Uncharted Waters New Horizons

I usually just hire the cheap mates, which include George Eggel, Gus Johnson, Zaganos Bei, but I stopped hiring Dante Peleira. I don't really remember why.

Anyway, I usually want Cizzaro Fedeliti, Fritz Ramsey, Antoine Fitch, Luka Ullman, and I stay away from anyone above level 3 to begin with.

I would recommend someone with a good knowledge and intuition as a first mate. Once you have the gunnery skill you don't really need a first mate with that skill. If your first mate and chief navigator have high knowledge and intuition (above 90 at least) you never have to worry about a storm surprising you again. You do need to have some balms ready to use, but the higher those two stats are the more likely you will be able to at least reach land before the storm hits.

Yes when you hire good mates they can cost a fortune.
Right now, on the game I'm playing, it cost me about 1000 coins per months in salary. 😀
I need to trade a lot and find treasures to pay them but I like the challenge.

siz, you keep missing the point. I know that I have made the point before that those high level mates don't increase their stats very well or very easy. Those "cheap" mates that I hire usually have most or all of their stats at 100 before they ever get to level 20. Not many of those "better" mates that require so much to hire will have stats that high, at least not all of their stats by the time they are level 20.

It has nothing to do with the fact that they only cost me 20 per month, it is all about where their stats are when I need them. My mates will run circles around most fleets by the time they are level 20, and that doesn't take very long.

I'm guessing that Koei simply applied a limit.

The one thing I didn't test when I was checking how the loyalty works was the effect of giving a large raise. If you give a raise when they ask for one it is always 10 more per month, but you can raise the wages at most any time and it doesn't just have to be when they ask.

If fact giving them a raise when they ask did very little for their loyalty. First, for them to ask for a raise their loyalty has to drop to 30 or below. Saying yes only added 1 point of loyalty in every case that I checked. Like I said in the paragraph above, I didn't check to see what giving them a raise at other times would do for their loyalty.

To summarize my findings, you can always hire a mate in the cafe at 100 loyalty if you treat them 15 times OR if you pay attention to how many times it takes for them to say "I hate to brag...". If you have to treat them 6 times before they say that, you will need to treat them 9 more times to hire them at 100 loyalty. If you have to treat them 3 times before they say that, you will need to treat them 5 more times to hire them at 100 loyalty. If you only treat them twice before they say that, you will need to treat them 3 more times to hire them at 100 loyalty. If they say that when you first treat them, you only need to treat them 2 more times to hire them at 100 loyalty. This applies to any mate that you hire in the cafe/pub.

Any mate that you hire in the lodge will start with a loyalty of 10 and may ask for a raise before you leave the port. Remember they only ask if their loyalty is 30 or below. The secret to getting a mate that you hire at the lodge to 100 loyalty is to "trick" the AI by sailing until the month changes twice.

What happens with a mate that is not at 100 is that their loyalty drops every time the month changes. Since the mates you hire at the lodge/inn start at 10 loyalty it should only take a couple of month changes for their loyalty to fall below zero. When that happens the game changes it from a negative to 100 loyalty.

I still haven't found a way to lower the loyalty of a mate that is at 100 loyalty. I've tried sailing without food and water, and sailing for months without any gold to pay them and still their loyalty stays at 100.

You may be better off to say no when they ask for a raise and then hire them again. If you hire them a second time their loyalty will start at 20. Hiring a mate adds 10 loyalty regardless of where you hire them.

Zaganos is one of the mates that I usually get, even though it seems that in the SNES version at least any bookkeeper has the negotiation skill. I'm not sure what you mean by the 31,31...40 because that looks like you aren't giving him a raise at all or you are giving him a raise of 31 which means his wages would be 31, 62, 93...etc. I always keep him at the 20 that I hire him at and just don't stop at a port for a couple of months, although you can stop at supply ports without being asked for a raise. I'll have to see what happens with a raise of 1 every time I stop at a port. It may be a while though.