Deckhands are quite neat, however they’re also a huge pain in the ass
Problems with deckhands as of now
The difficulty of changing deckhands, discouraging experimenting with different deckhands
Some deckhand stats are just worse or just straight up useless (magic storage)
Some professions need buffs
Loyalty system issues
Not being able to accurately tell what they want and what they don’t.
You can only give them one item at a time having to click through the text options again
You cannot sort the items when you try giving them something
How they can be improved
The difficulty of changing deckhands could be simple, make it so you could have them unequiped whenever.
the amount of total deckhands would still be limited but it would be a lot higher.
the amount of total deckhands would change depending on either the best ship the player owns or player level
In order to actually level them up and upgrade them you would still need to equip the deckhand
Some deckhands could get buffed stats in order to make them more viable compared to others
Just straight up remove the chef or change the profession to something new entirely like a fishmonger or something
An option to select what type of items do you want your merchant to be selling, this would be only available after reaching higher upgrade tiers of the deckhand
The Loyalty system improvents
This is really needed because right now it’s awful
When giving them something, they would only show the items they actually want
The option to select multiple items at once to give them
The option to actually sort the items
More ways to increase their loyalty, such as small collection side quests like “Collect 10 oranges” or “Do a treasure chart”, this would increase their tiers by a lot more than giving them items. (This one isn’t really needed but I just thought it could be a nice addition)
Can you also add like certain professions that are absolute bollocks?
Chef
You’ll either get a Golden/Legendary(Massive) Fish Scale from their cooking, as they use fish as ingredients from the catches. Allow them to ask you whether or not you want those particular fish to be thrown into the pot.
Merchant
Aside from selling items, most of the items sold are common and rarely uncommon, ranging from armour to reagents and most of the time it’s just useless armor sets and cooking ingredients. Allow them to offer some more uncommon items, but the amount they offer should be lower when they’re sold. (This amount is questionable. Originally I was thinking that certain things like lifeblooms could be duplicated again, but the fact that reagent pots are a thing and their growth time is so short, I wouldn’t mind them having more in stock, just a bit more expensive.)
These guys literally make me dread creating new slots because I know I’m gonna have to grind out deckhands all over again or my boat is gonna be super slow.
The main issue I have with the system right now (besides deckhand gifting) is that almost every profession asks for items with no stable method of obtainment and instead rely on mass amounts of frustratingly rare chest drops
Take navigators for example, you need a whole bunch of notebooks, which you can only get out of chests or if you’re really lucky merchant ships. You can’t even trade for them because the stupid original owner thing stops them from stacking.
I think the gifting menu shouldn’t also close when you give them something so you can mass gift items easier, really annoying to have to scroll all the way to the item you’re giving them all over again
I’ve found myself occasionally stuck with the dilemma of whether I should fire a deckhand or not because I wanted a different stat, but I like my current deckhand. I just wish there was a way to have some kind of reserve slot as you mentioned where I can swap them out, or at least keep them around without permanently deleting them.
