the voyages from barrels, so you would find way more of them overall.
I remember finding at least one every day without looking for them, now i find one every week with aktively looking.
So before S11 you could serverhop and look for the voyages at outposts to grind them, which was very easy, but i did other things at that time sadly.
Then there's the kegs that were removed from animal voyages.
They had up to 8 kegs per voyage and kegs could therefore be completed in one day, which now takes at least months.

So for the crates and kegs you now have to actively look for 250 quests via messages in a bottle and mysterious jurnals, instead of looking for 150 barrel quests half afk while serverhopping.
The chances of finding one were propably the same but the number of quests you found with that method was much greater than what it is now and you need 100 more for kegs.
So more quests you need to find plus less quests you can find.
More work for a lower quantity of quests that can be found.
Thats why many people say its nigh impossible.

Other things that are now harder with merchants are:
Cargo
Every cargo quest now has 4 instead of 8 items, so getting the crates you need now takes at least twice as long.
You have to do at least 300 quests for that now, if you get the exact items you need every single time.

Animals
Max animals per quest reduced to 4 and they made it that the cages spawn on the island.
That also makes it take at least twice as long to get the animals and unstackable.
Before you could get as many cages as you wanted from the merchant, get as many animals as you can and vote quests untill they are all sold.
You need to do 150 quests for this now, if you get the exact animal you need every time.

Edit: Rare also remooved a long lasting exploit with which you could also stack as much cargo on one island as you wanted.
That one was in the game since release untill S11.

I think maybe it should be a grade 5 quest instead of what you get now as all the grade 5's give you is the same old stuff just more of it.

@dermasterbob thanks for the in depth information :)