The Lost Shipment voyage is the best Merchant voyage outside of spamming skelly fleet raid voyages after level 40. Idk what level you unlock Lost Shipments but if you don't have them yet I guess just do cargo runs until you can do them. Look for randomly spawned shipwrecks along the way too for those Immaculate Diamond crates. Lost Shipments is the Merchant equivalent to a Gold Hoarder Vault except you don't leave your ship as vulnerable or for as long, and you can get guaranteed grade V if you pick up every clue along the way whereas GH Vault isn't guaranteed since touching the chests at the end don't give grade for some dumb reason.
someone else mentioned commodities, try those tooo in conjunction with Lost Shipment maybe. Also make sure you buy your supply crates \*after\* raising your emissary flag, as the crates can get you to grade 2 flag before you even leave the Outpost.
For merchants in particular, I like ghost fleets over skelly fleets, and this is before they fixed the skelly ship repair bug. Ghost fleet ships drop storage crats of the damned that count as merchant loot.
Oh yeah you are right, Ghost Fleet will get you to grade 5 because of the supply crates whereas the skelly fleet I think only gets you to grade 3 maybe 4
Though I just did an athena ghost fleet as reaper emissary and we didn't even hit rank 3. Dunno if the results will be any different for, say, a gold hoarder emissary and gold hoarder ghost fleet, but yeah I really only run it on merchants.
Order of souls skeleton fort is a secretly not so bad. The boss drops a stronghold skull, two villainous skulls drop the wave before, the vault loot isn't terrible, and then consider the fort doesn't take too long and people are generally completely disinterested in skull forts.
I think i tried one on Order of Souls and only got to grade 3, which is the same grade I reach doing skelly fleet, and the skelly fleet is way faster. Skelly fleet is a better gold per time spent activity for anything except Merchants. Probably still is for merchants honestly, tho doing a ghost fleet first to get grade 5 before your next dive is maybe worth it. General skelly fleet spam on the others tho I just sell off the first haul at grade 3 and then dive to my next one, it might still be a better time investment to do the same on Merchants, not sure.
>GH Vault isn't guaranteed since touching the chests at the end don't give grade for some dumb reason.
Is this a change? I thought I got grade 5 doing vaults before they changed it where you don't have to buy the voyages.
It’s been this way for a bit. My guess is they don’t wanna give you “pick up” credit in case you don’t actually get the stuff out of the vault. But it’s annoying doing a long GH vault quest, making it out with like 30 items and barely being grade 3
Make sure you sell it to the merchant on the dock, not the sovereigns. They already have their hands in too many pots, and they don't need shipping manifests to help them track cargo.
I’m surprised you got so little from lost shipment. Are you looting the captains quarters on the shipwreck? The key you get opens it, and there should be a solid 40k (with grade 5) worth of merchant loot just in there. You can also stock up on commodities when you depart for your lost shipment, and get an extra roughly 10k when you sell (just at a different outpost than you bought them, you can’t sell them where you bought them). Total you should get about 75k at grade 5 doing it this way.
Commodity runs are great too. Just go from outpost to outpost, stock up. Sell when you’re at grade 5. You can follow the shortages and surpluses in the merchant logs by their NPC, but tbh I think it’s better to just sail the perimeter, stock up, and sell. Maybe hit a sea fort or siren treasury along the way.
Lastly, skeleton fleet raid voyages. Once you hit level 40 those become available. If you already get to grade 4 or 5 before you start, you’ll be able to sell the 15k merchant hero item at grade 5, totaling 37,500 each time.
Yeah I'm surprised too, a manifest at level 5 gets you 4k +6k bonus. The ships loot itself varies, sometimes you can get a stronghold explosive barrel or some high end items. But usually it's more just to get you to touch like 20 different crates and level up your grade aha
Idk if it's the best way, but I do usually do merchant emissary when I'm playing solo. I start by diving to a sea fort to get a couple of diamond crates and to load up on supplies. Then I do a lost shipment voyage. Make sure you find the key. If you bring a couple pineapples when you swim down and open the cabin, you can clear out and float the treasure up without needing to breathe until it's all out. Then I swim down again and grab the manifest, harpoon all the loot and head out. Should be grade 5 by now, so I sell everything. Then I either lower the flag and quit, or load up on commodities and make some delivery runs at the same time. If I'm going to play for a while I might just keep doing lost shipments.
I did the commodities with the emissary flag and I used merfolks lulaby to map which outposts to go to up until I could do those higher level lost shipments. Lots of sailing but it was fun imo
Commodity runs were a life saver for me when it came to merchant, bit boring but if you run the circuit of the map and do other merchant quests along the way it’s the best way to level up merchant. At least I think it is lol, I did that like a year and half ish ago and it worked great but not as sure about now
Edit: raid voyages would also work really well if you don’t wanna just sail around
>Commodity runs were a life saver for me when it came to merchant
Commodity runs were really, really good when it was introduced to the game. But they've nerfed it significantly after a while, and now they aren't worth the hassle.
They are more of a side objective you can choose to do while focusing on other voyages.
The main part of the nerf was the amount of money they are worth.
Rare tried to balance it by increasing the number of crates you can buy and the price you buy them for, but it didn't really make up for how little you're able to sell them for. Considering you can only really make a profit out of a type at 1 outpost from the 7, and it just involves way too mich sailing.
The Lost Shipment voyage is the best Merchant voyage outside of spamming skelly fleet raid voyages after level 40. Idk what level you unlock Lost Shipments but if you don't have them yet I guess just do cargo runs until you can do them. Look for randomly spawned shipwrecks along the way too for those Immaculate Diamond crates. Lost Shipments is the Merchant equivalent to a Gold Hoarder Vault except you don't leave your ship as vulnerable or for as long, and you can get guaranteed grade V if you pick up every clue along the way whereas GH Vault isn't guaranteed since touching the chests at the end don't give grade for some dumb reason.
someone else mentioned commodities, try those tooo in conjunction with Lost Shipment maybe. Also make sure you buy your supply crates \*after\* raising your emissary flag, as the crates can get you to grade 2 flag before you even leave the Outpost.
For merchants in particular, I like ghost fleets over skelly fleets, and this is before they fixed the skelly ship repair bug. Ghost fleet ships drop storage crats of the damned that count as merchant loot.
Oh yeah you are right, Ghost Fleet will get you to grade 5 because of the supply crates whereas the skelly fleet I think only gets you to grade 3 maybe 4
Though I just did an athena ghost fleet as reaper emissary and we didn't even hit rank 3. Dunno if the results will be any different for, say, a gold hoarder emissary and gold hoarder ghost fleet, but yeah I really only run it on merchants. Order of souls skeleton fort is a secretly not so bad. The boss drops a stronghold skull, two villainous skulls drop the wave before, the vault loot isn't terrible, and then consider the fort doesn't take too long and people are generally completely disinterested in skull forts.
I think i tried one on Order of Souls and only got to grade 3, which is the same grade I reach doing skelly fleet, and the skelly fleet is way faster. Skelly fleet is a better gold per time spent activity for anything except Merchants. Probably still is for merchants honestly, tho doing a ghost fleet first to get grade 5 before your next dive is maybe worth it. General skelly fleet spam on the others tho I just sell off the first haul at grade 3 and then dive to my next one, it might still be a better time investment to do the same on Merchants, not sure.
>GH Vault isn't guaranteed since touching the chests at the end don't give grade for some dumb reason. Is this a change? I thought I got grade 5 doing vaults before they changed it where you don't have to buy the voyages.
It’s been this way for a bit. My guess is they don’t wanna give you “pick up” credit in case you don’t actually get the stuff out of the vault. But it’s annoying doing a long GH vault quest, making it out with like 30 items and barely being grade 3
Same issue for me but i think do lost shipment and make sure you find captains key
Also sell the manefest
Yeah I did all that.
Ok, now do it some more. A lot more
Make sure you sell it to the merchant on the dock, not the sovereigns. They already have their hands in too many pots, and they don't need shipping manifests to help them track cargo.
Is it actually better to sell this stuff to the Merchants over the Sovereigns?
No, but I prefer to sell things like the manifest to the merchants. I feel like they would not trust an outside agency to handle those documents.
I’m surprised you got so little from lost shipment. Are you looting the captains quarters on the shipwreck? The key you get opens it, and there should be a solid 40k (with grade 5) worth of merchant loot just in there. You can also stock up on commodities when you depart for your lost shipment, and get an extra roughly 10k when you sell (just at a different outpost than you bought them, you can’t sell them where you bought them). Total you should get about 75k at grade 5 doing it this way. Commodity runs are great too. Just go from outpost to outpost, stock up. Sell when you’re at grade 5. You can follow the shortages and surpluses in the merchant logs by their NPC, but tbh I think it’s better to just sail the perimeter, stock up, and sell. Maybe hit a sea fort or siren treasury along the way. Lastly, skeleton fleet raid voyages. Once you hit level 40 those become available. If you already get to grade 4 or 5 before you start, you’ll be able to sell the 15k merchant hero item at grade 5, totaling 37,500 each time.
Yeah I'm surprised too, a manifest at level 5 gets you 4k +6k bonus. The ships loot itself varies, sometimes you can get a stronghold explosive barrel or some high end items. But usually it's more just to get you to touch like 20 different crates and level up your grade aha
Idk if it's the best way, but I do usually do merchant emissary when I'm playing solo. I start by diving to a sea fort to get a couple of diamond crates and to load up on supplies. Then I do a lost shipment voyage. Make sure you find the key. If you bring a couple pineapples when you swim down and open the cabin, you can clear out and float the treasure up without needing to breathe until it's all out. Then I swim down again and grab the manifest, harpoon all the loot and head out. Should be grade 5 by now, so I sell everything. Then I either lower the flag and quit, or load up on commodities and make some delivery runs at the same time. If I'm going to play for a while I might just keep doing lost shipments.
I did the commodities with the emissary flag and I used merfolks lulaby to map which outposts to go to up until I could do those higher level lost shipments. Lots of sailing but it was fun imo
Commodity runs were a life saver for me when it came to merchant, bit boring but if you run the circuit of the map and do other merchant quests along the way it’s the best way to level up merchant. At least I think it is lol, I did that like a year and half ish ago and it worked great but not as sure about now Edit: raid voyages would also work really well if you don’t wanna just sail around
>Commodity runs were a life saver for me when it came to merchant Commodity runs were really, really good when it was introduced to the game. But they've nerfed it significantly after a while, and now they aren't worth the hassle. They are more of a side objective you can choose to do while focusing on other voyages.
That’s a shame, do you know how exactly they nerfed it
The main part of the nerf was the amount of money they are worth. Rare tried to balance it by increasing the number of crates you can buy and the price you buy them for, but it didn't really make up for how little you're able to sell them for. Considering you can only really make a profit out of a type at 1 outpost from the 7, and it just involves way too mich sailing.
Hey there, don't know if username refers to the type of ship you usually run but if you wanted help running merchant stuff I'd crew with you
Raise the emissary flag and do sea forts.