I like collecting animals for the Merchants. Even with all the new content (which I enjoy and participate in), I'm still going for those Animal Delivery titles.
It can be as challenging as any of the Tall Tales, since there are so many variables and woe to the sailor who tries doing this with an open crew.
If you don't have a mic or speak a different language than yer mates, the radial speech doesn't have helpful phrases like: "Let's look for chickens," or "Please feed the pig" or "Please stop killing the animals after I've caught them."
You land on an island and they don't have what you need, your crew lose the baskets, your crew picks a fight with a passing ship, and your chickens get cannonballed, your crew puts your own snakes behind you as a prank.
Along with all of the usual dangers of the krakenverse.
On a recent run, I thought I'd convinced someone to stick around and help me get that one last golden pig, but they just took the crate into the hills and logged off.
So, I was going to be a pig shy of the contract.
That sounds like a good pirate insult, by the way, "First mate's not too bright, is he? A pig shy of a contract, you might say."
From traveling and from an adventure with some snakes and because I got distracted by an Ashen Guardian, there was only a day left on the contract, and though I knew where I could find some pigs, I had nothing to keep one in.
It would definitely be helpful, by the way, to be able to buy coops, crates, and baskets. They should really be considered as another source of cosmetic. Would love to scoop up a Red Plumed Chicken in my Deep Ocean Crawler Coop. Or to just be able to buy them at all.
As it is, losing a crate is the same as someone running off with the crab totem or whatever, the whole mission is scuttled. Which... is part of the thrill. I get it. But...
So, there I was on an island full of pigs and nothing to hold them in, contract expiring... when I saw something that wasn't a rock nestled in with some rocks.
Wandered over there, and... it was a crate. A pigsmas miracle. I absolutely could not believe it. A random crate on an island exactly when I needed it.
Had it been left by another pirate? The island was full of pigs, so maybe.
The game spawns crates, coops, and baskets all over, but rarely do you get the one that matches the beast that goes in it. It feels.
Did I manifest it with my longing? Why was it there?
I felt the same elation as when I see a Skellie Galleon sinking or watch a fort captain explode into a key. Finding that crate unexpectedly was as marvelous as anything that's ever happened in all me pirate life.
Sold the porky fellow, his belly full of pomegranates, and got the Voyage Complete letterbox. So happy.
To think, I only need to do this a few hundred more times! What other pleasures, surprises and miracles await!
