Here is my problem, I want to play a dark side bounty hunter tank.

So I need a healer and Mako is the only healing companion.

And I want to get Mako to max affection for fast crew skills.

But whenever I choose dark side options I get negative affection. At level 30 I only have about 1000 affection points because Mako hates every dialogue choice I make.

I know you can get companion gifts, but I dont want a high maintenance companion that I have to keep buying gifts for constantly. Gifts are a huge pain, you cant search for a certain type, like luxury, on the GTN, crew skills only get random gifts that I always get the wrong type, vendors have weak low level gifts.

If I choose darkside, is it going to be a big chore trying to keep Mako happy with gifts? Im going to need about 9000 points in comp gifts I dont know, maybe I can keep a big stock of vendor gifts on hand and everytime I make Mako mad I give her some gifts?

Or should I just go lightside and save the hassle of buying gifts?

Gifts are definitely the fastest way to get a companion's affection up, especially if they don't like your decision-making. Annoying? Potentially, but once you're able to build up a backlog of gifts it's negligible.

- Do you have more than one character with a gift-finding mission skill? And are they at the highest level of missions? (Don't waste time with lower level gifts if you don't have to.) My main keeps all the gifts she and my other characters get, and unless it's a category I use a lot of (Weapons is a problematic one XD), I have huge piles of them by now. *Someone* will want them eventually.

- Find out the exact names of the top gifts for Mako (i.e. whatever the Level 5 gifts are in Technology and maybe Underworld Goods) and just search for those. If you're romancing her, she'll also take Courting gifts.

Or you could always dismiss Mako for conversations (and bring someone like Gault instead) to save the trouble.

Level with Mako but before conversations, call out a comp who is okay with your ds choices. You still have to buy companion gifts, but not so many of them.

I do this with many of the companions. Some I know will follow the LS/DS choice I want to make, or in the case of Nadia, she gets to 10,000 so fast that I just wanted to use the opportunity for others to progress.

Ok, I didnt know you could use your ship droid in conversations!

Great idea, Mako never needs to know what I do when shes not around

This of course will mean that I will have to get all the remaining 9000 affection points with gifts since no convo points, but I guess thats not too hard? maybe just expensive....

I don't think the ship droid actually responds to any conversations....can't say I've actually tried though. when I'm leveling, I always pull out whichever companion will react favorably to a decision. If I it doesn't work out, that's what the ESC button is for.

All I have ever gotten was from gifts and not convo's with the droids.

Well, for a start, I'm wary of the "dismiss companion before conversation" trick, because in the past I've gotten (and lost) affection for choices they weren't even there for.

You actually get a lot more from gifts than that, the gift vendor sells rank 1 and 2 gifts. Rank 1 are best for 0-1999, and rank 2 are best for 2000-3999, so that's more than a quarter of the way to full affection.

How do you want to get to full dark? If you want to always act like the darkside professional killer, then that's a problem, but if you just want the dark V look, you can pick conversation choices that get affection, until there's points up for grabs. Will you build affection as quickly as a light side hunter? No, but you'll get there.

There's always black talon farming. Learn all the choices that get affection, and make them for each run. Find someone else to join after you've memorized it, and you'll earn social points, too.

And, failing all of the above, you could get an alt with treasure hunting. Their companion gift missions have the same set of randomized gift returns, but they also have a chance to get gift fragments. Next to the gift vendor is another vendor, who can use gift fragments to create rank 5 gifts. These are the best in the game, and although are meant for getting you through 8000-10000, can be used earlier than that for a serious boost. It's not credit efficient, but gets the job done.

I believe Mako's favourite gifts are technology.

And, failing all of the above, you could get an alt with treasure hunting. Their companion gift missions have the same set of randomized gift returns, but they also have a chance to get gift fragments. Next to the gift vendor is another vendor, who can use gift fragments to create rank 5 gifts. These are the best in the game, and although are meant for getting you through 8000-10000, can be used earlier than that for a serious boost. It's not credit efficient, but gets the job done.

 

I believe Mako's favourite gifts are technology.

After 8 months of working on a consular, I finally unlocked all the companions. I even had treasure hunting and I was sending them out as fast as I could. In the end I broke down and paid about 500k for all the required gifts. The advanced vendor (Curator if I recall) is a joke because the return ratio is sad at best and takes forever to get 8 pieces for one gift that I can get the credits for to buy on the GTN in a few minutes of dailies..

After 8 months of working on a consular, I finally unlocked all the companions. I even had treasure hunting and I was sending them out as fast as I could. In the end I broke down and paid about 500k for all the required gifts. The advanced vendor (Curator if I recall) is a joke because the return ratio is sad at best and takes forever to get 8 pieces for one gift that I can get the credits for to buy on the GTN in a few minutes of dailies..

There's a reason I listed it last. To be honest, I just send out as many people for gifts as possible, and send the gifts to the alt that can use it the best. Because of this, I was quite annoyed when HK-51 was revealed to only have a moderately liked gift at best, and that it was weapons.

The devs need to introduce more patriotic companions ASAP.