@khaleesibot Death penalties are a terrible idea. I bought this game because there were no penalties except the risk of losing the stuff you haven't turned in yet as well as everyone being on a level playing field, no matter if newbie or veteran and enjoy the world without being forced into a grind.
Changing the game's philosophy now (you stated before the gold would be safe once you had it) would do no good. There are way too many games where penalties are the norm, people that really like those can easily go and play such games instead. I'm here to have fun, not to be frustrated to no end.
Items are way too expensive as it is (especially for casual players - in earlier betas item prices were at least tiered starting from cheap to expensive so people could always get something new and have a sense of accomplishment after a couple of voyages - with the high prices that feeling isn't there anymore), adding another gold sink and enabling griefers to cause you to lose your gold to boot is not a good thing.
Also, getting punished for "silly deaths" would be a complete game breaker. Why? "Silly deaths" are one of the most hilarious and fun things in this game! For example, last night we were on a treasure hunt on an island with a random crew, my pirate found a gunpoweder keg and carried it to the others, who were just engaged fighting some skeletons. My pirate said "look what I found" and the keg got hit in the crossfire and exploded, killing everyone. We laughed our behinds off on the Ferry of the Damned before returning to the land of the living. It was a fun experience! If there was a death penalty, I'm sure nobody would have laughed, people would feel grief, everyone would have been angry and it would have likely caused the crew to disband and possibly motivated some new players to never play again.
However, I wouldn't mind that if you die, you can get a quick task from the ferry captain like taking a bucket and removing some water from the deck, setting sails, angling sails, repairing something or firing a cannon and be allowed off the ferry quicker (the wait time to get off without doing anything could be increased a bit, currently I feel it's a bit too short to even start a proper conversation with other dead players anyhow). Each task could also give reputation levels with the Ferry of the Damned which would grant some cool titles like Dread Pirate, ghostly appearance, skeleton pirate appearance, zombie pirate appeareance, etc. to use in the real world, etc.
Also, you said you don't want to punish PVP deaths, but only PVE deaths. But what if a PVPer sinks your ship and a shark eats you? There is lots of griefing potential here still, and griefers will always find creative ways to grief people.
Just toss the idea of death penalties into the garbage bin. It isn't needed.
PS.: By the way, has anybody considered that if you die enough and have less gold left than the cheapest voyage for your current level, you can't even buy a quest anymore to earn more gold (if you aren't on the starter tier where you get free voyages, that is)?