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Should I just buy companion gifts from vendors?


Clayburn

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I've heard talk of the Compendium thing that gets them instant to 50, but I don't want to bother crafting DPs, and they're about 2+ million on the GTN at the moment.

 

Plus I already have some influence with companions. Some are close to 40 but most are around the 10s and 20s.

 

I see some companion gifts on the GTN, but can't I just buy them from vendors for less? I just want to hit 50 quickly, without overpaying unnecessarily. What would you suggest?

 

I've also heard that you want to use greens and blues up to a certain level before switching to purples. And I don't know much about the legendaries.

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A lot of it's gonna come down to time versus money. Here are some data points, though they're gonna assume a character's starting at rank 1 (which probably won't make as much difference as you're hoping, as the influence system is heavily backloaded):

  • A Commander's Compendium is going to cost around 11 million when you factor in the cost to buy/craft Dark Projects (crafting is a little more expensive at a baseline, but comes with a chance for critical successes that counteracts that). It's a one-and-done instant 50.
  • Using rank 1 greens to level 40, then using rank 5 blues from 40 to 50 is, barring freak strokes of luck on the GTN, going to be the most economical. However, you'll need in the neighborhood of 6500 total gifts (6092 of the former, 450 of the latter) to do the whole way. The credit cost will be only around 3.5 million (less than the Compendium, even taking the Dark Project cost out!), but is going to require a good 2½ hours of mindlessly clicking or tapping the same key over and over again (and that's assuming you have the Legacy bonus for faster gift delivery). How well can you train your reflexes to do that while you put a movie on, or something?
  • Using rank 5 purples is a sort of compromise point between the two. You only need around 480 of those to do the whole rank up, which is around 10-15 minutes of gift pumping with the legacy bonus, with a cost of around 4.8 million.

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There is a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet on the influence guide on Dulfy that allows you to calculate how many gifts of the various ranks and colours are needed and the cost (if known) per influence bracket. For reference, if you have the full 30% legacy bonus, it would cost a grand total of 4,490,400 credits to rank a comp from level 1 to 50 with green gifts.

 

Here's the breakdown:

6,083 rank 1 green gifts = 1,294,800 credits - that will get a comp from lvl 1 to 40 (there is no influence gain w/ rank 1 gifts above 40)

5,326 rank 2 green gifts = 3,195,600 credits - these will get the comp from lvl 40 to 50

 

Clearly you'll want to have the full legacy bonus to reduce the time to give gifts. The instant 50 gift is a great convenience but you definitely pay for that convenience.

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I see some companion gifts on the GTN, but can't I just buy them from vendors for less? I just want to hit 50 quickly, without overpaying unnecessarily. What would you suggest?

Purple grade 6 gifts are 10K credits at the vendor on the Fleet. Blue ones (giving half the Influence) are half the price.

 

Yellow grade 6 gifts give about four times the influence of the 10K-credit ones, and cost 25 times as much (250K).

 

So, if you can find yellow grade 6 on the GTN for less than 40K, they are a better buy than the purple ones from the vendor, and depending on how much you value your time, it might be worth paying a bit more than that because of the reduction in gift-clicking time.

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Purple grade 6 gifts are 10K credits at the vendor on the Fleet. Blue ones (giving half the Influence) are half the price.

 

Yellow grade 6 gifts give about four times the influence of the 10K-credit ones, and cost 25 times as much (250K).

 

So, if you can find yellow grade 6 on the GTN for less than 40K, they are a better buy than the purple ones from the vendor, and depending on how much you value your time, it might be worth paying a bit more than that because of the reduction in gift-clicking time.

 

Thanks! That's really helpful.

 

At what point should I use green vs blue vs purple? Does it matter? Is it just a difference in total time or are there differences in points based around levels?

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Thanks! That's really helpful.

 

At what point should I use green vs blue vs purple? Does it matter? Is it just a difference in total time or are there differences in points based around levels?

The only tier I've studied is the top tier in blue or better, and there is no difference between blue and purple for points-per credit, which makes blues a bad choice for time, while the yellows at vendor price are horrible for points-per-credit compared to purples.

 

So at vendor prices, considering only the toppest tier, the sweet spot is purples.

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the green gifts stop being time efficient after ~lvl 20, which will run you a little over 90k from 1-20... it's a little over 4mil to finish the companion 20-50 from there with purple 5's from the vendor in about the same time it took you to get to 20... you want to get at least the max gift giving perks in legacy tab (costs 90k, you'll get it back in value)
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Thanks! That's really helpful.

 

At what point should I use green vs blue vs purple? Does it matter? Is it just a difference in total time or are there differences in points based around levels?

 

To save me some time calculating what i do is with every new comp i want to rise the influence first i use every single gift i have (from Drops, crates or crew mission rewards) of green, blue and purple to rank 4.

 

Then i start with Purple grade 5 (the ones that cost 10k), i usally have several from same sources (from Drops, crates or crew mission rewards), some from buying cheaper than 10k on GTN and only when i really want to rise high and have no more in stock i do buy them for 10k on Vendor.

 

All Yellows i get, i always sell on GTN.

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Purple grade 6 gifts are 10K credits at the vendor on the Fleet. Blue ones (giving half the Influence) are half the price.

 

Yellow grade 6 gifts give about four times the influence of the 10K-credit ones, and cost 25 times as much (250K).

 

So, if you can find yellow grade 6 on the GTN for less than 40K, they are a better buy than the purple ones from the vendor, and depending on how much you value your time, it might be worth paying a bit more than that because of the reduction in gift-clicking time.

Purple grade 5, not grade 6.

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  • 1 month later...

All Yellows i get, i always sell on GTN.

 

This is what I did when I was trying for a 50 on a budget.

 

Do as many heroics as I could, turn in crates, sell all the yellows for 100k on the GTN (could sell for more but at 100k they sell fast) then use that money to buy purples after having given all the blues that I got from the crates to the companion.

 

If you don't count the purples I bought with money from selling yellows I got my first comp to 50 for about 1.2 mil with most of that being the cost of the legacy perk for faster gifting and only took 2 days.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Do as many heroics as I could, turn in crates, sell all the yellows for 100k on the GTN (could sell for more but at 100k they sell fast) then use that money to buy purples after having given all the blues that I got from the crates to the companion.

 

God I wish I'd thought of that back when I was grinding my top 8 comps to 50. I would just use the gold gifts from Alliance crates on them and go "hooray look at all the numbers". So much money wasted, lol

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