I need iron and I can´t find it either, I´m starting to realize the game was design to be a very very slow burning experience. It´s meant to be played maybe once per day and probably not more than an hour for some reason, except for minor resources, the rest tend to have high recovery ratios, like trees fruits and what not.

In fact, the flame guide tells you directly when you complete several missions on a day, he says he doesn´t senses any more spectral wood, and you should try again tomorrow. I payed for the store to upgrade the other day and I had to wait for today just so I was able to see what he had on it, and when you "cook" (meaning when you ask the cook bear to cook for you, weird crafting system here) it takes time for the food to come and it will do so on mail from the bear postman...bear.

It´s kind of weird honestly cause as you progress the money and ingridients requiered for everything can of goes trough the roof, yet it´s not very easy to gather anything that is not small branches and mushrooms.

And as for the captain are still being grey, that´s something that will also happen all the time. WHen you exit the game, even if all bear areas you have found have being colored, they will loose the color the next time you come back to the game after some hours. I suppose that eventually, with enough light sources spread around and your camp fire being big enough, the island would stay colored.

It´s a very very weird design choice, I get cozy crafting game thinies not wanting you to do everything in one sitting, but damn. This one really just wants to force the player to wait it out between playing sessions, not advance much on those and grind the hell out of it. I don´t usually mod non bethesda games, but if this one had mod support removing those restrictions I would gladly go for it. Seems like as a completionist this one it´s gonna take actual years of daily logins like if it was an MMO. Kind of ruins the vibe the art style gives away.

Have you tried the Kit's clothing store? It's not in with the general stuff but I found it in the clothing store today.