Iron and Misery has the advantage of being between Port Cecil and Venderbight. Stop by there on your way out to collect Schilitack (sp?) and back and burn off some of the Terror you built up on the trip.
I like the idea of being able to communicate with other merchants/zailors to get more recent prices. Although not sure what happens if they report on places you have never visited… Seems like a cheat, but then such occurrences are possible.
Not necessarily a cheat. Sid Meier’s Pirates! (which FBG have mentioned as one inspiration to Sunless Sea) had similar mechanics: You could get bits of info on other cities (included price changes, or events which might impact prices), even if you haven’t explored enough to know where those cities are. It worked fairly well.
It’s not exactly the same situation with SS, since here the very names of places are unique and fun to discover. But this is definitely solvable (e.g. you only get info on places already discovered; or you get vague references of "some port" where prices rose, but no name, making it tempting to stock up on the goods and go find that port, etc.).
When I first played the game, I didn’t even think of the trade goods as trade goods: I saw them as things with an obscure use I’d yet to discover. (Of course, a wonderful thing about the system is that they can be that too) My first Elite-like was Escape Velocity, which had trade goods in a separate section from useful upgrades, and the buy and sell price for a good being the same- maybe not seeing that tripped me up?