Well, "fastest" is all going to be relative. Every way is going to take a long time.

Gift giving would theoretically be the fastest time, but availability of gifts is going to be a stumbling block. Even if you're willing to blow umpteen million credits on gifts, it's unlikely there will be enough for sale on the GTN at any given time.

Using Grade 5 gifts as a yardstick, and with the legacy perk that increases affection from gifts, it takes ~950 blues or ~475 purples (or some combination between them) to go from 10,000 affection to 250,000 affection.

If you have a huge stable of alts, you can send them out on gift gathering missions. The missions take about 15 minutes now -- but that's still going to take quite a while (particularly seeing as how only 10% - 20% of the gifts you get will be the "right" gift for the companion you're grinding affection).

Running the new Alliance missions will net you Grade 6 gifts. You can also purchase gifts at the vendor in exchange for data crystals. So doing things that get you data crystals will help speed things up.

Frankly, ALL methods are going to be a grind.

The only reason I was able to get a comp to max affection right away is due to the fact that I ran gift missions every single day across all of my alts for 2 months before 4.0 dropped. And even THAT wouldn't have been enough if it weren't for the fact that treasure hunting artifact fragments were changed to have a 1:1 exchange rate for purple gifts.

However, will all due respect and being serious here, why bother? Companions are overpowered now. There's no achievement. Many of us if not most have already done all the conversations ( assumption yes). So all we have left are gifts to give them?

Until something changes, I'm just going to ignore the whole influence thing for now. If I'm wrong please correct me.

However, will all due respect and being serious here, why bother? Companions are overpowered now. There's no achievement. Many of us if not most have already done all the conversations ( assumption yes). So all we have left are gifts to give them?

 

Until something changes, I'm just going to ignore the whole influence thing for now. If I'm wrong please correct me.

Well, high ranking companions are certainly overkill as far as combat is concerned.

But high ranks also bring significant crafting benefits, if that interests you. My rank 50 comp can obtain ~12 purple mats per hour all by himself. His mission time is down to 6 minutes and his crit rate on missions has gone up to 40%.

Well, "fastest" is all going to be relative. Every way is going to take a long time.

 

Gift giving would theoretically be the fastest time, but availability of gifts is going to be a stumbling block. Even if you're willing to blow umpteen million credits on gifts, it's unlikely there will be enough for sale on the GTN at any given time.

 

Using Grade 5 gifts as a yardstick, and with the legacy perk that increases affection from gifts, it takes ~950 blues or ~475 purples (or some combination between them) to go from 10,000 affection to 250,000 affection.

 

If you have a huge stable of alts, you can send them out on gift gathering missions. The missions take about 15 minutes now -- but that's still going to take quite a while (particularly seeing as how only 10% - 20% of the gifts you get will be the "right" gift for the companion you're grinding affection).

 

Running the new Alliance missions will net you Grade 6 gifts. You can also purchase gifts at the vendor in exchange for data crystals. So doing things that get you data crystals will help speed things up.

 

Frankly, ALL methods are going to be a grind.

 

The only reason I was able to get a comp to max affection right away is due to the fact that I ran gift missions every single day across all of my alts for 2 months before 4.0 dropped. And even THAT wouldn't have been enough if it weren't for the fact that treasure hunting artifact fragments were changed to have a 1:1 exchange rate for purple gifts.

Not quicker, but simple and cheaper. It seems that the new rewards drops are mainly companion gifts. I've run about 8 of the Heroic Weeklys which involve running through the instance while your companion kills everything and ended up with a ton of purple level 5 & 6 gift missions.

Like you, I saw the hand writing and ran pre launch gift missions. I ended up with a cargo hold full of stacks each of 50+ missions, but have just left them. I don't have the will to sit and click on 100s of missions. I probably have enough to max level one companion. I also have a ton of the artifact fragments, but haven't bothered to turn them in. Just to much mindless grind and clicking to max out previously maxed out companions.

Hmmm, from experience my influence with my companion goes down when they disagree with my choices......weird.

Since 4.0? 'cause before 4.0, yeah, you'd lose Affection if they disagreed, but now you still get at least 50 Influence when they disagree; it should be impossible to lose Influence now.

Since 4.0? 'cause before 4.0, yeah, you'd lose Affection if they disagreed, but now you still get at least 50 Influence when they disagree; it should be impossible to lose Influence now.

Ok, but that means you would STILL have to choose what they like to increase the influence enough to max it out....now if you got the same influence regardless of your choices, then it would be cool, but if you got 50 for a disagree and 100-200 per agree, i wonder which one players are gonna pick?......lol

Well, i was able to get 6000-6999 influence from doing Black Talon....so if you can stomach doing Black Talon over and over and over again, you can max the first companion pretty quick, but i doubt black talon conversations will include the other companions, unless they changed that with 4.0.

Ok, but that means you would STILL have to choose what they like to increase the influence enough to max it out....now if you got the same influence regardless of your choices, then it would be cool, but if you got 50 for a disagree and 100-200 per agree, i wonder which one players are gonna pick?......lol

I get what you're saying, but is this difference so important to you that you feel forced to "meta game" the system?

What with all companions being able to do all roles, you have the option of picking a companion that you enjoy. In terms of character and in terms of dialog.

If you have a companion you're in disagreement with over conversation choices, I would at least hope that you otherwise enjoy having that companion out. And if not, wouldn't you be better served by picking a companion that is more compatible with the way to you want to play your main character?

If you have a companion you're in disagreement with over conversation choices, I would at least hope that you otherwise enjoy having that companion out. And if not, wouldn't you be better served by picking a companion that is more compatible with the way to you want to play your main character?

So tl;dr: For the companions who agree with you, there are conversation bonuses. For all the others, there's MasterCard.

So tl;dr: For the companions who agree with you, there are conversation bonuses. For all the others, there's MasterCard.

I heard Billy Crudup's voice in my head when I read your post.

So tl;dr: For the companions who agree with you, there are conversation bonuses. For all the others, there's MasterCard.

Well, considering how much you will need to spend to get the gifts to max it out, it would cost way, WAY over 5mil credits.

I get what you're saying, but is this difference so important to you that you feel forced to "meta game" the system?

 

What with all companions being able to do all roles, you have the option of picking a companion that you enjoy. In terms of character and in terms of dialog.

 

If you have a companion you're in disagreement with over conversation choices, I would at least hope that you otherwise enjoy having that companion out. And if not, wouldn't you be better served by picking a companion that is more compatible with the way to you want to play your main character?

25% chance to crit on missions, 75% more faster mission duration? its a no brainer...

You can also buy rank 6 companion gifts for 30 Common Data Crystals, or you can buy the Alliance Supplies for 50 and get a companion gift and a piece of legacy gear and a chance at some other stuff too.

Also, each old Treasure Hunting companion gift fragments buys one rank 5 gift of the same rarity -- what a bargain!

Well, considering how much you will need to spend to get the gifts to max it out, it would cost way, WAY over 5mil credits.

IMO, the time spent feeding the gifts is worse than the other costs.

25% chance to crit on missions, 75% more faster mission duration? its a no brainer...

Yeah, but why do this on a companion that doesn't fit your playstyle?

You were complaining about comps disagreeing with your decisions getting low influence, so having to meta-game the system to pick the "better" choices.

Doing this with a companion you disagree with seems like a waste of time.

I admit I was curious about the new system in terms of a tier of potential responses a companion could have to your conversation. For example is "Char X is amused" equal to "Char X approves" or "Char X has their interest piqued etc."

Obviously greatly approves trumps approves but how do the others compare to each other?

It doesn't honestly change anything and I've just been picking answers I like anyway but I was still curious.

What about heroics? I don't get it. Sometimes I run heroics with comps and they end up with huge affection gains. Most of the time, nada.

So what gives???? :confused:

I am not sure I will ever max out my companions it seems like too much, however I have set some more 'reasonable' limits. Each class has 1 character that's a crafter and for that character I rank up to rank 20 using rank 1 companion gifts (as soon as I get the companion) with a aim of funneling all gifts through these characters to get them at least rank 30+, for all alts of those classes I chose the same crew skills and replace the crafting skill with slicing, with these characters I give them a base influence of rank 15 (giving gifts as soon as I get them), any influence gained after that is a bonus.

It seems like a reasonable trade off since I still get some decent crits from my gathering alts but the larger proportion of crits will come from my crafting characters.

I am not sure I will ever max out my companions it seems like too much, however I have set some more 'reasonable' limits. Each class has 1 character that's a crafter and for that character I rank up to rank 20 using rank 1 companion gifts (as soon as I get the companion) with a aim of funneling all gifts through these characters to get them at least rank 30+, for all alts of those classes I chose the same crew skills and replace the crafting skill with slicing, with these characters I give them a base influence of rank 15 (giving gifts as soon as I get them), any influence gained after that is a bonus.

 

It seems like a reasonable trade off since I still get some decent crits from my gathering alts but the larger proportion of crits will come from my crafting characters.

I agree that trying to get all companions on all characters to max influence is too much. In fact I will go so far as to say it is unnecessary. I have implemented a similar strategy to yours:

On my crafting characters I have one companion that is rank 30+ that is my dedicated crafting companion. The rest range from 10 to 25 (basically the former max affection to slightly better than the former best companion specific bonuses). I tend to use...

• lower rank companions for gathering skill missions (since a crit is not as important; 2 extra units is not worth worrying about) and discovered missions (again crits are nice on those but not as important)
  
• higher rank on mission skills (where purple mats are nice but not always necessary)
  
• and highest rank (save the one crafter) for slicing (since purple mats are the goal)
  

The exception is my main where the increased efficiency is actually a benefit (while playing I can run more missions). On my main I have seven companions 30+ (50, 46, 40, 40, 39, 35, 33; Niko is my 50 so when he disappeared I leveled another companion to compensate)