After you start a merchants quest you can get the amount of crates you need to fulfill it at the merchants . This means the quest has to be active and you can't get any more crates until you return with the cargo. I wouldn't have a problem with that, as it prevents you from stuffing your ship with empty crates, capture a crapload of animals and drive to the next outpost hoping to finish several merchants quests at once. However, if you buy and start a 0 Gold quest, get your crates and cancel it, you keep the crates. Repeating that you actually CAN stuff your ship with a crapload of animals. I think if Rare wants to prevent this, they should make the crates disappear after cancelling the quest. Any thoughts on this?
Merchant Guild: Problem with Crates
@lifewcoke I would love to do that too! But as you say, there should be another way to get the crates than the exploit.
@speckbutler In all seriousness it should be fixed. But until then, I am gonna stay at a low enough level so I can become a REAL merchant.
@tre-oni Yeah, but you can stock up hoping you already have the animals you need for the next quests in your little zoo.
so. I've just hit my first issue with MA voyages. I collected my quota (2 pigs) and headed to the required outpose, on my way I cross paths with a galleon.
I'm not here to complain about the utter d****e-baggery of those sailors for hunting down a solo player, but after they sunk me and I lost 1/2 my cargo (managed to turn one in) I spawned on a new island and went back to the outpost to discover that the MA vendor won't replace my crates...
The quest giver should replace our crates imo or we should be able to purchase more in this situation.
Anyway, jokes on the galleon crew as they only got my Castaway chest and not my Captain's.
EDIT: I was not aware of the crate exploit as I assumed the crates were tied to the voyage.There is a more important issue with these crates, imo.
If you lose a ship (with the crates, obviously), you can't buy them from the trader again. So you must find them in the terrain or cancel the quest to be able to buy them again.
I guess this is designed this way to avoid the hoarding of crates, but it's a serious chore...in fact, you can steal me all the treasures of the Queen of Sheba, but leave my crates alone, thanks.
@lobofh I think there is no way around making the crates purchasable. The limited handout is just not working out.
On a related note, I'm a merchant not a chicken chaser / pig wrangler. I want to be able to solve this mission by going to an outpost (not the one that issued the mission or the voyage destination) and purchasing the cargo I need to take to the destination. If I'm poor I can use the free crate to catch the chicken, but I'd also have the choice to invest some of my cash and shorten the voyage.
As for the actual issue (having loads of crates of chickens ready for the next mission) I'm guessing it's all performance related. Keeping an eye in all those captured chickens, pigs & snakes is going to put an unnecessary burden on the game. I found it buggy/laggy/glitchie enough as it is.
@speckbutler I don't agree with this. In fact, I have a problem with the whole mechanic (one that is controversial so be ready):
Griefing.
In my opinion, there should be no reward for delivering animals without a voyage. I'd keep the crates and gunpowder barrel rewards though.I've seen two Galleon crews literally sinking sloops to get empty coops/cages so they could hoard every animal. While in spirit it seems fair, if all galleons start to do it only the very good and aware sloops will ever have a chance of finishing a Merchant voyage. If they made this change THEN I could see that working but still don't really see the need for it. Since you wouldn't get rewards for random animals anymore.
Let me know your opinions
@speckbutler I think... the penalty of having a ship load of animals that you have to feed, keep safe and generally protect might be enough of a deterrant to doing this, plus the fact you'd be running around for a good deal of time, filling those crates on the offchance that you'd pick up a quest that needed them.
The crates should disappear if the quest is cancelled though, it doesn't seem right that they stay around. You could fill your ship using crates you'd found on islands instead.
@speckbutler I didn't have this problem with my merchant missions. It's frustrating that you have to take them voyage activate it on your ship and then return to the merchant 3 times to get new crates.
It would be nice, however to have voyages from different groups going at the same time. Have a merchant one that you can fulfil while cruising for treasure from the gold hoarders. "Ooh, there's that chicken the merchants wanted" nab it and the treasure and move on.@deashkiin That would change if you could come by crates in another way than starting a merchants quest too though. I feel that the possibility to evade PvP by focusing on trade (as there would be no sense attacking somebody to steal worthless chickens) just doesn't fit the game. Also I think it would be kind of a waste to tie the interaction with animals to the quests. I would love the possibility to have some spare crates on the ship, to capture a rare pink speckled, titanium white striped, glowing piggy when I run into it and to cash it in too. If your are sailing on your own, which I did a lot, you just have to be prepared to flee if you see a galleon (and can't handle the canons poperly, as myself) and have stuff to lose, be it chickens or chests. Thats fine with me though, as I love the suspense.
@speckbutler I agree that it goes somewhat against the nature of the beast but trust me, in that server you could see how bad it can get. There could definitely be more coops and cages around as it's quite rare but perhaps an alternative solution would be to be able to buy them if on a voyage then? say 5-10 gold at any merchant until you have the original number for instance
@katttruewalker That would be the other way to go, which would be fine with me too. Either to restrict the crates (but to make them disappear after cancelling the quest or losing them) or to create the way to get them (another than just finding one or two by accident on an island, which doesn't make any sense at the moment too though, as you cant sell animals captured without a quest anyway). I would still prefer the second though, as I feel it would just open up the whole trade thing and create new possibilities.
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