@atomictoyrobot
There are 2 ways to get to grade 5 athena quickly.
(1) The fastest way: If complete the Fort of Fortune and you do all 11 digs, as well as put the athena kegs on your boat, it will guarantee that you get to grade 5. Not only are you getting grade 5, but you also have a lot of the athena items that you need to sell in order to get a good amount of reputation as well as commendations.
The cons of this strategy is that in order for you to do it quickly, you kind of NEED 4 people to do it as fast as possible. It is also a very big risk to reward because you are at the fort for upwards of 30 minutes meaning that anyone can come over and try to attack you. High risk because anyone can come find you and kill you, but very high reward in the fact that you can get grade 5 in as fast as 40 minutes.
(2) The safest way: Do the Thieves Haven Runs that the girl right outside the tavern sells. You will have to do 2 of these quests in order to get grade 5 athena, but they are MUCH safer compared to the FoF because you are at the bottom of the map away from everybody, and there's not a big skull in the sky that entices people to come over to you. The best way to do these voyages is to have at least 1 friend on your ship with you. The voyage has 5 parts. 3 digs and 2 riddles alternating between the two types.
What you do is you send someone off to Thieves Haven to do the dig missions, and they stay there until chapter 5. Then you have your other friend do the riddles when they come up. Having 1 person staying on the boat doing riddles, and having 1 person staying on Thieves Haven doing the digs allows the quest to be completed as fast as possible. This strategy is very low risk / medium reward. The medium reward being the fact that it takes at least a good hour+ in order to do 2 Thieves haven run voyages. But it it definitely the safest way to get to grade 5 athena.
