Why was athena thieves haven voyage removed?

Easy to complete but also easy to steal

Time consuming for a voyage that didn’t really offer a lot. It gave you Athena stuff but you were taking home more gems than anything

High predictability made it too obvious/juicy a target. Rare must have noticed that the ratio of people completing that voyage to the amount of people turning in stolen athena loot from said voyage was too heavily skewed. Add the high ambush rate to the long voyage time and you quickly find the meta 'Least worth it' quest standing out by a mile. Not entirely sure what the intention was for a high-predictability voyage like that on inception, but the reality must have been so far removed from it that it got nixed.

@schwammlgott

Hmm, i will try one later today then :)

@d3adst1ck said in Why was athena thieves haven voyage removed?:

....They designed the Thieves Haven run as an ambush point on purpose.

And it was glorious!

Player metrics on it were extremely low. It was boring, repetitive and gave extremely low value on Athena rep and rewards for being an "Athena" voyage.

Grinding it was the only really plausible way to get up to grade V on your emissary instead of doing the voyage of legends, and it cost doubloons on top of that which were a finite resource compared to gold.

Once the Legend of the Veil was released it dropped to nearly zero...and honestly no one missed it.

Plus, digs on Thieves' Haven suck.

@thegrimpreacher

Nice response. The grade 5 u mentioned, and then theres the ghost shipset achievements. I forgot the niches that led to the voyage being useful.

I disagree with the digs tho, i like that. probabily because i dont like sailing long distances when solo. Staying on one island and gathering everything possible there is neuron activation for me.

Athena thieves haven was THE way to go for becoming PL before the veil came out.

It was boring, repetitive, but at least easy doable with solo slooping. And man how good did I get finding those treasure spots, how good did I get in reading the maps xd

RIP Thieves Haven Quest, you will be missed.

Then again, I am glad they have better quests now.

@wujuwarrior1375 the fortress health scales with ship size you can very easily solo a veil if you know what you're doing and I could have a bias but I kinda like the costume being exclusive

@ghost-of-ronin

Costume?

@wujuwarrior1375 you got a unique costume for completing an amount of Thieves Haven runs I forgot how many completions were needed but the costume is called Legendary Treasure Serker Costume and if memory servers it was one of if not the 1st costume added to the game.

@thegrimpreacher said in Why was athena thieves haven voyage removed?:

Plus, digs on Thieves' Haven suck.

This was the problem. If the digs where a little less sucky and the loot more of a pay out....

@whitestag1992 said in Why was athena thieves haven voyage removed?:

High predictability made it too obvious/juicy a target. Rare must have noticed that the ratio of people completing that voyage to the amount of people turning in stolen athena loot from said voyage was too heavily skewed. Add the high ambush rate to the long voyage time and you quickly find the meta 'Least worth it' quest standing out by a mile. Not entirely sure what the intention was for a high-predictability voyage like that on inception, but the reality must have been so far removed from it that it got nixed.

That was one of the design goals, to create more ambush scenarios.

It was introduced to be a temporary event, then was made permanent because of the lack of variety in athena voyages.

I assume that when it came to the voyage rework, it no longer made sense for it to cost dubloons, and that without the dubloon cost, it was too rife for exploitation.

A common speed running strategy back in the day, was to leave 2-3 crew members on Thieves Haven to do all the digs, while a single galleon/brig pilot raced to different islands for the riddles.

Doing that same speed run strategy, without the dubloon cost, means that it's far too easy to stack gems, trinkets etc.

Thieves Haven Runs used to stand out later in development, because they had Athena Trinkets added, but with standard Athena Voyages adding trinkets, the interest in them dwindled.

So it was likely a combination of factors.

1. Thieves Haven Runs only remaining purpose is easy ambushes or cheesing the grind (especially if you sold gems to sea posts).
2. Athena Voyages now had trinkets, making it less unique.
3. Dubloon costs going away made them too attractive gold/rep wise, but also boring.
4. They helped to create the image that Athena Voyages were some of the least interesting voyages available.

I'd like to see Thieves Haven Runs return, but in a juiced up community time limited voyage, the same way as they were introduced.

That high-risk smuggling run feel, is what they were designed for and what made them great. And now with the limited voyage menu, they have the proper way of handling it.

@ghost-of-ronin

I forgot. I think you get that one from doing 30 legendary voyages now.