Do I need to max out companion affection to get the bonus, or just do all the quests related to them? It seems the quests are related to their affection level.

 

I have Sith Huggernaut and Sith Sorc.

HUGGERNAUT! A friendly Sith Warrior.

 

Each 2000 affection gives you +1% to crit on all crew skills.

 

Maxing out affection gives you +10 Presence on all characters in your Legacy.

 

Finishing all the conversations gives you the companion class bonus (e.g. Ranged DPS companion will give all toons in your legacy +1% Accuracy).

 

Also, every point of affection will increase your companions' efficiency at running crew skill missions.

Also note that just getting a companion to 10k affection does not automatically give you their legacy bonus for that companion type. You need to have completed all conversations with that companion, which might also mean completing their companion missions if they have any (usually it's only the companions you get early in the game which have their own missions).

 

Companion conversations are also tied to your progress in your class story. So if you haven't completed your class story you might not get access to all conversations until you have. You might find you complete an Act of your class story and suddenly unleash a flood of companion conversations. This is most likely to happen with your starter companion.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Cernow
typos

Okay cool. It's my understanding maxing out Vette will give me 1% accuracy for all of my toons then. I'm trying to find a chart about which of my other story companions will give bonuses useful. I found the one for my sorc. Edited March 25, 2014 by nightsproull

It's my understanding maxing out Vette will give me 1% accuracy for all of my toons then.

 

It doesn't.

 

Completing all companion conversations on a Ranged DPS companion such as Vette will give 1% crit chance to all toons in the server.

 

1% accuracy is gained from a melee tank companion (Boonmark for a Sith Warrior)

Thanks for the clarification. I found an excellent guide with a bit of searching.

Note that you only get ONE of each Companion Archtype bonus. IE: Melee Tank. Khem, Broon, Skadge, I forget who else :B

They give 1% accuracy and 10 presence, as well as reducing cooldown and increasing duration on your Heroic Moment, on the first one you complete the Companion Quests for (The conversations and quests). Note, it's the Quests, not simply maxing out affection.

But every subsequent Melee Tank you complete will only give you the 10 presence, and none of the other bonuses.

 

But anyway, again, it's not based on reaching 10k affection, but completing their quests (which requires you to get dang close to 10k)

Maxing out affection gives you +10 Presence on all characters in your Legacy

 

From empirical evidence in my Legacy, I think the +10 Presence requirement is only finishing the conversation chain for each Companion, not maxed out Affection. Finishing the convo chain generally takes less than 10K Affection to do.

From empirical evidence in my Legacy, I think the +10 Presence requirement is only finishing the conversation chain for each Companion, not maxed out Affection. Finishing the convo chain generally takes less than 10K Affection to do.

This is correct.

 

And if anyone is interested, about 1/3 down the page are the "companion affection triggers":

http://dulfy.net/2012/04/22/companion-gifts-and-crafting-bonuses-for-1-2/

 

You can see how many affection points it requires to trigger the final conversation for each companion (so long are you are in chapter 3 of your class story).

Luckily I don't care about crafting or presence all that much, so I won't be doing this with most of my characters once I've got the five slots unlocked for acc/sur/crit/health/heal-received

 

What a massive money sink. And the stupid companion gift vendor doesn't even offer decent gifts for several of the companions to get past 4000 for a reasonable price.

What a massive money sink. And the stupid companion gift vendor doesn't even offer decent gifts for several of the companions to get past 4000 for a reasonable price.

 

Using nothing but 200 credit companion gifts from the vendor, you can get your companion to 6000 for ~30k credits (less if you get the Companion Gift Legacy Perk).

 

I'd say that's reasonable.

 

There is the occasional exception to this, because some companions have no type of gift that they "love," while others don't start loving their gifts until you get them above a certain threshold. These will cost more to get to 6k affection, but 90% of companions are easy mode and can be got there by spending ~30k on tier-1 gifts.

Even just the bonus presence adds up a lot if you're going to be making lots of alts. With a Human and five finished classes, my new characters start with 350 bonus Presence. THis gives all my companions +2400 HP, +112 damage, and +84 healing. My companions can basically solo everything through nar shaddaa, when I'm feeling lazy.

Also, for your first companion only (Qyzen, Corso, Khem, etc.), you can usually gain large amounts of affection with them by doing Esseles/Black Talon with them. I don't know the numbers for all companions, but it's over 300 for Qyzen Fess (consular). And at 55, you can solo it less than 20 minutes. I'm sure there's guides for each one as to what choices you need to make for that to happen.

 

It gets a little boring, but it's way cheaper than buying gifts, and actually works out to being faster than running crew skill missions or waiting for the stuff to come up on the GTN. Plus, it works at any affection level, there's no fall off as you get closer to 10k.

What a massive money sink. And the stupid companion gift vendor doesn't even offer decent gifts for several of the companions to get past 4000 for a reasonable price.

Belsavis dailies conversations give plenty of companion affection for players on a budget.

 

Also, many crew skills return companion gifts. You can run those missions, use the ones that give large affection for your companions, sell the ones that dont, and wind up money positive.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Khevar

I got away with only spending about 200k total on the GTN. Not sure how much I spent on the gift vendor, but I got all the companions to 8000 just using those. The rank 2 gifts for 600 each are substantially cheaper than anything people sell on the GTN.

 

I also learned that you can escape out of a convo if you're comp doesn't like your answer to one of their stupid prompts. Learned that the hard way after Khem Val docked me -480 for helping him.

Yes you can escape a convo by hitting ESC, at any time except during the final fade to black. I do this all the time to see all the conversation options. Also, it's a pretty smart way for Bioware to implement the ability for your companions to affect YOUR behavior, if you think about it.

 

The 600's are grade 2 green and typically get used up after you're completely done with the 200's (grade 1 green), and so only give 19 points or whatever. The grade 5 blue gifts give 160-190 points each, and if you can get them for less than 5,000, that's more effective. Yes, things are overpriced on the GTN and you can't always find the gift categories that you need, but if you have the patience to read through to pages 30-50 of the Miscellaneous category, you CAN find cheap grade 4 or grade 5 gifts that will give you a lot more points than the 600's would.

 

The support tradeskills (treasure hunting, diplomacy, investigation, etc) have missions that will give you companion gifts, all the way from grade 1 green to grade 5 purple, for much cheaper than the GTN (2,500 for 1-2 grade 5 blue). You need some time to build up the skill, and some more time (and hangar space) to accumulate a set of gifts of each kind, but it's not horrible. Diplomacy also gives you light/dark points (your choice); the other skills give you various crafting mats that you can sell.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Merouk

there are some guides on the net that tell you how to get to 10k by just using lvl 1 or 2 gifts,

first you buy about 100 lv 1 and same lvl 2, do not do any conversations with companion,use the lvl 1 til you get 0 affection,you might have to buy some more or switch to lvl 2, It also helps if you get the legacy conversation/gift bonuses.

after you get tired of the giving, do the conversations, you should be close to 9k or more.

Edited March 29, 2014 by MadHobbit

there are some guides on the net that tell you how to get to 10k by just using lvl 1 or 2 gifts,

first you buy about 100 lv 1 and same lvl 2, do not do any conversations with companion,use the lvl 1 til you get 0 affection,you might have to buy some more or switch to lvl 2, It also helps if you get the legacy conversation/gift bonuses.

after you get tired of the giving, do the conversations, you should be close to 9k or more.

 

Grade 1 gifts (200 credits per) will get you up to 6k affection. Grade 2 gifts (600 credits per) will get you up to 8k. Vendors don't sell gifts that will get you any higher than that.

 

If you have the perk that makes your companions like gifts more (Legacy of Altruism), it will take about 128 Grade 1 gifts to get your companion from 0 affection to 6k. Whether you want to grind to 8k at that point is up to you, but assuming you have Legacy of Altruism maxed out, that final 2k affection (goal of 8k affection) will run you about 50k credits (you'll be getting 25 affection per gift at that point).

 

If you don't have Legacy of Altruism, then it will take more gifts to reach the same levels, but the limits stand: Grade 1 takes you up to 6k and no farther; grade 2 takes you up to 8k and no farther.

 

Either way, if you're going to use this method, don't engage in any conversations with your companion until you're done getting them to 6k or 8k with cheap gifts.

Yeah, the cheapest and easiest method is definitely to go up to 6k with level 1 gifts, and 8k with rank 2, before you do anything else.

before you do anything else.

 

Before you do anything else is the key here.

 

Don't talk to your companion at all until after you have given them so many cheap vendor gifts that they are as high as they get with those.

 

Gifts give less affection the higher you get until in the only choice is to get more expensive gifts.

Conversations keep giving same affection no matter the previous affection levels.

 

If you do some conversations first and then start giving gifts after that, the cheap gifts will still only get up to 8000 and you will need to go GTN to buy really expensive rank 5 gifts to do the rest.

 

So start by giving them grade 1 vendor gifts up until 6000 and then grade 2 vendor gifts to get them from 6000 to 8000 and only after that start doing the conversations and they will pretty much get you from 8000 to 10000 for free and you will never even have to go to buy more expensive gifts.

The grade 1 gifts will cost 35k to get from 0 to 6000 and are definitely recommended as the first step.

 

The grade 2 vendor gifts will cost 60k to get to 8000, and if you bargain-hunt for grade 4-5 blue gifts from the GTN you can get to 9500 for less than 60k. It's all in the fact that single grade 5 gifts reward 190-200 points, and grade 4 give 140 or so. MUCH better than the 19 points you get from a grade 2 vendor gift.

 

Seriously, a grade 5 gift rewards as much affection as 10-12 grade 2 greens, so it's worth 6k credits. Yet I see grade 5 gifts on the GTN for sale for 2-4k.

 

But, whatever, it's your money, spend it however you want.

The grade 1 gifts will cost 35k to get from 0 to 6000 and are definitely recommended as the first step.

 

The grade 2 vendor gifts will cost 60k to get to 8000, and if you bargain-hunt for grade 4-5 blue gifts from the GTN you can get to 9500 for less than 60k. It's all in the fact that single grade 5 gifts reward 190-200 points, and grade 4 give 140 or so. MUCH better than the 19 points you get from a grade 2 vendor gift.

 

Seriously, a grade 5 gift rewards as much affection as 10-12 grade 2 greens, so it's worth 6k credits. Yet I see grade 5 gifts on the GTN for sale for 2-4k.

 

But, whatever, it's your money, spend it however you want.

 

I maxed out Vette, Jaesa, Talos, Khem, and Xalek. Rank 5 gifts that they actually liked were few and far in between, and were almost always extremely expensive. They only give big affection numbers if there's a significant difference between your current affection level and the rank of the gift.

 

5-6k credits for a gift that gives 48 affection is not a great deal, and you'll mostly find those on the GTN, especially when you factor in that there aren't that many worthwhile professions, so the comps that gives bonuses to bioanalysis/slicing/etc drive up the price of gifts that they favor.

I maxed out Vette, Jaesa, Talos, Khem, and Xalek. Rank 5 gifts that they actually liked were few and far in between, and were almost always extremely expensive. They only give big affection numbers if there's a significant difference between your current affection level and the rank of the gift.

 

5-6k credits for a gift that gives 48 affection is not a great deal, and you'll mostly find those on the GTN, especially when you factor in that there aren't that many worthwhile professions, so the comps that gives bonuses to bioanalysis/slicing/etc drive up the price of gifts that they favor.

At 8000 affection, rank 5 blue gifts should give 160 and rank 5 purple gifts give 384. With the legacy perk that adds 30%, then the blues give 208 and the purples give 499.

 

If you're only gaining 48 affection, you're giving the wrong gifts.

 

Vette likes Underworld Goods

Jaesa likes Weapons

Talos likes Cultural Artifacts

Khem likes Cultural Artifacts

Xalek likes Weapons and Military Gear

 

Here's a spreadsheet with all the data you need:

https://docs.google.com/a/copperhamster.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av7rr4x654YfdGY2RG9zcjFfSk9ZWHlqRnFlZDlOcUE#gid=1

Edited April 1, 2014 by Khevar