As it sits merchant quests are best reward for lowest risk.
If you just complete missions with gold animals you will gain exponentially more gold per hour than with any other method in the game including strongholds.
The only way strongholds would be more gold per hour is uncontested which rarely happens.
Merchant quests also have the lowest risk in game as unless you already have a quest for a specific animal, you only gain 10% xp and gold for the turnin. AKA golden chicken worth 1500 on quest is only worth 150 withouthe quest.
So my suggestion isn't to reduce the gold given from merchant quests but to simply increase the value of treasure chests, skulls, Trinkets, and other Merchant rewards.
I get a golden animal quest probably 33% of the time. Multiple golden animals probably 10% of the time. 100% of the time I get a golden animal if I'm cancelling non golden quests.
Meanwhile a Captains Chest which is much rarer is lucky to net me 1100-1200 gold.
A skull mission which will give me a villainous skull maybe 10-15% of the time is right in the same value range albeit a little higher than a Captains Chest.
This will make Skull Forts considerably more valuable along with Order of Souls and Gold Hoarder quests.
Again I'm not aswing for a nerf to merchant quests; (I like raking in 30k+ in an 8 hour session.) But a value buff for the other factions.
