Suggestions/Comments: Killing Margoria monsters is not rewarding enough: silver and xp is ridiculously low compared to the effort needed

I. First some facts and numbers (skip this and go to II. if you know the problem and only care about solutions):

The grindspots where players go are: Pirate Fleet. yes, there is almost no one left at crocs, and even less at lekrashan.
The spots where players never go or just to kill monster for daily or weekly playout: Hekaru (1 per day), Stalker (1 per day), Small Goldmont (3 per day), Candidum (1 per day or more if guild payout), Shark (1 per day), Large Goldmont (1 per day), Rust (1 per day).
The spots where no one ever went: Rust habitat, Goldmont territory (killed by pirate fleet) unless you need panokseon ship (and need to kill 3 little ones per week).

The last spot added just killed the 2 main spots. Why? because same drops and better silver with closer location to continent. The worst part is that this new spot is still "meh". Just shows how bad the 2 others were.

How bad? Let's look at loot and the equipment needed.
To kill sea monsters, you need a carrack with +10 green gear. There's no difficulty there, just time gated. You need a month of daily quests and intensive bartering to craft it. That's approx 3h per day of sailing during 1 month! That's the min requirement because you will struggle and be slow.
To max up your gear, you need some mastery, count 10bil if you go for cheap loggia. And then blue ship gear. Let's say you play without VP and make 5k coins a day (supposing you bartered hard to get all barter coins unlocked). blue gear, needs 200k coins representing at least 40 more days of intensive bartering just for base gear that you have to enhance (needeing a lot more coins)! So we can say that getting a high end ship in 3 months is the fast you can go and it requires a lot of time, everyday!

So let's see what the best geared players can get on those spots using the max drop increase (i insist on the fact that these numbers are not met by 90% of the players):
Lekra lvl2+agris = 550m/load (approx 1h)
Crocs lvl2+agris = 650m/load (approx 1h15)
Pirate Fleet lvl2 = 750m/h

So the best sea spot is barely the same silver as Centaurs where i can make with my tuvala character 600m/m with lvl2 + agris just with the trash (having approx 150m more in other items that i keep or sell on market). That tuvala character takes me 10h to do and reach the 245AP/300DP. And it's not only centaurs. Other 250ap zones net you 400m in trash very easily (+200m worth of other items) like miru or polly (and many other spots).

II. The simple fix to make Margoria feel less shitty:
Reward the players on their dedication and hard work by simply adjusting the loot in all margoria spots (and making them more dense because monsters are too scarce and players rather swap chanels and kill same packs than sail in the spot).

It can't be simpler than adjusting the drops and the value of drops:

base drop=2 trash valued at 1m each + 2 coins on all margoria seamonsters (yes even stupid hekarus because they take same amount of shots as a violent saltwater crocodile) 

• lvl1: 2 Trash Loot x ( 1 + 0.5 ) = 3
• lvl2: 2 Trash Loot x ( 1 + 1 ) = 4
• lvl1+agris: 2 Trash Loot x ( 1 + 0.5 + 1.5 ) = 6
• lvl2+agris: 2 Trash Loot x ( 1 + 1 +1.5 ) = 7

The price of the trash is not excessive if set at 1m as we can't kill them fast. Atm trash in pirate fleet is 1.5m and can drop 2 if lvl2. I insist on "can", because sometimes, it does not drop at all!

And while we're still talking about loot, making a visible light beam on the loot (like on lekra boss) of all sea mosnters would be nice. They do blink, but it's not very noticeable. And on ships, they sink, making loot hard to pick because pets are stupid as hell. Even on top of loot, sometimes, they struggle.

Another very convenient add is the canonballs supply. The boxes at pirate fleet are awesome. Why not adding them in all spots?
Or (and?) make the boxes stack and last 4h, it allows you to grind there and then go to other spots without stopping at a wharf and not having to pay for expensive origins. 


III. Regarding the Sailing XP
Sailing XP is probably the worst xp you can get in the game. You gain xp based on the distance you travel and on some items you can drop.
it is flawed to the point where active players get less xp than afk players!

How's that possible? Let's take a look at the 5 ways we can get xp

1. First source of daily xp is questing: the sailies as players call them. Quests from epheria, velia, oquilla, and now iliya. It takes roughly 1 hour to complete them all. They give roughly 2% xp at Master10 (i will take this level as example because i have exact numbers for it). this is not impacted by buffs.
And players mainly organise themselves with taxi services: 1 ship carries platoon(s) of players. I saw several players reach master sailing without ever driving a ship! Why not. They are not the problem (it's even nice that they can gather so many newbies). The way we gain xp is the problem!

2. Second best source of xp is just sailing around. A to B and so on. I tested during my bartering with many available buffs. in a hour long trip in margoria, i barely reach 1% (with a shit ton of buffs!). As comparison, i captured a horse at M15 training level with same buffs, it was 0.40% (it took me less than 2 mins from heidel stable to registering horse).

3. Third source of sailing xp is killing monsters. An hour at lekra, crocs, or even pirate fleet is not even 1%. 

4. The last source is items we can drop (picked up by sailors or the drop at pirate fleet wich is 0.025xp and where you get not even 4 per hour) and random delivery quest at kuyt (got that quest 3 times in all those years, expired twice as i was in crocs and was not wasting tent buff and others for 0.20 xp).

5. And i kept the best for last: exploits! Well, not exploits because you can't get banned. Let's call them unintended features.
Yes they took place a long time ago, and not so long ago. i spotted 3 players gaining unusual amount of levels at high ranks.
reported and still not banned. (and no, they did not use a xp transfer coupon like one replied to me because you cant gain 10+ master levels in a week on a already high level, even if you spent all that time afk sailing in margoria with a shit ton of buffs).
Sadly sea stuff is a place where exploits, my bad, i meant unintended hidden features are commonly used and make a huge difference. 

IV. How to fix sailing XP?
Reward players who do actually play the game. Make killing margoria monsters the best source of sailing XP.
if questing is 2% and can be done carried. Then killing stuff should award you at least 4%.

let's translate that into numbers:
Killing a major sea monster (the ones that require more shots like candi, big ship, etc) should be 0.030
Killing pirate fleet ships should be 0.025 per ship
Killing crocs should be 0.025 per monster (and as it's two party, require to deal a certain amount of damage to get that xp to avoid the ones that go duo with only one ship with wiz or ranger/archers to tag monsters for loot)

Make the exp books more significant. A book should be 0.25 not 10 times less.

And comparing those % to other lifeskills... it's still not that much!
i remember doing guru cooking in less than 2 weeks. Guru alch was maybe 3 weeks. Fishing master can be done in a few hours of active fishing. Gathering is very simple too. Processing is very fast too. Master hunting takes 1h and then each level is approx 1h too. the only other painful one is trading, but i don't really know as i hate that.

EDIT: A seasoned sailor made a good point i didn't think of: "Let's simply throw away all the "effort and dedication" of hours and hours and simply make it easier from point A ? As I said, the ideal is to change the required amount of exp for each level to the point of making it easier to reach higher levels."
Lowering the XP required to reach each level (and recalculate everyones level like it was done a few years ago) would in my opinion result in same boost. Which is a good thing too.
So that can be an alternative solution. Or even both can be applied.

V. Other ways to make margoria great?
Yes, many!
Simply by doing some QoL changes and fixing some bugs... and maybe making it a bit more fun/challenging&rewarding/cooperative or even dangerous (because of other players or monsters).
Take a look here for more detailed improvements to BDO