The most effective ways of obtaining Tokens of Merit are likely hunting monsters on high-level planets, collecting Avikan Gifts from your Avikan tenants, and purchasing tokens directly at the Drifter's Emporium (that last one will cost a LOT of pixels, though).

The types of items you can trade in are:
-Special monster drops associated with the Avikan (like the Sandspitter's Sack and the Valahr Poison Gland)
-Special drops from Thelean enemies
-Avikan hunting materials (bones and hides)
-Avikan dyes and coloured fabrics
-Centensian crafting materials
-Various quest items (like special drops from Elite Drahl, and the Centensian relic. These are all quest items that can be obtained multiple times - items you can only obtain once can't be traded in)
-Avikan gifts
-Unique Weapons (these can generally be traded in for 100 tokens. Weapons you obtained through the Unique Weapon Reforger are only worth 10 tokens)

Bit of a necro, but what I do now is just purchase 1,000 monster hides (costs approx. 20,000 credits) from a merchant in an Avikan terve and turn those in. I suppose this is a bit exploit-y, but then again you could just grow loads of spices or bolbons to crank out dyes as well.

The high cost to purchase them directly from Drifter only lasts until a player finds and flags a terve or encampment that sells hides.

I actually have tons of monster materials saved up, but since many of them are used to make deco, I don't like to use them up for token turn-ins.

I actually have a spice farm. I make sure the Nomada doesn't run out of dye.

Funny thing about that: Both types of dye are only worth one Token each, while raw Kadavan Spices sell for 30 pixels each; Monster Leather (not hides, I misspoke above) sells for around 20 pixels each from terve merchants, and is also worth one Token each.

In other words, if you just sell your raw spices through Terramart Shipments and use the proceeds to buy Monster Leather, you'll get around 50% more Tokens than you would by actually processing and then turning in dye. This goes double for Rhaiod dyes. You might as well sell the bolbons.

Rhaiod dyes should definitely be worth two Tokens each, and the selling price of Monster Leather should probably be increased.

Far be it from me to insist everything be "balanced" (I'm usually the last one you'll find doing that), but at the moment buying and turning in Monster Leather is THE way to get tokens past the early game, which does seem a bit broken.

Originally posted by Blaine:

Funny thing about that: Both types of dye are only worth one Token each, while raw Kadavan Spices sell for 30 pixels each; Monster Leather (not hides, I misspoke above) sells for around 20 pixels each from terve merchants, and is also worth one Token each.

In other words, if you just sell your raw spices through Terramart Shipments and use the proceeds to buy Monster Leather, you'll get around 50% more Tokens than you would by actually processing and then turning in dye. This goes double for Rhaiod dyes. You might as well sell the bolbons.

Rhaiod dyes should definitely be worth two Tokens each, and the selling price of Monster Leather should probably be increased.

Far be it from me to insist everything be "balanced" (I'm usually the last one you'll find doing that), but at the moment buying and turning in Monster Leather is THE way to get tokens past the early game, which does seem a bit broken.

Noted! I'll try and adjust the values a bit in the next update.