I know you can gift to your companions but what does this do for you?

 

Also, the ship droid (RV something) is he worth gifting to? I have heard he offers no bonus and on the gift guides he is never listed.

 

I am a lvl 24 right now and only have Khem and the droid but do not want to put time into gifting if the payoff is not worth it. Please help

Gifting increases the affection of your companions, which increase their chance to crit craft an item, which either crafts it with an augment slot or increases the amount of items received.

So if I get the droid to 2000+ affection he will bring back better stuff or craft better stuff?

The biggest thing it does for you besides getting there back stories and quests is raise their affection for you. That's good for crafting and the like. So if you have your droid craft you should give him some gifts to get his affection up because greater affection means less chance of failure and more chance of them coming back with stuff you'll really like.

I tend to use the droid for most of my crafting (cybertech, scavaging, underworld) and use Khem when I am not fighting. I was giving all my stuff to Khem but stopped when I realized that I can gift to the droid as well. Since the affection is a crafting bonus mostly it would be better to level the droid affection more...am I understanding this correctly?

 

**sorry for all the newbie questions this is my first MMO...former console gamer

It's for bonues and for success, if they don't like you they will fail more.

You'll want to increase the affection the the companion that has the best crafting bonuses to your crafting skill. For example, Khem has +15 artifice efficiency, so if you have artifice then you should raise his affection.

Like I said I am cybertech so Khem really has no bonus (if I understand correctly) the droid has nothing for me bonus wise either but is my main gatherer/crafter so dump into him right

Like I said I am cybertech so Khem really has no bonus (if I understand correctly) the droid has nothing for me bonus wise either but is my main gatherer/crafter so dump into him right

None of your companions have bonuses to cybertech, so you'll be fine to focus on your droid as your main crafter and give him a ton of gifts. Andronikus has a +2 to underworld trading, so you can give some gifts to him. Xalek has a +2 to scavenging, so you can dump into him when you get him, That's basically it.

Awesome thank you!

Efficiency is a time bonus.

 

Critical is a chance to return with more/better/extra stuff, or to crit craft, which means a chance for augments slots on some things, or a chance to produce two items instead of one for others.

 

Affection increases these, as well as reducing the failure chance.

 

The ship droid, however, can not have it's affection increased until you buy special items available from the ship repar droid.

So for a starting player, do not give the ship droid anything. Save the gifts for companions that like them.

 

You can find out who likes what through the time-tested process of trial and error, or you can just look it up on the internet if you are not interested in figuring it out for yourself.

There's also the Presence bonuses (+10 each, maximum of +400) and the improvements to your Heroic Moments (increase duration and decrease cooldown) that you get for the first of each Companion type (Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Ranged Tank, Melee Tank, Healer) for completing the Companion Quests.

I can give my ship droid gifts and it gives affection. Right now he is at 1000. So I have people telling give him gifts and others saying its useless...which is correct. I have 10 rank 2 tech gifts. They are good for both Khem and the droid. I seldom use Khem to craft so his affection is not as important as the droids (my main crafter) so before I give all 10 to one of them can I get a solid reply please. I am a level 24 inquisitor with cyber tech

I can give my ship droid gifts and it gives affection. Right now he is at 1000. So I have people telling give him gifts and others saying its useless...which is correct. I have 10 rank 2 tech gifts. They are good for both Khem and the droid. I seldom use Khem to craft so his affection is not as important as the droids (my main crafter) so before I give all 10 to one of them can I get a solid reply please. I am a level 24 inquisitor with cyber tech

 

Giving it to khem would unlock more story for you, and about 5k exp.(after a few gifts) and more exp as you level. Ship droid gives better crafting bonuses because you use him more. Its simple as that, and your choice

The ship droid, however, can not have it's affection increased until you buy special items available from the ship repar droid.

 

This is not true. You can raise the droid's affection from the moment you get your ship - it likes cultural artifacts the most, followed by technology and imperial memorabilia (republic memorabilia for C2-N2).

 

Adittionally, you can buy sensors that give it bonuses to some specific crafting skills. For a cybertech you'll want the Engineering Droid Sensor, which gives it +5 Scavenging efficiency and +5 Cybertech critical - which is huge. But, you need 100.000 credits to purchase it and a somewhat high Legacy level (12 IIRC), so if this Inquisitor is your first character, it's not something you have to worry about for a while.

 

So yeah, your best course of action for now is to raise 2V-R8's affection and send it to craft nonstop.

I'm not sure if affection increases crit chance

My commando's companions (with 2k each) crit more often than my sage's companions

According to the devs, a companion at full 10000 affection gets a 5% crit bonus to all crew skills:

http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-april-27th-2012/

 

It is unclear if it's a continuous variation, or 1% fixed steps: a companion with 1990 affection may get a 1,99% or a 1% bonus.

 

And as always, what the devs say should happen and what the game actually does is not necessarily the same. But the common consensus seems to be, it's better to raise everyone's affection.

Thanks everyone. I have started to put more into each at the moment but my main focus is the droid since I cannot level him at all on missions (kinda useless compared to Khem in the field). I have not noticed a big difference but I have only gone from 1000 to 4000 in affection so far.