Messages in bottles, Merchant distinction

Drew Stevens said that they are working on a fix, but noone knows when thats going to be implemented.
I hope it will be soon, but the first time Rare said theyll look into it was in Season 11, so im not convinced it will be any time soon.

They've become increasingly rare since the introduction of the smuggler messages.

Because, as of the current season..they said the most Bottles will be Smugglers. So you can do them. (nobody reads the patch notes?) Once season ends, it go back.

Secondly, would it be possible to get quest scrolls back from the barrels on the islands

Maybe No, Because the Salt of pirate tears flooded the complaints and they "had" to remove them.
"Nobody liked emptying the barrel and having a lot of voyages" it was weird thing to do but hey....the small % pirates out shine

This is a regular request. Hopefully that means someone will that a lot of people have a big problem with the current spawn

I'm approaching finishing these using maps with mysterious journals. But it is pretty tedious. I really don't need low tier digs or shanty lyrics. This season's smuggler bottles has made the situation much worse, but even before that it wasn't great. I will repeat the obvious solution, stick at least one of each type in the Merchant emissary quest. The current emissary quest is pretty poor, and getting more high grade flags out there is great for Reapers who still need those coms also.