In case anyone was wondering.

1. New influence (affection) cap raised to 250,000

2. Grade 5 blue gifts give +466 affection (with the legacy gift perk)

3. Grade 5 purple gifts gift +932

4. At 20,000 influence blues went to +399 and purples to +799

5. At 40,000 influence blues went to +333 and purples to +666

6. At 60,000 influence gains were the same as 40,000. I stopped at this point.

M1-4X now is at "Rank 25 out of 50". He has

+1250 presence when summoned.

+37.5% crew skill efficiency

+12.5% crew skill critical

72,932 hp as a tank

2506-2834 primary damage as a tank

63,448 hp as a dps

3188-3516 primary damage as a dps.

Compare to Elara, who is at Rank 10:

+500 presence when summoned.

+15.0% crew skill efficiency

+5.0% crew skill critical

67,667 hp as a tank

1481-1485 primary damage as a tank

58,868 hp as a dps

2027-2031 primary damage as a dps

I wonder what the bonuses will be at a fully maxxed out rank 50 companion?

Still patching... So.... previously maxed out, 10000 affection companions got converted to how much influence?

10,000 -- it's a 1:1 translation.

Now, you might think you lost all your affection when you first log in (I did) but that's just because the new cap is so high, that the 10,000 influence you start with is barely noticeable on the bar.

Also note that B is now the default shortcut that opens the crew skills window (can be changed of course). N opens a new companion interface.

Did they change the affection/influence conversation modifiers for our later companions IE: the 1st companion we get gains +10 while the last one we get our 5th would gain 40+?

Looks like doing the lvl 50 daily's from Belsavis/Ilum is something we will want to do again, especially for our original companions. Don't know if the new ones in KOTFE will gain influence from these as well.

Someone had a lot of gifts banked lol - thanks for the information.

Yeah, I went a bit crazy in the weeks leading up to 4.0.

Now I have to decide if I want to keep the gifts to use for myself (at this rate I could empty my cargo hold of gifts without making a significant dent in influence on my primary crafters), or sell them.

I guess I'll watch prices on the GTN.

Incidentally, it looks like Grade 6 companion gifts are rewards for certain Alliance missions -- not from Crew Skills.

I wonder how much more affection they provide?

I should have never sold all those Purple Gree Courting gifts. hehe

Lol so you were one of thep eople I was buying masses of those from. They were like the only purple 5 that was coming in around 10K for the past couple of weeks.

Yeah, I went a bit crazy in the weeks leading up to 4.0.

 

Now I have to decide if I want to keep the gifts to use for myself (at this rate I could empty my cargo hold of gifts without making a significant dent in influence on my primary crafters), or sell them.

 

I guess I'll watch prices on the GTN.

Yeah tough choices right, I'll personally sell them only because I probably have enough banked CM items to reach my billion credit goal and crafting now seems like just too much work to make decent profits from it.

However if I were still in the area of crafting for profit I would weigh up what items I thought I could make a profit from and how long they might still make a profit.

Tough with all these new gear changes as I only really see crafting for some form of cosmetic items being truly profitable ( dyes, crystals etc. ) however prefabs could become quite a good money maker and the higher crit could certainly help there being you can either sell them as is or use them to buy deco's and sell those for even more of a markup which doesn't seem like so much hardwork now that crafting is more work. Plus they all stack ( deco and prefab ).

If you think you could get a decent market going somewhere then the gifts used to get a big crit would be pretty worth it ( wonder how high that crit bonus will go? ) but honestly I think selling gifts and focusing on a gift generating market would be most profitable for quite some time with a 250K! cap lol.

Curious what are prices for gifts like now that you are seeing ( I'm at work so can't check without remoting in to home which I'd do if someone hadn't shut down my pc it would seem ) ? I can see these sky rocketing and staying high for quite some time.

Wonder what other sources of rank 6 there will be - cm packs perhaps? Seems CM something is inevitable with that high of a cap.

So with the discovery that artifact fragments have a 1:1 trade at the gift vendor, and seeing as how I had a loooooot of them in my cargo hold () I decided to forgo profits from selling the gifts and take Forex the rest of the way to max influence, just to see what it took (and what the result was).

Okay, so to continue:

7. At 90,000 influence blues went to +266 and purples to +532

8. At 160,000 influence, blues went to +200 and purples to +399

9. He was at rank 40 by this point.

10.The points per gift stayed at +200/+399 all the way to the end.

11. The last rank (49 to 50) took 9900 affection to obtain.

12. No achievement for rank 50 (not that I expected it -- but just in case anyone else wonders)

Click for companion stats:

Summary of costs per level (between 10k and 250k):

Which basically would mean, 922 rank 5 blue gifts or 469 rank 5 purple gifts (or some combination between them).

Some analysis of costs:

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my little ridiculous journey. When I make it to level 65 I'll go to the fleet and parse Forex on the combat dummy -- I'm super curious as to how much he can pull at max.

I too took Jaesa Dark Side to 50. I went through 500+ purple grade 5 weapon gifts. She can do slicing grade 8 rich mission for adaptive circuitry in 6 mins and I got 3 adaptives each mission 6 x's in a row so the at 50 inf. you get some serious crits and time cuts.

Whoa. 6 minutes?

I'll have to see how long the mission takes with a 0 affection companion. Either they reduced the baseline mission time, or the +75% efficiency is better than I thought.

Whoa. 6 minutes?

 

I'll have to see how long the mission takes with a 0 affection companion. Either they reduced the baseline mission time, or the +75% efficiency is better than I thought.

Per the blog:

In most cases, Crafting times have been greatly reduced. This will enable crafters to craft more items to coincide with the faster leveling.

and

The completion time for Crew Skill Missions has been greatly reduced

For reference, I have slicer at 10K Influence, and Disassembly Required takes 20m24s, so ~6 mins for +75% sounds right.

For reference, I have slicer at 10K Influence, and Disassembly Required takes 20m24s, so ~6 mins for +75% sounds right.

Groovy.

So, assuming that the default 15% crit rate for a non-orange mission still stands, this means a rank 50 companion has a 40% crit rate with a 6 minute running time.

Napkin math suggests such a companion could obtain 12 purple mats per hour.

Dayam.

Thank you for this topic, but can I ask how "Liked"/"favorable"/"loved" gifts are compared in gains?

For example, Ashara only have "liked" with female SI, so would love to know how much I must multiply them 20 millions. :/

Click for companion stats:

x2 damage vs 10.000 influence! I should choose one char for open world content a level one companion. Still, dat grind and amount of credits!

i just realized - it will kill all these innovations with free-role and gear skins for me, cuz i will stuck with one 250k companion. Bioware... just whyyy?

1. New influence (affection) cap raised to 250,000

2. Grade 5 blue gifts give +466 affection (with the legacy gift perk)

3. Grade 5 purple gifts gift +932

4. At 20,000 influence blues went to +399 and purples to +799

5. At 40,000 influence blues went to +333 and purples to +666

6. At 60,000 influence gains were the same as 40,000. I stopped at this point.

 

M1-4X now is at "Rank 25 out of 50". He has

+1250 presence when summoned.

+37.5% crew skill efficiency

+12.5% crew skill critical

 

I wonder what the bonuses will be at a fully maxxed out rank 50 companion?

There's also a gift effectiveness chart, that shows the diminishing returns of gifts after rank10.

Here's the chart for "companion LOVES this gift": Assuming companions LOVE this gift (16x multiplier)

dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/swtor-love-companion-gift-values-and-influence-rank.jpg

file:///D:/x11g/documents/swtorgame/dufly/SWTOR%20Fallen%20Empire%20Companion%20Influences%20Guide%20-%20Dulfy.mht

Hehe, oops that's a link to my local archived version of her guide

here's her world wide web link dulfy.net/2015/10/21/swtor-fallen-empire-companion-influences-guide/

Each influence rank give the following bonuses.

 

+50 Presence

+1.5% time efficiency for crew skill tasks

+0.5% critical rate for crew skill tasks

 

Which means a influence rank 50 companion will have 2500 presence, 75% time efficiency for crew skill tasks and 25% critical rate for crew skill tasks.

Here is dulfy's companion recruitment guide: dulfy.net/2015/10/21/swtor-alliance-specialists-and-companion-recruitment-guide/

==================

Summary of costs per level (between 10k and 250k):

With grade 5 gifts:

 

10,000 - 20,000 (6 blues or 11 purples)

20,000 - 40,000 (50 blues or 25 purples)

40,000 - 90,000 (150 blues or 75 purples)

90,000 - 160,000 (264 blues or 132 purples)

160,000 - 250,000 (452 blues or 226 purples)

 

Which basically would mean, 922 rank 5 blue gifts or 469 rank 5 purple gifts (or some combination between them).

 

Some analysis of costs:

 

Assuming that there were enough gifts for sale on the GTN (which there won't be, that's FAR to many gifts to be actively listed at any given time) -- but just for pretendzies, say they were. And gifts were at ~20k for blue and ~40k for purple.

 

That would cost you around 20 million credits to get a single companion up to 250,000 affection.

 

HOLY ****

Rank 5 Prototype and Artifact Gifts are available also from the fleet vendor in Galactic Trade Market section of the fleet. They cost 5 Common Data Crystals for prototype and 10 for Artifact.

Rank 6 Prototype and Artifact level Artwork and Consumable Gifts are available from the Jawa Scrap vendor in Cartel Bazaar section of fleet in exchange for the matching type of Jawa Scraps

Rank 6 Legendary Gifts are available from a vendor Odessen Cantina for 30 Common Data Crystals and available from the new pack as well.

Bioware wants you to spend basic commendations on Gifts instead of vendoring basic commendation gear for credits.

So with the discovery that artifact fragments have a 1:1 trade at the gift vendor, and seeing as how I had a loooooot of them in my cargo hold () I decided to forgo profits from selling the gifts and take Forex the rest of the way to max influence, just to see what it took (and what the result was).

 

Okay, so to continue:

 

7. At 90,000 influence blues went to +266 and purples to +532

8. At 160,000 influence, blues went to +200 and purples to +399

9. He was at rank 40 by this point.

10.The points per gift stayed at +200/+399 all the way to the end.

11. The last rank (49 to 50) took 9900 affection to obtain.

12. No achievement for rank 50 (not that I expected it -- but just in case anyone else wonders)

Can you screenshot your max rank 4x and publish to imgur.com or something. I really want to see someone achieving max influence in the first week.

Sure, here you go:

http://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/2476784/pics/original/3422615.jpg

And I need to correct the stats I gave earlier. That was at level 60. When I reached 65 and got Forex back, here were his updated numbers:

Tank stats:

122,436 hp

3893-3926 Damage (Pri)

DPS stats:

105,763 hp

5303-5336 Damage (Pri)

Then I finally got around to taking him to the fleet. I cast Grav Round for the armor debuff, and let Forex go to down on the training dummy for about 5 minutes.

5,664 dps

5.6K dps! Lol.

If we could get companions to avoid stupid they would be pretty viable for operations and hm fp's now perhaps?

Been a long time since I've run them and checked any numbers etc. which has no doubt changed in 4.0

Wonder how their tanking would hold up against bosses etc. too ... heals ... hmmm.

5.6K dps! Lol.

 

If we could get companions to avoid stupid they would be pretty viable for operations and hm fp's now perhaps?

Been a long time since I've run them and checked any numbers etc. which has no doubt changed in 4.0

I'm reminded of a funny story from a guildy (purely anectodal and I wasn't there for this, so take it with a grain of salt)

But he was trying to solo SM Lost Island, back in the day. Lord Scourge was his companion while fighting LR-5, when suddenly Scourge ran away from the boss, dropped one of the energy coil bubbles, then leapt back to the boss and kept fighting.

Wonder how their tanking would hold up against bosses etc. too ... heals ... hmmm.

There appears to be some bugs related to companion tanks at the moment. While in tank mode, companions get a shield and absorb RATING, but that doesn't translate into an actual +PERCENT. I should really try this myself, but someone reported the combat log showed no shielded or absorbed hits, just defended hits.

Also, apparently threat is wonky? Not sure if this has been verified, however.

Best chance against a boss fight would be with dps toon and a heal comp. I think my Forex could heal a tactical flashpoint boss. Not sure about a HM flashpoint though.

I'm reminded of a funny story from a guildy (purely anectodal and I wasn't there for this, so take it with a grain of salt)

 

But he was trying to solo SM Lost Island, back in the day. Lord Scourge was his companion while fighting LR-5, when suddenly Scourge ran away from the boss, dropped one of the energy coil bubbles, then leapt back to the boss and kept fighting.

 

 

There appears to be some bugs related to companion tanks at the moment. While in tank mode, companions get a shield and absorb RATING, but that doesn't translate into an actual +PERCENT. I should really try this myself, but someone reported the combat log showed no shielded or absorbed hits, just defended hits.

 

Also, apparently threat is wonky? Not sure if this has been verified, however.

 

Best chance against a boss fight would be with dps toon and a heal comp. I think my Forex could heal a tactical flashpoint boss. Not sure about a HM flashpoint though.

Yeah i was just thinking with that DPS they probably outdo many geared players dps? Again not too caught up on current numbers as 3.0 put me right off raiding.

Problem of course being they'd still fail to mechanics that involve them moving etc. Be cool if it was like many companion style RPG's ( e.g. pillars of eternity that I'm currently playing through ) where you can direct the companion where you want them to go and what you want them to do but that does have a pause feature which helps.

Problem of course being they'd still fail to mechanics that involve them moving etc. Be cool if it was like many companion style RPG's ( e.g. pillars of eternity that I'm currently playing through ) where you can direct the companion where you want them to go and what you want them to do but that does have a pause feature which helps.

Yup, I know what you mean.

I thought it was interesting the STO added a "pause" feature for instanced content. The longer you're in the area, the more seconds of pause you build up (to a max of 45 seconds).