1. Sea of Thieves Achievements
2. Merchant Forager achievement

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Merchant Forager achievement in Sea of Thieves

Merchant Forager

Receive the Commendation for delivering 50 Fruit Crates on time.

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How to unlock the Merchant Forager achievement

• Artie

  28 Nov 2018 03 Oct 2018 20 Nov 2024
  41 1 35

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  Updated following Season 11 nerf to quests spawning in resource barrels
  
  This achievement is awarded for completing the "Merchant Forager" commendation for the Merchant Alliance trading company. The commendation requires crews to find and timely complete the delivery of 50 emergent Fruit Crate contracts.
  

  How to Find Contracts:

  As of Season 11, contracts can only be acquired randomly in the green Message in Bottles and the pink Mysterious Journals that can be found around the various islands (except outposts). Bottles can also be occasionally found within shipwrecks, dropped by scuttled Skeleton Ships and floating among the Barrels of Plenty in the open seas.
  
  Once the bottle or journal is interacted with, a map will be added to the crew's quest wheel. If the crew is lucky the map will be a contract for a Fruit Crate delivery, otherwise the crew would have to seek out another bottle quest.
  
  

  Optimal Search Methods Developed by the Community:

  The SOT community has been improving search methods to farm merchant contract quests by searching islands with a high density of Mysterious Journals. Optimal search routes and journal spawn locations for Lone Cove, Mermaid's Hideaway, Snake Island, Sunken Grove, and Crook's Hollow are documented here:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/Seaofthieves/comments/1dz8ref/best_...
  
  3 players can dive simultaneously with brigs in safer seas to improve search efficiency as well.
  
  

  How to Complete Contracts:

  Once a valid contract is found, the crew can visit any of the Merchant Alliance traders at the 7 outposts or the Hunter's Call representative at the 8 Sea Posts to pick up an empty fruit crate. Alternatively, crews may elect to use any Fruit Crate they have found washed ashore and in various shipwrecks in the game. However, selling a purchased fruit crates... even one stolen from another crew... WILL NOT COUNT.
  
  Crews must then fill up the fruit crate, travel to the correct outpost, and deliver it to the Merchant Alliance Senior Trader (or Sovereign) before the in-game time listed on the contract is reached. Players with Seasonal Notifications enabled will see a message confirming the timely resource crate delivery on screen.
  
  WARNING: Do NOT DIVE to a new activity with an outstanding Resource Crate contract you intend to deliver. All emergent quests are lost when a ship dives to a new server.
  
  

  Additional Season 11 Observations:

  • As of Season 11, quest parchments have been removed from all resource barrels. This makes the server-hopping strategy no longer viable. The discovery of emergent quests is essentially back to how it was in Year 1.
  • Although we need some Sea of Science to confirm the drop rates, early observations seem to confirm the higher prioritization of resource crates in the loot pool for bottle quests is still in effect.
  • Fruit Crates still compete with wood, cannonball, and gunpowder barrel contracts in the loot pool. With the removal of gunpowder deliveries from Merchant Quests in S11, the bottle quests are also now the only way to finish
    The Black Powder Merchant achievement in Sea of Thieves worth 241 pointsReceive the Commendation for delivering 100 Gunpowder Kegs on time.
  • Other solutions have posted various methods that could be used to farm emergent quest maps. However, due to the continuous development nature of SOT the viability of these methods can change at any time. Take advantage of them when they are working.

  Additional Notes/Tips:

  • This commendation can be completed in Safer Seas.
  • 1 in-game day elapses in 24 real-time minutes.
  • On captaincy/guild boats, selling items to the Sovereign is equivalent to selling to the respective faction representatives, and WILL COUNT as timely deliveries for this commendation.
  • Crews will be warned if they attempt to sell a resource crate to the wrong outpost/trader with an outstanding contract.
  • Crews are not required to sell the given resource crate to fulfill the contracts and can instead use any crate they may have found while adventuring. Should one sell the resource crate before claiming the free one, the free one will be lost. Be careful though, purchased crates don't count, and there is currently no visual way to identify if a found/stolen crate was originally purchased or an emergent one.
  • Fruit crates must be 100% full to sell. Smart crews will fill the crates with bananas before giving up any higher-quality food.
  • In a pinch, it is possible to buy a new fruit crate and transfer the purchased fruit into a non-purchased crate to be turned in.
  • Should a crew be sunk and/or somehow lose their assigned resource crate, the shipwrecks for the Lost Shipment voyage have a high probability of including 1 or more fruit crates.
  • Unlike Cargo and Rag&Bone crates, Resource Crates sold to the Reaper's Hideout are not considered timely and WILL NOT count for this commendation.

  Guide not helping? View 2 more guides for this achievement.

  Showing most recent comments. View all comments.

  With season 12 this voyage is back in normal message in a bottle.

  Posted by One Reality x on 09 May 24 at 17:11

  I'm very sorry, may I borrow the comment section? This achievement is very difficult to achieve due to the update. We need to make developers understand that the way to obtain tasks should be added to the task table of the ship, rather than relying on drifting bottles. I have written a feedback in the Thief's Sea community. If you also hope to achieve this achievement, please express your opinion,
  Post link: https://www.seaofthieves.com/zh-cn/community/forums/topic/17...

  Posted by MR SPX SS on 01 Nov 24 at 05:16

  Hello all. Since the Season 11 nerf to the spawn rates of merchant crate contracts the community has been developing and improving efficient ways of farming these quests. I've updated my solution to link to one of these guides showing optimal routes to search islands with high density of journal spawns: TLDR, get 3 friends dive to riddles and follow the optimal path given in the images...
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/Seaofthieves/comments/1dz8ref/best_...

  Posted by Artie on 20 Nov 24 at 13:14

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• Supa

  11 Sep 2022 12 Sep 2022 13 Sep 2022
  9 0 2

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  The existing guides here are excellent, but I'm going to propose an approach that can be either used on its own, or combined with Artie's solution: Mysterious Journals.
  

  

  
  
  This is going to be a long guide, but I assure you that it's worth it.
  
  Some things to note before the step-by-step:
  

  • Mysterious Journals are random, and rare, but can be cheesed.

  • Because of the repetitive sailing, this approach works best in pairs.

  • Mysterious Journals are instanced to the server, so they have a tendency to change voyage types or de-spawn altogether, whether you're at the island or not

  • I'm suggesting Snake/Plunder/Spire because of proximity, the small size of Snake Island, and the number of journals on the island, but these journals have dozens of spawn points, most (but not all) of which are shown on MerfolksLullaby

  The principle here is simple: You're server hopping as per Artie's solution, but with the added layer of looking for journals.
  
  Steps:
  1. Log into game and start a new closed ship
  2. Scour all barrels at the outpost and collect all maps offered
  3a. If you find a fruit voyage, sail to the destination and fill it
  3b. If you spawned anywhere but Plunder or Ancient Spire, leave the game and join a new server, returning to step 1.
  3c. If you spawned on Plunder or Ancient Spire, pull up anchor and sail to snake island
  4. Check each of the following locations for a small red book:
  

  

  
  https://www.merfolkslullaby.com/map/mysterious-journals
  5a. If you find no journals or only non-merchant (Gold Hoarders or OoS), leave the server and start back at step 1.
  5b. If you find a journal that gives you a merchant voyage (gunpowder, fruit, wood, or cannonballs), you now get to move to the fun part: Farming it
  
  Farming the journal:
  1. Get the voyage from the journal
  2. Kill yourself by any means
  3. Return to the journal and get another merchant voyage
  4. Kill yourself again
  5. Repeat the cycle until you have ~24hrs before your first fruit expiry
  6. Have a friend join you
  7a. If there's a rowboat, load the rowboat and send your friend to the outpost to start filling orders while you continue to die/grab journal voyages (the journal will not respawn the voyage if there is ANY player nearby)
  7b. If there's no rowboat, load your ship up, head to the outpost, and fill orders
  
  When you find a journal, you'll know how great this can be. I've had a single journal generate 8 Fruit Crate voyages inside of a one-hour period. The biggest problem can ultimately be finding enough resources to fill the orders.

  Showing both comments.

  Sunken Grove is also a fantastic location for the journals. You can spawn at either Galleons or Dagger Tooth and it’s real close.

  Posted by MashedPeas11 on 21 Nov 22 at 11:31

  Sadly, this is no longer possible with the 4/13/2023 update.

  Posted by Aesir Prodigy on 13 Apr 23 at 22:25
• xxDAMRONxx

  27 May 2019 15 Feb 2019
  8 1 0

  Actions

  Ahoy Matee’s! Welcome to Sea of Thieves
  
  This simply a video addition to artie’s Solution and will show you the fastest way to get this achievement if you prefer to grind it. I won’t replicate his text here so refer to his guide if you prefer text and drop him a like!