Athena commendations and Merchant missions

I was Athena 10 before cargo runs so I know what it was like having to do the animal runs during an athena. Losing your cages can ruin the mission for you. A lot of people would probably prefer the cargo runs to stay in simply because it makes athena missions easier, faster, and it never makes you have to cancel after losing your animal cages or force you to find more, or even wait for them to expire.

With that being said, I personally think they should change one of the cargo missions back to an animal run.

I've never agreed with animal runs being fazed out by cargo runs in the first place. They aren't worth the time and effort, they require maintenance unlike chickens and snakes, and even though they provide a new way to voyage, I still found animal runs more enjoyable. The first thing I would do on an athena voyage was figure out exactly which islands I would get my animals from, leaving the pigs for my last stop before turning them in. It required planning that today's athena voyages just don't have. It also required you to protect your ship since you didn't want to lose your cages. Having one of each type of voyage would not only add to the variety of the voyage, but would help people with commendations like you and me.

Merchant voyages just need to include everything. They should look something like this:

2 Black Chickens
1 Gold Pig
2 Bottles
1 Black Snake

3 Gold Chickens
2 Plants
1 Red Chicken
1 Gun Powder
3 Cloth

_

Etc

Oh please, please for all that is good, just get rid of it all. Strip away the pl legend voyages for something more interesting, unique, and epic. That commendation is great for low level merchant voyages though. But in all honesty they should just start a new and completely remake the voyage system all together. Current standing is great from rep lvls 10 (Or 5) and under.

what you do is you go to an outpost, talk to a merchant, and purchase an animal delivery voyage. then you go place it on the voyage table

@dislex-fx though a better idea for normal Athenas. The animals don’t fit for devil’s roar athenas that don’t have animals on them at all.

@tyronius-89

Wel, I get your frustration. I too am extremely disappointed with Rare when they introduced these. I just hit level 10 Athenas 3 weeks before the patch and am extremely disappointed that they locked cosmetics behind "new" challenges that I had already completed.

With the bad excuse of: well we didn't track the exact number. While common sense dictates that to achieve the level that I had I already completed a lot of these and they didn't even bother giving us a portion, due to their choice to tag along with a legend you get Athena reputation/alliances etc. and making your level less of an indication of what you did as a legend I guess...

I for one still have not completed the Voyager etc. commendations, as I only run Athenas pretty much with others now a days, cause Rare demotivated me that much from doing them with this choice and made those commendations have little value for me based on how they were introduced. They don't reflect my achievements as a pirate legend at all and one is even unachievable in practice, 50 shrouded ones.... I have not even seen the beast once and I am a fair bit on the seas.

The numbers are the numbers and if you want them to go up, how it was implemented means you have to go out and specifically go for them. Not all these commendations are about Athena voyages and it might be nice that some can be done simultaneously, but it is what it is.

Now for Athena voyages themselves I believe they should have made it so to have 1 animal and 1 cargo run for the non devils roar versions or left them untouched. Though the no animals removed all the risk of losing the cages to be able to complete, so made that a lot less of a worry.

@daveyjay1984 you think these things are new challenges?

For me it is just a number that will go up. I already completed them a long time ago, the spreadsheet just does not show it.

These commendations didn't really add anything new at all for the legends of old, other than please redo the thing for cosmetics... that aspect annoys us more than them being added.

I will reccomend if your only goal is to reach rep 10 for Athena, to just leave the loot, like 1 tap the chests get the cargo and leave it so you will be able to get the Athena more quickly and when you are rep 10 then get some Merchant voyages. Because you will not need to worry about Athenas. Atleast it worked for me and i was not in so much stress and i prefered getting rep 10 and then getting the ''Legend of Fauna''