Merchant Delivery Quests/ Commendations Rebalance

  • Gol D Joja
    Master
    Insider

    Since the introduction of kingly treasure and the removal of voyage in a bottles from barrels. The merchant delivery contracts have become near impossible find.
    One way to to find them is to find a message in a bottle on a shore, in flotsam or in a shipwreck, but even then the chance for the resulting quest to be a delivery quest is insanely small.
    The other way is to seek out quest books on big islands. These books seem to have a higher chance to contain a delivery quest but they are harder to locate and rarer than messages in a bottle. This results in the fact that some commendations have become near impossible now.
    The Commendations in question are: Merchant Forager | Merchant Shipwright | Cast Iron Merchant | Black Powder Merchant The first three require 50 crates to be delivered and the last requires 100. These values are way too high for the amount of quests that you can possibly get. These numbers were already pretty high before the nerf but now they are way too extreme.

    My opinion is that some merchant voyages like the Merchant Contract and the Merchant Medley should contain delivery quests.
    Something has to be done about these commendations. Otherwise they will not be completable by new players. The only people that don't have a problem with this are the ones that have already earned the commendations before the introduction of kingly loot.

    There is this very good video by L8dyHysteria about this problem. She did a lot of testing and also came up with the strat to look for the books instead of the bottles.
    Video

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  • Arias1101
    Seafarer
    Insider
    Founder

    @gol-d-joja Very true.
    These commandations are not realisticaly doable in the current state of the game.

  • Peteloaf777
    Champion
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    Founder

    They aren’t meant to be grinded out in a week. It’s be been playing the game since alpha and occasionally come across one and tap it out for the progress. Slow down, enjoy the game, and don’t focus on mindless grinding out commendations for no reason other than to complete them as fast as you can.

  • Arias1101
    Seafarer
    Insider
    Founder

    @peteloaf777 a dit dans Merchant Delivery Quests/ Commendations Rebalance :

    They aren’t meant to be grinded out in a week. It’s be been playing the game since alpha and occasionally come across one and tap it out for the progress. Slow down, enjoy the game, and don’t focus on mindless grinding out commendations for no reason other than to complete them as fast as you can.

    We are not talking of "grinding in a week"
    Just make them feasable.
    This has been changed, so keep in mind that not everyone had the chance to do the commendation before that.

    As far as I can tell, we currently have 1 in 5 chance to get any one of the matching quests in a bottle.

    We need to deliver 250 items for the commendations.

    So, if you find 5 bottles per day while "enjoying the game", wich is already a lot, you would need 250 days of playtime to have a hope to do these commendations.

    Several hundred days, 5 bottles a day.
    1250 bottles.

    Sure, let's slow down and enjoy.
    Meanwhile, I have all commendations from all factions, and I'm not Even at 10% for these ones.

    I'll get the Shrouded Ghost before I'm finished delivering fruit crates.

    Let's enjoy the game.

  • Gol D Joja
    Master
    Insider

    @peteloaf777 This might have been true before but now you wont be coming across these voyages occasionally anymore. You would be lucky if you got one in a 100 hours of gameplay.

  • Hefty Henri
    Marauder

    They (presumably unintentially) nerfed these into oblivion and have since refused to do anything about it despite constantly being reminded on here and elsewhere. Just today there's 3 threads about it on the front page which i like to see. We'll just have to keep it up until they finally make these commendations possible to get again.

  • Hefty Henri
    Marauder

    @arias1101 said in Merchant Delivery Quests/ Commendations Rebalance:

    As far as I can tell, we currently have 1 in 5 chance to get any one of the matching quests in a bottle.

    It's actually more problematic than that still. Over the last month alone i've picked up 50+ of these quests. What i had to show for it was 1 wood crate delivery, and i don't even care about those since i'm only looking for fruit crate and keg deliveries. They've made it so the chance to find delivery quests is much lower than the other ones.

  • Arias1101
    Seafarer
    Insider
    Founder

    You might be right, it definitly feels less than 1/5

    I assumed equal chances for:

    • Gold hoarder king treasure map
    • Order of Souls king captains
    • Merchant blue delivery
    • Crowns riddle
    • Random delivery
  • DedMachine1217
    Marauder
    Insider

    @peteloaf777 There's no way to downvote on here, but just know that I would if I could. Your input is not helpful. No one is complaining about not being able to complete them quickly, we're complaining about being able to complete them at all. I have been working on these deliveries for two years, BEFORE they were nerfed. They were still difficult and grindy. Now I only need ONE of these deliveries to complete it and it still feels nearly impossible. So if you don't still need them and understand the struggle, then maybe keep your very wrong opinion to yourself

  • DougM7
    Marauder
    Insider

    Did Rare ever acknowledge this or said anything about doing something about it?
    I been seeing this problem for so long and it is surprising that nothing has been done to fix this despite of community frustration.
    In the current state of the game this is basically impossible to be achieved. Most bottles are Smugglers, the remaining as mostly King stuff and from the remaining it is basically never merchant deliveries.
    I love this game and I am forever grateful to Rare but sometimes it just feels like we are not heard or that we as community are actively ignored.
    Come on, just say something, do something, anything.

  • DerMasterBob
    Commander
    Insider

    @dougm7
    About 2 years ago Mike Chapman commented under a tweet, that they are aware and working on a fix.
    Then 31.07.2025 Drew Stevens commented under a tweet that they are now "... working on a design that addresses some of the challenges with those crate related commendations" (kegs not mentioned).
    And in the last Rare stream where Drew played SoT, he also said they are working on it.
    But to this day nothing changed.

  • Look Behind You
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    Deckhand

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