Ship improvements?

Sasiya

So!

I am the proud owner of a seastrider and am currently learning the ropes in regards to sailing. I have a bit of credits to spare and figured maybe I should invest in some of the ship artifacts. Just was hoping for some advice/ideas on what would be good investments for a ship. Regular ship artifacts, Shop of Wonder artifacts, anything else that might be worthwhile investing in.

Thank you!

Taraus

That answer will depend on how new you are to seafaring, and what your ultimate goal is, what you want to do with a ship.

If you're just starting out, pure gold will be more useful to you, in terms of crew hire and set-up, as your first (and most important) goal will be getting them useful and with high morale. So rations, wages, and extra bait to cook for the morale boost (+5 morale per fish cooked - though you don't absolutely require gold for this, as the fish you kill deep-sea diving will also work).
And while the cabin boy (or cook, chef) is certainly useful for this, without knowing how many credits you actually have to, or are looking at, spending for this, I can't advise here. It's great for when you're actually pushing towards the Fanatical morale, but generally speaking, once you're passed that, I feel like he outlives his usefulness (yes, they're handy for when a crew occasionally dips below 64000 bc of missed wages/rations, but that's easy enough to recover).

Also look at getting non-decay figurehead, as there's little else that's more annoying than getting on board to discover your figurehead, and also stored energy, is gone.

If you -are- looking at weapons, you'll want to factor in the cost of the non-decay, and also possibly an ammunition rack that generates the necessary ammo, because the cost to keep yourself stocked is, in a word, ridiculous.

The diving bell is handy, if you anticipate deepsea bashing, or treasure hunting.

I can't really advise any of the other equipment (beacon, crate, sextant), because they're very niche.