Rare desperately needs to address these two pieces of content. They are neglected to the point that it takes hours to get a single point of progress on the commendations.
Bottle quests: You need to find and complete a total of 250 voyages that can only be found in random bottle spawns, and then only a small percentage of those. And when you're down to trying to complete one particular commendation, finding that one voyage in all the random possibilities is going to be absolutely infuriating.
Gifts: Humble gifts aren't too hard to find, but I haven't seen a generous gift in months. And then there's the trouble with actually giving them and getting them turned in. You have to be on the server when the other party turns them in, and multiple times I've handed gifts off to other crews only to be server merged and watch them disappear from the map, costing me commendation points.
I honestly don't have good suggestions on fixing these issues. But at present, there's not even a meaningful way to intentionally advance these commendations. In almost 4,000 hours of gameplay, I've barely moved the needle on these things because when they were easily available, I didn't grind at them and now find them almost impossible to see any progress at all. I've completed all commendations for Gold Hoarders and Reapers. I'm five voyages from doing the same for Order of Souls. Merchants, these bottle voyages are the last thing I have left. The same goes for the Mercenary Voyages set of commendations and gifts. This isn't the Shrouded Ghost. We don't need a long list of commendations with no viable means for people to complete except "wander around for thousands of hours and hope."
