Before I start, the goal here is a to add a sense of progression for each play session that is exciting and addictive but still maintains the purity of having every crew start from scratch with the same exact equipment each time they log in.
I have an idea. Add a new faction and voyage category. The Blacksmith. The object of the voyages would be to find weapons in various ways. Weapons will also appear in the world organically like chests and Skelly bosses. Some will he found on islands. Others will be held and used against the player by skeletons you run into in the world.
These weapons can be equipped by you and there will be a large variety of them. Think throwing daggers. Duel weild swords. Maybe variants of preexisting weapons. A Poison sword or a fire sniper.
You can sell these weapons to the Blacksmith faction or you can continue using them for the remainder of your play session. You lose all these weapons when you quit and start from scratch each time you sign in.
If you don't like the faction idea, you could have weapons come in 3 base varients. Bone, gold, and regular. You can sell them to the skull, gold, for trading preexisting factions respectively.
I just think it would be exciting not knowing what weapon you may find and how it will actually change the way you play during that session. It would be addictive hoping you find a super rare weapon varient. Knowing you will lose it when you log out or sell it, players will want to continue playing even longer. Plus it's another type of loot to sell that you can actually interact with and use.
