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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stoat" data-source="post: 5082366" data-attributes="member: 16786">A valuable lesson I learned DM'ing Spelljammer lo these many years ago:Maintaining a warship is expensive.Repairs cost a stack, maybe 100 gold per ship's hit point restored.The crew expects to be paid, and if they have to fight, they expect danger pay (or a cut of the loot).Coming to port means paying tolls, tariffs, fees, taxes, duties, excises, bribes, gratuities, etc., etc., etc.As I understand it, your other problem is that NPC's carry stuff, often magical stuff, and magical stuff is valuable.  You can always take the 4E way out, NPC's don't need magical stuff to be better, but that's an option that rankles a lot of folks.  Consider larger groups of lower-level foes.  Instead of a 6th Level swashbuckler with a +2 rapier, send out 10 or 12 2nd Level fighters with masterwork rapiers.  Then make it a little trickier for the PC's to buy and sell items.  Merchants pay less when they're buying swords in bulk.  It takes a few weeks or months to consign fancy magic items.  Another option is to be straight with your players: "guys, I've given out too much stuff.  We gotta do something about it."</blockquote>