Hello, I managed to beat the game solo after 30 hours at max brightness, so here are a few tips I can offer you to have a better gameplay.

Here are some tips if you just started the game:

- First thing you should do is to unlock Shelbie, he is one of the best characters because he gives you more damage and rate of fire, and can be unlocked very easy, you need to complete an encounter without firing a cannon, so don't put ammo in your cannons and use the charged up paddle to send enemy projectiles back to them

- Make a few trial runs and see what's what on the map, plan your best course, I always plan my course to aim for Trinkets and Artifacts

- Try out Cursed Chests and Artifacts, after you clear out the zone boss you will receive (hopefully) a great trinket that can make your run much easier

- If you take Cursed Chests avoid The Dark Cannon (it disable one of your cannons) and The Dark Plank (You cannot repair your ship anymore), these 2 can be fatal during boss fights

- Always have planks on board your ship

- Try to scavenge for as many tendrils as possible for the permanent upgrades

- At the Soup Shop, invest in ship HP and cargo space

- At Blacksmith invest in Sentry, there will be more cannons to unlock, but you will always have a sentry on board (if you play offline like me)

- Keep bombs for large group of enemies or boss fights, they regenerate slowly, so use them wisely

- Always search for trinkets that increase the damage, crit chance and ammo of your projectiles, in this order

- Be on lookout for items in the water (chests, harpoons, planks, gold)

- Some planks can be recovered from water if your ship gets damaged (Use your harpoon)

- Train your paddle skills to better deflect enemy projectiles (it will be useful later in game)

- After beating the first boss you can recycle an item, that means an artifact, ammo or EVEN trinket, you just need to open inventory, drop it and then grab it, I cannot stress this enough, I found out that you can do this when I was at brightness level 3 -.-

- After beating the second boss you can DUPLICATE any items, that means EVEN trinkets

- Regarding artifacts, you should have on board The Barracuda (Attack Speed), The Pearls (Ammo Capacity) and The Shell (Damage) these 3 work well on any run

- Destroy every crate you come upon on islands

- For ammo, I love the Potato Bag, is half damage but the clip size and the ricochet are great, you can also aim for ammo that has spread or splash, use wikipedia to identify ammo!

- Make your build depending on the RNG, do not have the mentality of being stucked on some specific trinket or artifact because it's possible you won't get it

- Do the Siren Quest in the first zone, there is a 20% chance that after beating the boss and give the item to the Siren you will get the Holy Chest Artifact, which is one of the best artifacts because it doubles your rewards, that means x2 trinkets, x2 artifacts, x2 everything

- With Warrior Sculpture trinket and Big Bullet/ Silver Bullet or any crit chance item you can forget about reloading and can fully automatize your ship if you have only sentries

- I play offline and with 2 sentries, I take manual control of cannons only when I am overwhelmed, most of the time I focus on scavenging from water, deflecting projectiles and reloading, it worked so good I finished the game

- Light Purse and Light Coin will make your life much easier

- As you unlock pearls and bring them from the shop to the ship try to make the best of that run, because once unlocked, the pearls won't appear again in the Pearl Shop

- Make an effort and buy the upgrades from Old Man, which let you use the Siren Pools twice

- Some of the best ammo I used: Gold Nugget, Poison Dart, Maracas Duet, Frozen Wave and Rusty Seablade

- Try to collect as many trinkets as possible, you never know when you need them

- For the final boss you can prepare your cannons on portside of the ship and take a few shoots while he spawns/ respawns, sometimes I killed the boss before monsters spawned

- For my runs I only used Shelbie and Quill

- Try to get the fallowing trinkets for an easier run: Dragon Statuette, Popshells, Searemonial Dagger, Warrior Sculpture and Cursed Rewards

- You can discard The Beacon Artifact if you need more cargo space

- At second Siren Pool you can duplicate tendrils

- Try to avoid empty tiles on the map, you have limited time/movement on the map due to the storm

- Extinguish the fire on board the ship, otherwise there is a chance it will spread

- Read carefully what each brightness level does and prepare accordingly

- Once you unlock the ,,Slot Machine" for shops and have a bunch of tendrils, you can get most of the trinkets very easy and make your desired build

- Skeletal enemies have revenge shot, that means when they are killed, they will launch a projectile at you

Good luck sailors!