Here is my advice about how to rack up your common materials for LP's so that you can spend your time going after rare materials and davy jones chests. After you have a couple LP's, you need all the materials to upgrade them, and it's not always efficient to target one specific resource. On a day where you are active, spam attack all the 1 and 2 star monsters/ships near your start point. I didn't make a single trip that lasted more than 1.5 hours. My recruit time is about 32 min per battle, so I would try to do a string under 32 min or a string under 1 hr 4 min. The optimal goal is to have your ship return before you do 1,2, or 3 attacks. Just don't hit the button to auto rehire. Attack everything close by on the exploration map, even the shark and the crab and all the junky, easy battles you can. What you want are battered chests. In about 8 hours of regular (not constant) play I got 11 battered chests. I saved them all to open at once and here are the results: 6 iron, 6 copper, 4 vodoo masks, and 4 gunpowder. I also got some iron and gunpowder from fighting the monsters, but I didn't keep track of that. I also got one 550 bp, and a variety of things not worth mentioning otherwise. However, I did get a good stock of materials and can focus on getting rare materials and davy jones chests now. Hope this helps ...
With the new booty types from the Eastern Seas I don't think this strategy works any more. I have a level 3 Silo and all of the slots are full, but I don't have enough materials to upgrade ANY of my legendaries Some of the goods I need, like squid ink (supposedly common) I have zero of. Waiting for the right goods to drop is incredibly frustrating, and I don't know what I can safely throw away to make room for the stuff I need. I'm building up chests because I don't want to waste them. It's making the game a lot less fun...
Since the legends share some of the items needed for training, I have simply crossed 6 of them off for now to concentrate on the other 6. E.G, Mack and Blackbeard share copper, therefore I don't save anything else for Mack as I'm using the Copper for Bbeard, thus freeing up slots as I don't want the other stuff for Mack. I have also thrown away countless items from chests, but in doing so I have Bblackbeard at lvl 19 and Mack at 9, by the way Mack was the first legend I got, Bbeard was the 5th. I simply streak to 50, maybe using a few gems along the way to gain chests, then hit rumble rivals with the reduced time, repeat as and when needed for big scores and plenty of silo stuff. I still have to sail the map though for a lot of the common materials.
