A pretty lame suggestion I made for some cool bonus content that could work in the dark sea, probably not amazing, but could be interesting.
Proposal
The dark seas will contain a new and rare type of deckhand with unique cosmetics and dialogue that can be recruited from islands found on your expeditions. Similar to normal deckhands, they grant boosts to the ship, however the boost is much more noticeable and potent, in exchange, these “dark” deckhands will have insanity effects as a drawback.
To combat this, a new type of regular deckhand found in the sea clusters can be obtained, they grant boat stats, but also have warding effects, essentially making them useful for dark sea exploration + countering the insanity that dark deckhands come with.
Details
What does a dark deckhand look like?
A dark deckhand resembles a strange, magically irradiated human that can have parts of their body replaced with magic, or magical elements protruding from them in odd places. they can also be ghostlike (resembling the ghosts you might encounter at akursius keep, but perhaps with unique colors that reflect the stat boost they grant, as well as some extra details like a ghostly cape and captains hat). When deckhands will be able to fight alongside players, they will not be very different compared to normal deckhands, offering the same combat potential as a regular one, making all of the visuals mostly cosmetic.
How can I obtain one?
As stated prior, dark deckhands can be found on islands located in the dark sea, the farther you go, the higher quality, more bizarre looking, and more forbidden they become, meaning they will grant even more insanity if put on a ship. As for requirements to hire one, they are unique in the fact you need to repeatedly battle and defeat them, to prove you are a worthy captain that they should respect (credits to @bio for this idea). Similar to a rival, once you battle one you need to defeat them 2 more times. They’ll respawn on an island near the one they died on waiting for the player to find them. you’ll know when they respawn when a notification appears in your messages that says something like “you feel as if someone is calling you to the dark sea” or something.
Once this criteria is met, they become deckhands for you, this also makes high tier deckhands harder to obtain since they are located deeper into the dark sea.
What’s up with warding deckhands?
Warding deckhands are pretty much normal deckhands, but they come with the warding secondary effect, allowing them to weaken insanity effects that dark deckhands and the dark sea may cause.
Similar to dark deckhands, they can come with different tiers of warding, making it wise to use a high warding deckhand with a powerful dark deckhand to counterbalance the insanity.
final notes
This idea could be expanded on a little more, maybe it could tie in with ghost ships too, but I think this is a good base idea and I want to hear your guys’ opinions on it.
They could sorta resemble this, maybe with other variations such as being more sea creature like or as I said earlier, with magical parts instead of normal limbs, getting more contorted and bizarre the further you go into the dark sea.
that’s why they don’t do very well