I believe Merchant Alliance is one of, if not the most, boring trading company in Sea of Thieves. Every other kind of trading company requires players to go on voyages where they have to solve some kind of puzzle, fight some kind of enemy, etc. Whereas Merchant voyages are almost exclusively fetch-quests: bring valuable object from NPC 1 to NPC 2 elsewhere in the Sea of Thieves.
Lost Shipments have some degree of puzzle-ness to them, I agree, but you can easily read the coordinates/destination of where the next clue is by watching for key words in the clue papers you find. With the exception of finding loot to "sell" to an NPC, such as finding animals to put in cages, the greatest challenge to most Merchant voyages is sailing the distance from Point A to Point B.
Additionally, Merchants are the least "fantasy" of all the trading companies; there is no magic, mystery, or colorful depth to them, like with the other trading companies. They do not serve an avatar of avarice in the shape of a skeleton lord. They do not channel the arcane arts to peer into the memories of the dead. They do not roam the oceans hunting dangerous, enormous monsters. They do not offer an exclusive meeting place for pirates of special renown, nor do they reward pirates who are particularly bloodthirsty.
They're just... merchants. Regular businesswomen and businessmen of the sea. Their mercenaries sail non-magical cargo across the sea, to sell them to non-magical NPCs, to turn a profit. Every other trading company in the game has a curse, except for merchants. This, I think, is the best evidence I can indicate to that the Merchants never try to be so adventurous that they risk encountering a magic curse. Well, unless you count the Curse of Poor Eyesight, which, if you look at the spectacles on the noses of every Merchant Alliance representative, seems to be a blight almost as pervasive as the Shores of Gold Curse afflicting all the Gold Hoarders representatives.
With this in mind, I believe the Merchant Alliance has to become more adventurous, more magical, and more colorful, if it is to remain as exciting, significant and relevant as the other trading companies in the Sea of Thieves, especially as the Sea of Thieves continues to become more exciting and magical. I have 6 concepts (3 concepts and 3 sub-concepts) in mind, which I believe can invigorate the Merchant Alliance. Let me know what you guys think of my ideas!
Concept 1: Fish Tanks!
The Hunter's Call love fish. They love for their emissaries to capture fish for them to eat, to sell, and to hang up on the wall. But surely, a stuffed dead fish can't be the only decorative use for the unique sealife of the Sea of Thieves? Surely, there are customers in the Sea of Thieves, and maybe even beyond, who'd take an interest in having live specimens of these creatures decorating their home? The Merchant Alliance sees the demands of the market, and they act to meet it!
Fish Tanks would be like snake/pig/chicken cages, but made out of glass, and used (obviously) for caging fish!
Fish Tanks can only be found randomly, sitting on beaches across the Sea of Thieves. They are quite rare (slightly more rare than coral messages in bottles, maybe?).
While holding a fishing rod, players can attach the glass cage to their fishing rod, and lower it into a body of water. It will take longer for the line to go taught (since water will have to "accumulate" in the tank), as well as for the player to reel in this line (the tank attached to the line is heavier because its full of water).
However, once the tank is full of water, it can now be filled with caught, uncooked fish (maximum 5 fish), and be sold to the Merchant Alliance! When sold with fish inside, the total gold and reputation value a player would ordinarily receive from the Hunter’s Call for all the fish inside the fish tank, will instead be paid out, in equal amounts, in gold and reputation value from the Merchant Alliance. This would help make items as plentiful and unique as fish have more uses than as meat to sell exclusively to the Hunter's Call for gold, reputation progress, and commendations.
But be careful! The tank has slightly more durability than a Crate of Rum. If it takes too much damage, or rattles too much, the tank will break and all the fish inside will be lost for good! A high risk, high reward method of selling fish to earn gold, and level up your Merchant Alliance ranking!
Concept 2: New Emissary Quests!
Merchant Alliance emissary quests, for players who reach Grade 5, are famously boring and lackluster: delivering normal crates of goods from NPC to NPC. To remedy this, I propose 3 new Grade 5 emissary-exclusive voyages, to replace the existing emissary voyages. After all, any pirate can be trusted to find a chicken, sail a piece of cargo across the ocean, or scavenge a shipwreck. It takes pirates of special dedication to the Merchants' cause to undertake 3 voyages from the following 3 voyage types: A Search for Bewitched Beasts, A Search for Frightful Flora, and A Search for Secret Spirits! The unusually high amount of gold received for these emissary voyages is a testament to the rarity of their objectives, and should act as a similar incentive to do Merchant voyages to reach Grade-5 emissary as Hunter's Call currently does with its Ancient Meg hunts.
Subconcept 1: A Search for Bewitched Beasts!
The Hunter's Call are interested in the magical monsters of the Sea of Thieves. Dangers ranging from as big as a Kraken to as small as a Wild Boar. However, what about the beasts who aren't dangerous? Exotic animals, warped by the magic in the Sea of Thieves, that wouldn't taste good in a frying pan, but which a collector or zoologist would pay a pretty penny to have for themselves? Such interested parties would know of the Merchant Alliance's reputation for handling animals with a level of care the Hunter's Call rarely shows, and would enlist their services to find these mythical animals in the Sea of Thieves!
However, the Merchant Alliance can't just trust any pirate to go looking for creatures as rare and valuable as these. Only players who have reached Merchant Alliance emissary grade 5 would have proven themselves to track down these Bewitched Beasts.
For these voyages, players would be given maps with the location of an island where one Bewitched Beast was last seen, which they would have to travel to in order to find the Bewitched Beast. On the island, the player's map would indicate the radius within which they would have to look to find the Bewitched Beast. There are 3 different types of Bewitched Beasts for which a player may receive an emissary quest to find: Roaring Rooster, Phantom Python, and Winged Pig.
The Roaring Rooster would be the most common Bewitched Beast for a player to receive a Search for Bewitched Beasts emissary quest for. A chicken who pecked too close to a Chest of Rage, the Roaring Rooster would look like a black-and-red feathered chicken, with a beak and talons made of brimstone crystals. The Roaring Rooster would behave like a normal chicken, except that it would loudly screech in distress when carried in a chicken crate, alerting everyone around of its carrier's presence.
The second-rarest Bewitched Beast for a player to receive a Search for Bewitched Beasts emissary quest for, would be the Phantom Python. A cunning creature who managed to slither its way out of the Sea of the Damned, this enormous snake would look like it was wearing the Ghost curse. To avoid being sent back to the Sea of the Damned, the Phantom Python would turn invisible whilst away from the light of the sun, or the light of a lantern. At night, pirates could find the Phantom Python by following the groove-like snake tracks left behind in the ground behind the huge, heavy snake. By shining a lantern near the source of the tracks, the Phantom Python would appear for a few minutes and be able to be captured with a snake cage. Although unusually docile for a snake, after being away from a source of light for a few minutes, the Phantom Python would restore its supernatural camouflage. Players must remember to either sell the snake cage with the Phantom Python inside of it while the sun is up, or shine a lantern on the cage before selling it. Otherwise, the Merchant Alliance representative will assume they are being sold an empty snake cage, and pay the players a far lower amount of gold and reputation progress than expected! Don't bother trying to convince the Merchant representative that there was, in fact, a snake in the snake cage they bought. Their eyesight may be bad, but not that bad!
The rarest of all Bewitched Beasts for a player to receive a Search for Bewitched Beasts emissary quest for, would be the Winged Pig. This pig is merely a myth, with few living souls believing it really exists. However, if a player goes to the radius in which the Winged Pig was seen, and holds aloft a banana in their hands, a creature with miniature wings attached to its back (like in the Red Bull commercials) will fly down out of the sky towards them. If they player disturbs the Winged Pig as it feeds on the fruit, by moving or interacting with anything else during the 10 second window during which it eats, the Winged Pig will fly away and be gone forever! However, if the Winged Pig remains undisturbed, the banana will be gone from the player's inventory, and the Winged Pig will form a strong and emotional bond with the generous pirate! From then onwards, they will fly around the player who fed them, following them wherever they go, like an additional pet! But watch out, the Pig has the same healthbar as a regular pig, and so can be killed! To hide the Pig somewhere where it'll be safer than at the side of a pirate, a player can interact with the Pig using a pig cage to place the pig inside. Although the Pig can still be killed inside the cage, the Winged Pig can be sold now that it's inside the cage.
The Roaring Rooster would sell for 8,000 gold, the Phantom Python would sell for 15,000 gold, and the Winged Pig would sell for 35,000 gold.
Subconcept 2: A Search for Frightful Flora!
This voyage would work similarly to the Search for Bewitched Beasts emissary quests: the player would get a map of an island, and are expected to search within a radius for their objective. However, unlike Bewitched Beasts, these magically-altered plants tend to do a better job of blending in with their environment. So, for the benefit of the players searching for them, the map would include a picture of the plants they are looking to find, uproot, and sell. There are 3 different types of Frightful Flora for which a player may receive an emissary quest to find: Bush of Blackening, Herb of Ill Winds, and Flower of Fantasy.
The Bush of Blackening would be the most common Frightful Flora for a player to receive a Search for Frightful Flora emissary quest for. Cursed as a seedling to be made entirely of gold, this plant is worth 30,000 gold! That is, if it were left in the ground. Once this plant is uprooted, rust begins to gradually appear on its leaves every 10 minutes. The more the Bush of Blackening darkens and loses its luster, the less valuable it becomes! Players must race against time to sell this Frightful Flora to the Merchant Alliance, before it totally rusts over, and becomes worth 30 gold instead!
The second-rarest Frightful Flora for a player to receive a Search for Frightful Flora emissary quest for, would be the Herb of Ill Winds. Drinking in foul magics, this plant expels the same aroma as the buttocks of a pirate being used as a Horn of Fair Winds! Any pirate who gets too close will feel as if they've swallowed a mountain of bait, endlessly plaguing them with vomiting, obscured vision and general discomfort. A good thing the spectacles worn by the Merchant Alliance representatives shuts their noses, because otherwise they'd never buy the Herb of Ill Winds for 15,000 gold.
The rarest of all Frightful Flora for a player to receive a Search for Frightful Flora emissary quest for, would be the Flower of Fantasy. Possessed by mysterious, shadowy magic, this plant causes players in proximity to hallucinate. Sights of unmoving pirates standing all around, along with sounds of cannonfire and gunfire, disturb the senses of any pirate nearby. But not to worry! A bucket of water thrown on the face will quickly snap any player out of their delirium. At least temporarily. Is a Frightful Flora worth 40,000 gold worth the risk of insanity? The Merchant Alliance seems to think so.
Subconcept 3: A Search for Secret Spirits!
For years, the Merchant Alliance believed they held a monopoly on maritime trade in the Sea of Thieves. However, a recent discovery has revealed other, independent dealers in the Sea of Thieves, who were secretly selling liquor of a magical variety! Their operation betrayed, these dealers have stalled their trade routes, and hidden their unique brews in stashes across the Sea of Thieves, waiting for the day they can continue carrying out their business in secret again. Although the extent of this discreet operation is yet to be fully uncovered, the Merchant Alliance has found clues to the locations of their secret stashes of Secret Spirits!
Like the other two emissary voyage types, Searches for Secret Spirits would give players a map of a particular island, and a radius within which to look for the stash of Secret Spirits. The stash would be buried underground, with wooden boards covering it. Players would have to destroy these boards, and then dig up the Secret Spirits. There are 4 different types of Secret Spirits for which a player may receive an emissary quest to find: Brandy of Plenty, Ancient Ale, Wilds Wine, and Rum of the Roar. Unlike the previous 2 emissary quest types, these boards indicating the location of stashes of Secret Spirits can spawn randomly, yet rarely, on islands around the Sea of Thieves. Furthermore, there is an equal chance to find any of these 4 types of Secret Spirits: none of them are statistically more rare than any other.
The Brandy of Plenty is a water-colored liquid, personally brewed and enchanted by the aforementioned mysterious dealers themselves. Kept inside of a keg-like barrel, the Brandy of Plenty is known to rapidly become more "plentiful" if it experiences sharp impacts. Therefore, the barrel can take damage just like a Crate of Rum. Although the Brandy of Plenty has a bigger healthbar than the Crate of Rum, if the barrel takes enough damage, it will break and become worthless. But more importantly, pirates should be mindful of this when keeping the Brandy of Plenty on their ship, because if the barrel breaks, then "plentiful" quantities of magic liquor will instantly fill their vessel with water up to its mid-deck. No matter how many holes the vessel has, nor if it is a large Galleon or a small Sloop. The crew will be literally swimming in alcohol! Perhaps that's why the Merchant Alliance is content to pay 25,000 gold for this delicate, dangerous cargo. There are worse ways to drown, after all. The Brandy of Plenty can only be sold in the Shores of Plenty. Stashes of Brandy of Plenty can be found anywhere on the map except for the Shores of Plenty.
Ancient Ale, the scholars say, is perhaps the first alcoholic beverage to ever be brewed in the world, helping to enrich the sense of community and freedom possessed by long-gone civilizations. Produced by the Ancients and magically cursed after their passing, Ancient Ale is an enormous stone crate, which sits inside of a wooden carrier with 2 pairs of handles on either side. If only 1 player carries the crate, the side of the crate not being carried will "drag" along the ground, making transporting the Ancient Ale take a while (it is possible to jump while dragging the Ancient Ale, making some degree of mobility still possible). If 2 players carry the crate, with 1 player taking the handles on each side, the Ancient Ale can be carried at the same speed as normal loot can. The Merchant Alliance discourages pirates from trying to pry open the stone crate to drink its contents, lightening their load. If the pirate can resist the urge for long enough to sell this artefact of history, the Merchant Alliance will pay 40,000 gold for it. No drink in the world is finer than this perfectly-preserved beverage, stolen long ago from the ruins of the Ancients by those shady dealers. Ancient Ale can only be sold in the Ancient Isles. Stashes of Ancient Ale can be found anywhere on the map except for the Ancient Isles.
Wilds Wine is a drink as temperamental as the region in which it is brewed and enchanted. Stored within a keg-like barrel, human contact has a mysterious effect on both the Wilds Wine and its container. As soon as a pirate picks up the barrel, the Wilds Wine will begin to rapidly age, increasing its value over time. Left completely untouched, Wilds Wine's initial value is 5,000 gold. However, over a period of 2 hours, this Secret Spirit will achieve a value of 25,00 gold! But how can a pirate tell how old the vintage of the Wilds Wine is? Unless, of course, they taste it... wrong! The barrel itself changes color as its contents age, with with every 5,000 gold added to the Wilds Wine's value changing its barrel's hue; white, orange, red, then purple. How the dealers responsible for making it managed to avoid aging the wine whilst transporting it during their operation across the Sea of Thieves, must be some kind of trade secret. Wilds Wine can only be sold in the Wilds. Stashes of Wilds Wine can be found anywhere on the map except for the Wilds.
Finally, Rum of the Roar. Discreetly distilled amongst the blistering heat and danger of the Devil's Roar, this beverage is enchanted to be boiling hot! This will cause any pirate who picks up the keg-like barrel containing it to take damage over time, as if they were sitting in boiling water. In return for this Secret Spirit, and the pain and suffering involved in transporting it, the Merchant Alliance will pay out 27,000 gold. No, you will not get a better deal elsewhere. One can only assume the liquor cools down after the barrel gets opened by its buyer. Rum of the Roar can only be sold in the Devil's Roar. Stashes of Rum of the Roar can be anywhere on the map except for the Devil's Roar.
Concept 3: New Commendations!
As part of these new concepts for emissary quests and so on, and as an additional way to invigorate the Merchant Alliance, here are some new commendations I came up with, as well as rewards to chase after for getting them!
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"Breaking Trust for Greater Depravity (comes with title "Betrader"): sell a Cargo crate stolen from a ship flying merchant alliance emissary flag.",
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"Defender of Trade Routes (comes with title "Merchant of Death"): sink 300 ships whilst flying a Merchant Alliance emissary flag.",
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"Trader of Boom-Boxes (comes with title "Gun Runner"): sell 300 ammo boxes whilst flying a Merchant Alliance emissary flag.",
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"Allianced Alliance (comes with title: "The Savvy"): form an alliance with another ship flying a Merchant emissary flag whilst flying a Merchant emissary flag 200 times.",
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"Decorative Swimmers: sell 200 Fish Tanks.",
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"Touch of the Beast (comes with Chimera Curse: similar to the appearance of Davy Jones from Pirates of the Carribean: body parts would resemble the body parts of chickens, snakes and pigs. Has relevance to the deliveries of animals Merchants make): sell 500 Bewitched Beasts to the Merchant Alliance.",
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"Animal Lover (comes with Zookeeper Shipset: a figure head with a chicken, pig and snake on it, and the rest of the ship is a nice mix of pink, purple and white, to represent all animals): sell 700 Bewitched Beasts to the Merchant Alliance."
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"Tree Hugger: do a Search for Frightful Flora 200 times."
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"Liquor Connoisseur: do a Search for Secret Spirits 200 times."
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"Merchant Most Exotic (comes with title: "Merchant of Cursed Cargo"): Achieve the "Animal Lover", "Tree Hugger" and "Liquor Connoisseur" commendations."
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