The Players' Guide to the Cities/User Interface/Help Window/Merit Rewards

The following is from the Merit Rewards tab of the Help Window

Earning Merits

A character earns a number of Merit Rewards each time they complete a difficult or time consuming task. The following tasks grant Merit Rewards: Story Arcs, Task Forces, Trials, Raids and Giant Monster encounters. The number of Merits earned is relative to the average completion time for that task.

Tasks that require more man power and time will grant more Merit Rewards upon completion. Taskforces/Strikeforces and Trials grant the greatest number of Merit Rewards per hour while Story Arcs grant a lesser amount.

Merit Rewards and Tasks

Different tasks handle how they grant a player Merit Rewards differently. Taskforces, Trials and Raids offer greater rewards for the time involved to complete them, but completing the same task within 24 hours will reduce the number of Merits that the task would normally grant.

Story Arcs will award the player with Merit Rewards, but they offer significantly reduced rewards for the time involved to complete them. They, however, do not have the number of Merits awarded reduced if they’re completed multiple times within 24 hours.

Spending Merits

Merits can be exchanged for a large variety of rewards including random Taskforce and Trial recipes, random rare salvage, Single Origin enhancements and Invention Origin enhancements. Merit Reward vendors are located within each zone in a central location.