Since companion affection affects crafting and crew skill missions it behooves us to raise companion affection. I will not go deep into the numbers but this guide is intended to help raise that affection in the cheapest manner possible. This guide is based entirely on gifts that are Loved, i.e. those that return the highest level of affection. Some companions only have Favorite gifts but the strategy for gift buying remains the same albeit slightly more expensive.

 

Important Note!

To maximize affection gain, do not have any Companion Conversations before reaching 6000 Affection! When you first get your companion you should immediately find the nearest Gift Vendor and begin the process. Conversation Affection gains are best used to raise Affection past 6000.

 

Before beginning: There are a few important things to remember when leveling affection. Affection is measured in 5 Tiers with each Tier covering 2000 Affection. Gifts that are of an appropriate Tier for your companions level of Affection give 96 points for Premium (Green), 160 for Prototype (Blue) and 384 for Artifact (Purple). Going 1 Tier lower cuts the gain in half, while going 1 Tier higher only adds 10% (rounded down, its a dark universe).

 

An Artifact quality gift is worth 4 times the points of a Premium gift while a Prototype is worth 1.667 times the points of a Premium gift. These numbers are important when determining which gifts to buy in Step 1.

 

Step 1 (0-6000): On Fleet and the planets of Dromund Kaas and Coruscant you can find Companion Gift vendors. These vendors sell a variety of gifts of Tier 1 and Tier 2. A Tier 1 gift costs 200Cr while Tier 2 gifts go for 600Cr.

 

Before buying any gifts it is worth the effort to check the Galactic Trade Network. Often you will find Blue (Prototype) or Purple (Artifact) level gifts at a price low enough to make them worth purchasing. Do not purchase an Artifact gift from the GTN that costs more than 800Cr for Tier 1 and 1600Cr for Tier 2. For Prototype gifts, stay away from any gift priced higher than 333Cr for Tier 1 and 667Cr for Tier 2. The guide below is based on using only Premium Gifts purchased from the Gift Vendor.

 

Tier 1 to Tier 2:To go from 0 Affection to 2000 Affection you will need to purchase 21 Premium Tier 1 gifts which will cost a total of 2016 Affection. The total cost for this is 4200Cr.

 

Tier 2 to Tier 3: This will require another 42 Premium Tier 1 gifts and will raise your Affection to 4032 points and cost an additional 8400Cr. While this would only take 21 Premium Tier 2 gifts, those gifts cost 3 times as much as the Tier 1 gifts.

 

Tier 3 to Tier 4: To finish the climb to 6000 Affection will require 41 Premium Tier 2 gifts with a cost of 24600Cr. This will take you to exactly 6000 Affection.

 

The quick and dirty: Purchase 63 Tier 1 Premium gifts and 41 Tier 2 Premium gifts for a total credit outlay of 37200Cr. Use all 63 Tier 1 gifts before using the Tier 2 gifts.

 

 

Why do it this way?: Moderate yield Rank 1 Companion Gift missions cost 95Cr per mission and typically return 1 Gift. The problem lay in the fact that there are 10 possible gift categories and the type of gift returned is completely random. Higher yield missions often return Prototype gifts and even Artifact gifts if you have a critical success but again, the type of gift returned is totally random. At 295Cr per Rich yield Rank 1 mission you could easily end up spending well over the cost of 4 Premium gifts just to get 1 Artifact level gift. It gets even more expensive when you jump one Rank higher since a Moderate Yield Rank 2 gift mission costs 220Cr and a Rich Yield mission costs 560Cr.

 

What about going from 6000 to 10,000 Affection?: You have a couple of options at this point. Since most players tend to pick a companion that complements their character role (Healers or DPS for Tanks, Tanks or Heals for DPS and Tanks or DPS for Heals) most players stick with just one or two companions while leveling up. Those companions will receive the brunt of conversation gains made during the leveling process.

 

However, if you can remember to do it, you can spread conversation gains around all companions except for your ship droid by summoning them prior to initiating conversations with NPC's. It's awkward but an easy way to raise affection.

 

Otherwise you'll have to use gifts received as quest rewards (of which there are some but not many), received from running gift missions or purchased from the Galactic Trade Network. The good news is that once you reach 6000 Affection you need only worry about running Rank 4 and Rank 5 Companion gift missions.

 

When running Crew Skill gift missions you want to concentrate on running Bountiful or Rich Companion gift missions because these will give you the most return on your credit and time investment. These will tend to return Prototype gifts at a minimum with a good chance of returning an Artifact gift.

 

With the new Cartel Market the Galactic Trade Network is flooded with Artifact quality Rank 5 gifts and because of this many good deals are available for someone willing to wade through the list. Once you find the name of the gift you need for your companion it is a simple task to do a GTN search of that name and sort by auction price to find the best bargain. Often times Rank 5 Artifact quality gifts are cheaper than their Rank 4 counterparts simply because of the oversupply of the Rank 5 gifts.

 

I hope this helps. While I understand players leveling their very first character will not normally have the credits available to follow this guide with their first two or even three companions, the guide should give you a solid framework for building companion affection on later companions or alt characters.

 

A good guide to gifts by companion can be found at http://www.oldrepublic.net/261-swtor-companion-gifts-guide-how-buy-your-love/comments3.html

 

For those companions who only have favorite gifts, multiply the number of gifts needed by 1.5625 to get the amount you'll need to purchase.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Grayseven
Additional Info:

Great info.

 

I recently found this (http://psynister.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/affection-farming-black-talon/ and found it very useful. Is a farming guide for BT/Essles for your initial companion. I find that I can use that for that companion, I can then use gifts/credits for the others.

Great info.

 

I recently found this (http://psynister.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/affection-farming-black-talon/ and found it very useful. Is a farming guide for BT/Essles for your initial companion. I find that I can use that for that companion, I can then use gifts/credits for the others.

 

BT/Essles is a great way to get your first companion some affection while gaining gear, credits and experience.

Excellent info. Thanks.

good guide man, nice job.

This is a great guide. I wish I had seen it before I had been grinding my affection with khem - could have been 10000 easily by now but still about 8-9k.

 

I used this guide to go from 110 affection to 7.5k with Ashara. I don't like using her on quests so I hadn't done anything with her at all, hadn't even got to romancing!

 

But anyway - this is great for 0-6k. All the resulting conversations you have afterwardss will get you to around 7k ish..

 

Then it is is a case of more gifts or taking companions into conversations and saying whatever they would like.

 

7k-10k is the tough bit :X

Can you explain this part?

 

However, if you can remember to do it, you can spread conversation gains around all companions except for your ship droid by summoning them prior to initiating conversations with NPC's. It's awkward but an easy way to raise affection.

 

Do you mean use one companion for one NPC, then going to another, switch them out before hand?

 

Also, was there a change to Elara's affection? Strange question, but I stopped playing about 3 months ago in Chapther 2 and Elara would not speak to me anymore. I come back about 2 weeks ago as a sub and all of a sudden had 3 convos with her that never was there before.

The conversation points seem to be assigned to the companion out at the moment of the conversation. I have turned in quests that have assigned points to more than one companion, because I switched comps during the process of the quest. You still end up with the same number of points, they just get assigned around.

 

The conversations with your companions are tied to affection level as well as your own level. I have had (as an example) Mako very quiet for a while, then level up and suddenly she has 3 or 4 conversations for me. Her affection was well ahead of my own level, so the conversations didn't trigger. Sooner or later, the comps catch up with you.

 

As far as I know, there has been no change to the conversation process. Actually, they added HK-51 and added affection for the ship robot yet the conversation process on quest hasn't been updated so they gain basically none.

Yeah, I like to play with my healer, but she's maxed out now. So just before I turn in a mission I switch to whatever companion is lowest, do the mission turn in and conversation then switch back to my healer when it's over.

 

Very good if you have a female sith inquisitor and Ashara since she doesn't have any gift favorites or loves. Usually conversations pay off better than even high level gifts with her.

Very helpful, thank you.

Great Job Grayseven!

 

I went ahead and crunched some numbers to see if I could come up with a ballpark on all of the other variations and I think I've got the amounts pretty close as you can see because by your experience, for a gift with maximum affection (+96) you came up with 63 Tier 1 and 41 Tier 2 so, I used that as a base to see if my methodology would get close enough to save everyone time.

 

What I did was take the amount of affection for a level (2000) and divided it by the amount of affection (+96 in this case) to get the same amount that you did: 21. Where I differed however, in order to save time, I just did the same trick with the amount of affection gained from a Tier lower and added those together to get the number of Tier 1 gifts. As you can see I got pretty close because whereas you rightfully noted that 41 Tier one presents will get a companion from 2000 to 4000, I calculated 42. This tells me that any calculations shouldn't be any more than one or two gifts off and always just a little high.

 

Now why would I do such an insane thing when you've already gone through and tried it out?

 

So, I could come up with a working list of all levels of affection and all legacies for a quick list I can glance at and use. In other words, a little bit of calculator work provided me with the following:

 

Legacy (+30%)

 

High Affection (+125):

Tier 1

49 Gifts Cost 9,800

Tier 2

33 Gifts Cost 19,800

Total Cost 29,600

 

Medium Affection (+70):

Tier 1

91 Gifts Cost 18,200

Tier 2

58 Gifts Cost 34,800

Total Cost 53,000

 

Low Affection (+31):

Tier 1

190 Gifts Cost 38,000

Tier 2

125 Gifts Cost 75,000

Total Cost 113,000

 

 

Legacy (+20%)

 

High Affection (+115):

Tier 1

53 Gifts Cost 10,600

Tier 2

35 Gifts Cost 21,000

Total Cost 31,600

 

Medium Affection (+65):

Tier 1

94 Gifts Cost 18,800

Tier 2

32 Gifts Cost 19,200

Total Cost 38,000

 

Low Affection (+29):

Tier 1

212 Gifts Cost 42,400

Tier 2

143 Gifts Cost 85,800

Total Cost 128,200

 

 

Legacy (+10%)

 

High Affection (+106):

Tier 1

57 Gifts Cost 11,400

Tier 2

38 Gifts Cost 22,800

Total Cost 34,200

 

Medium Affection (+59):

Tier 1

101 Gifts Cost 20,200

Tier 2

67 Gifts Cost 40,200

Total Cost 60,400

 

Low Affection (+26):

Tier 1

231 Gifts Cost 46,200

Tier 2

154 Gifts Cost 92,400

Total Cost 138,200

 

 

No Legacy

 

High Affection (+96):

Tier 1

63 Gifts Cost 12,600

Tier 2

42 Gifts Cost 25,600

Total Cost 37,800

 

Medium Affection (+54):

Tier 1

113 Gifts Cost 22,600

Tier 2

75 Gifts Cost 45,000

Total Cost 67,600

 

Low Affection (+24):

Tier 1

251 Gifts Cost 50,200

Tier 2

167 Gifts Cost 100,200

Total Cost 150,400

 

Now, again, I know that some of the these numbers are going to be over by one or two gifts but I figure that these are enough to run with and saves folks from having to sit there and try every possible combination.

 

These numbers also show that with just two hard to buy companions (Ashara for females for example) that only give off the lowest level of affection possible for even the best of gifts, you've actually just about bought that Legacy Altruism to full with just those first three levels of affection- 90,000 credits for the perks vs 74,800 credits for extra presents (37,400 for each "I don't like anything" +24 companion). Add in the difference between two “easy” present takers (37,800 no perk vs 29,600 for a difference of 8,200 per companion for that "I so love it!" +96) and you are not just even but a little ahead, making everything else for the last two levels of affection a savings.

 

Mid level though ("meh... it's okay," +54 companion) , the numbers aren't quite so dramatic: 67,600 - 53,000 = 14,600 difference per companion. 29,200 less for two companions with no high level affection presents. This makes it not quite as worth the cost anymore.

 

In short, if you know that you are going to have two companions with nothing but low affection (+24) for your gifts and almost no way to talk them up through having them out for conversations- it's worth buying. At worst, it won't hurt and at best, over the long run, it can possibly save thousands. But, if that first gift is giving off more than +24 with no Legacy for 3 or more of your companions then that Legacy Perk isn't really useful.

 

Anyway, that's what I've got. If my numbers seem to be highly off, please someone let me know but that's what I have so far. Also, bear in mind that this is only to get a companion up to just over 6000 utilizing the vendor only using Grayseven's technique as described above in the OP.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Dallayna

So I am right on saying fro each rank of gifts 1- 5 there are £200 tier 1 types and £600 each tier 2 types so for the equal ranked tier 1 or 2 that both offer the same affection for that current companion the £600 would just treble the affection so it cost the same in the sense and has same effect as buying 3 tier 1's?. Other wise if it only doubles the affection paying 3 times times the tier 1 it would not make sense? So it always vital to use gifts that are the same rank level as the current affection band aswell then?. Confused?

This is very good information, thanks a lot!! =)

So I am right on saying fro each rank of gifts 1- 5 there are £200 tier 1 types and £600 each tier 2 types so for the equal ranked tier 1 or 2 that both offer the same affection for that current companion the £600 would just treble the affection so it cost the same in the sense and has same effect as buying 3 tier 1's?. Other wise if it only doubles the affection paying 3 times times the tier 1 it would not make sense? So it always vital to use gifts that are the same rank level as the current affection band aswell then?. Confused?

 

Yes, I'm a bit confused but I think I know what you're asking. It seems like you're asking if because a Rank 2 Gift costs three times more than a Rank 1 Gift, does it give back three times the affection? The answer to that would be "No."

 

In fact, there are countless charts and spreadsheet posted all over the forums (I used some random one I don't even remember the name of for my calculation) that break everything down into cold numbers for every single possible variation imaginable and you can use them to look at your companion, figure out their Rank then look up the Rank and type of gift on the chart/spreadsheet and know exactly how much affection you are going to get from that companion when you give it to them. Smarter brains than ours have already tried and plotted all of that out.

 

Now, as to what we figured out and some of the numbers we used to do so lemme see if I can try to explain by taking an example companion like Corso Riggs for the Smugglers (just because most everyone hates him but me and I love playing Smugglers.) So, when I first get Corso he starts at Rank 1 with 0 Affection.

 

Now, Corso loves Weapons (he names the darned things after all) so, when I arrive at the Fleet there are two Gifts available to me that I want to give him: Ammunition Belt at Rank 1 for 200 creds and Padded Weapon Case at Rank 2 for 600 creds.

 

Now, the Ammunition Belt (Rank 1) at this point will get me 96 Affection but the Padded Weapon Case (Rank 2) Will get me 106. This means that to get him to Rank 2 with 2000 Affection, I can either get 21 Ammunition Belts (Rank 1) or 19 Padded Weapon Cases (Rank 2). Granted, 19 Cases are less than 21 Belts but if you look at how much getting each type costs on the other hand it's a different story because those 19 cases will cost me 11,400 credits but those 21 Belts are only 4,200 credits.

 

Now, this is pretty obvious, both Grayseven and I know this but the tricky part- and the part we're talking about is getting him through Rank 2. It's that getting him from 2000 Affection to 4000 Affection that things seem to get counter intuitive because while at that point the Weapons Case will get you 96 Affection and the Belt will only get you 48 it is actually still cheaper to keep getting those Belts even though you need much more of them then you do the Cases.

 

It's not a perfect ratio in other words. In a choice between getting a gift that's Higher than your Companion's Rank or a gift that's Lower than it- in this particular instance of trying to get a brand new companion from 0 Affection all the way to 6000 with just the Vendor on the Fleet, the game actually seems to favor getting the lower gift when it comes to money. To go back to our example so you can see the numbers let's get Corso from 2000 to 4000 Affection, all the way through to Rank 3:

 

Padded Cases (Rank 2) give 96 Affection so you need 21 of them and they cost 600 credits each so that will cost you another 12,600 credits to get Corso from 2000 Affection to 4000 Affection where he'll finally be at Rank 3.

 

Ammunition Belt's (Rank 1) only give out 48 Affection so you need a whopping 42 more of those to get him to that Rank 3 affect but the trick is that those Belts only cost 200 credits. Your total bill going that route is only 8,400 credits. Grayseven is right, Its' a lot cheaper!

 

After that, of course, you really have no choice but to go for the Padded Cases (Rank 2) to get Corso up to Rank 4 to top him off as much as you can with the Vendor at 6000 Affection.

 

Me? I just took it one step further because I just added the wrinkle of the fact that while those numbers tell us that we're going to need a total of 49 Ammunition Belts and 33 Padded Weapon Cases for Corso to get him all the way to 6000 Affection for a grand total bill of 29,600 credits, what about companions like Qyzen? There is no gift that will give you 96 Affection from Qyzen. In fact, the best gift that exists is also the Ammunition Belt but you are only getting 54 points of Affection from him for each until he gets to Rank 2 after which those Belts are only getting you 27 Affection until Rank 3.

 

So, I went ahead and looked up the numbers in the charts and did the same scenario for Qyzen type of companions and Ashara ones (Ashara's "best" gift for a female Inquisitor is actually 24 Affection.) I figured that it would be handy to have a list nearby so I could just look up how many gifts to get and how much it would cost to buy them to Rank 4 with the Vendor on a quick cheat sheet.

 

Of course, by that point, I remembered that there is a Legacy Character Perk called Altruism that allows you to get more affection then normal for every present you get for every companion that character will have. The Legacy Perk has three levels and each gives out a 10% bonus, the catch there however is that it costs 90,000 credits to get all three levels. So, I went ahead and tossed each level of those as well just to finish it up and to check to see if it was worth the cost to get the perk and it turned out that sometimes, like for a Light Sided Male Sith Warrior or a female Inquisitor for example, yeah, it seems like it is- but, otherwise? Not really.

 

So, once I figured that out, I realized that I had a better cheat sheet than I thought because now there's a quick, down and dirty list of how many presents of what Rank you need to buy from the Vendor regardless of the type of companion, how well they like their best gift and/or how many levels of that Legacy Perk you bought as well as exactly how much all of those gifts are going to cost you.

 

 

Sorry for the Wall 'o Text but, does that answer some of your other questions?.... Or did I just make things worse?....

Edited August 2, 2013 by Dallayna

 

 

Now, the Ammunition Belt (Rank 1) at this point will get me 96 Affection but the Padded Weapon Case (Rank 2) Will get me 106. This means that to get him to Rank 2 with 2000 Affection, I can either get 21 Ammunition Belts (Rank 1) or 19 Padded Weapon Cases (Rank 2). Granted, 19 Cases are less than 21 Belts but if you look at how much getting each type costs on the other hand it's a different story because those 19 cases will cost me 11,400 credits but those 21 Belts are only 4,200 credits.

 

Now, this is pretty obvious, both Grayseven and I know this but the tricky part- and the part we're talking about is getting him through Rank 2. It's that getting him from 2000 Affection to 4000 Affection that things seem to get counter intuitive because while at that point the Weapons Case will get you 96 Affection and the Belt will only get you 48 it is actually still cheaper to keep getting those Belts even though you need much more of them then you do the Cases.

 

It's not a perfect ratio in other words. In a choice between getting a gift that's Higher than your Companion's Rank or a gift that's Lower than it- in this particular instance of trying to get a brand new companion from 0 Affection all the way to 6000 with just the Vendor on the Fleet, the game actually seems to favor getting the lower gift when it comes to money. To go back to our example so you can see the numbers let's get Corso from 2000 to 4000 Affection, all the way through to Rank 3:

 

 

Sorry for the Wall 'o Text but, does that answer some of your other questions?.... Or did I just make things worse?....

 

Thanks fro you response yes a bit more clear now, so its best to stick with same rank gifts to what you current companion's rank is basically as its cheaper. So rank 1 0-2000 affection level rank 2 -2000-4000 etc.. so rank 5 is 8000 to the max 10000 I guess. What about the investigation mission skill that goes 6 levels so do you get rank 6 gifts mission for that top level if so how does that improve affection, is is just greater affection for the top rank 5 through artifce quality type rank 6 gifts?.

 

To me it still seems daft that it cost you more when buying the higher level gifts from the vendor to increase affection by the same amount as buying alot more lower gifts. Surely a higher level gifts should give more affection to actually make it cheaper in the long run for the same overall affection gain (Thus 20 £600 gifts at £12000 have fair bit more more effection than the equal cost 60 £200 gifts at also £12000), otherwise it makes no senes to buy higher level gifts from the gift vendors as you will just stack up lower level gifts becasue it's cheaper for the same gain?

Thanks fro you response yes a bit more clear now, so its best to stick with same rank gifts to what you current companion's rank is basically as its cheaper. So rank 1 0-2000 affection level rank 2 -2000-4000 etc.. so rank 5 is 8000 to the max 10000 I guess. What about the investigation mission skill that goes 6 levels so do you get rank 6 gifts mission for that top level if so how does that improve affection, is is just greater affection for the top rank 5 through artifce quality type rank 6 gifts?.

 

Those would be the ranks for your companion's affection" 0 - 2000 is Rank 1, 2000-4000 is Rank 2, 4000-6000 is Rank 3, 6000-8000 is Rank 4 and 8000-10000 is Rank 5.

 

There are, unfortunately no Rank 6 gifts. I'm assuming that you're talking about those last Gathering Missions marked 49-50. Yes, you do still see gift missions for that level of Gathering mission but, truth be told those are just better Rank 5's (almost always Blues and Purples). They also have a chance at getting Gift Fragments for the Gift Curator who's right next to the Vendor on the Fleet who will give you either a Blue or a Purple.

 

If you've ever clicked on them then you know that the Curator only sells Rank 5 Gifts of the Blue and Purple variety for those Fragments. The reason why those are nice to get is because you can choose whatever Gift you want instead of getting something random from a really good roll on a mission.

 

Once we get the companion to Rank 4 those Rank 5 Purples are also really good to get because if our hypothetical Corso's affection is at Rank 4 if it's a Gift he really, really loves, like a Weapon he would give you 422 Affection for it and even at Rank 5 he's still giving you 384 Affection making them a very, VERY nice boost even though it's a bit of a pain to collect enough Fragments of the right color in order to afford the right Gift. So, frankly, I just send all of my fragments from all of my characters to the same one and mail them back out to whoever needs it when I've got enough.

 

The level 50 - 55 Gathering Missions don't even have the options for Companion Gifts anymore.

 

To me it still seems daft that it cost you more when buying the higher level gifts from the vendor to increase affection by the same amount as buying alot more lower gifts. Surely a higher level gifts should give more affection to actually make it cheaper in the long run for the same overall affection gain (Thus 20 £600 gifts at £12000 have fair bit more more effection than the equal cost 60 £200 gifts at also £12000), otherwise it makes no senes to buy higher level gifts from the gift vendors as you will just stack up lower level gifts becasue it's cheaper for the same gain?

 

It really is weird which is why we're kind of shaking our head at these numbers, but, numbers are numbers and they don't lie- those lower level gifts are just cheaper in the long run to get your companion from Rank 2 to Rank 3 and more often then not, it's just worth buying them up to Rank 4 (6000 Affection) at the Vendor right away before even talking to them for the first time. So, from what we've determined while getting 20 of those 600 credit gifts for that 12,000 credits does get you a little more affection, then getting 60 gifts for 200 credits for the same amount- it doesn't give you enough of a boost to make it cheaper in the long run.

 

If it helps, think of it on a cost of how many credits per Affection each type gives you:

 

A Rank 2 (600 credit) Gift to a Rank 1 Companion gives 106 Affection so that's about 5.66 credits per Affection Point.

A Rank 1 (200 credit) Gift to a Rank 1 Companion gives you 96 Affection so that's about 2.09 credits per Affection Point.

 

A Rank 2 (600 credit) Gift to a Rank 2 Companion gives 96 Affection so that's about 6.25 credits per Affection Point.

A Rank 1 (200 credit) Gift to a Rank 2 Companion gives 48 Affection so that's about 4.17 credits per Affection Point.

 

In both cases, it's just cheaper on a per Affection Point basis so, it's going to keep being cheaper no matter how many Affection Points you get.

 

To be honest, I was also really surprised to find out that the Legacy Perk wasn't always worth it- in fact, up until now, I have been buying it on every character I've created ever since I got the Legacy Level for it. Frankly though, I'm just chalking this up to a weird quirk that the developers probably didn't think about too much and just chose numbers that seemed reasonable but that us players with far too much time on our hands crunched into obscurity to find out that it causes a strange quirk as a result.

 

In other words, given just how complex these types of games are, I doubt that anyone there even would have thought of it. I mean, it's just such a minor part of the game that it probably just got decided on and everyone turned their attention to other things and no one really noticed until folks like Grayseven and I started playing with our calculators.

 

Good news is though that now that we know, we are probably going to save a small fortune in credits over the long run which leave more credits for cooler gear!

 

Does that help?

Edited August 7, 2013 by Dallayna

 

Does that help?

 

Dude, like you don't even know.

 

I was just buying / using Rank 5 for my companions gifts and they aren't even past 2000. I finally understand that now and I must hit up the Gift vendor when I log in. Now I fully understand the way this works.

 

I was getting a bit confused between Tier 1 2 and Rank 1 2, as I thought they were the same thing but you cleared that up later.

 

Great posts and research.

Something about this seems to have changed. I have Malavai Quinn, and decided to get his affection up. I went to Dromund Kaas, and bought 21 Imperial Memorabilia items, then game them to him. I have not had any conversations with him, but I have had him on several missions where he gained affection from conversation choices. He therefore started out at 206 Affection. Upon giving him the 21 Imperial Memorabilia items, he jumped up to 1445 affection. This means that the 21 gifts I gave him only earned him 1239 Affection, not the 2016 Affection that this guide states they should have given. Is there something I'm missing?

Something about this seems to have changed. I have Malavai Quinn, and decided to get his affection up. I went to Dromund Kaas, and bought 21 Imperial Memorabilia items, then game them to him. I have not had any conversations with him, but I have had him on several missions where he gained affection from conversation choices. He therefore started out at 206 Affection. Upon giving him the 21 Imperial Memorabilia items, he jumped up to 1445 affection. This means that the 21 gifts I gave him only earned him 1239 Affection, not the 2016 Affection that this guide states they should have given. Is there something I'm missing?

 

Not that I can see. 21 should be the amount to get them to 2000 Affection. But, are you sure that those memorabilia are giving you 96 Affection? I know that the Gift Guides can sometimes be a little off on what a Companion's favorite is because I guess there have been minor changes in that over time since most of those guides were made- which is why I went with numbers instead of that whole "Favorite," "Love," and "Like" thing.

 

The reason I ask is that, if memory serves, Quinn doesn't have a "favorite" that gives 96 Affection, the best you'll get from him is "Love" at +54 Affection per gift meaning that you should probably be using these numbers here and is actually, one of the reasons why I went that one step further:

 

No Legacy Bonus:

Medium Affection (+54):

Tier 1

113 Gifts Cost 22,600

Tier 2

75 Gifts Cost 45,000

Total Cost 67,600

 

And, the numbers seem to bear out my memory because 54 (affection) * 21 (gifts) = 1134 which is pretty close to what you got up to. Like I said before, these numbers aren't going to be thoroughly exact but fairly close.

 

Let me know either way though because I've actually been using that list on all my companions and, if I'm wasting credits too, I really want to know just as much as you do!

Not that I can see. 21 should be the amount to get them to 2000 Affection. But, are you sure that those memorabilia are giving you 96 Affection? I know that the Gift Guides can sometimes be a little off on what a Companion's favorite is because I guess there have been minor changes in that over time since most of those guides were made- which is why I went with numbers instead of that whole "Favorite," "Love," and "Like" thing.

 

The reason I ask is that, if memory serves, Quinn doesn't have a "favorite" that gives 96 Affection, the best you'll get from him is "Love" at +54 Affection per gift meaning that you should probably be using these numbers here and is actually, one of the reasons why I went that one step further:

 

No Legacy Bonus:

Medium Affection (+54):

Tier 1

113 Gifts Cost 22,600

Tier 2

75 Gifts Cost 45,000

Total Cost 67,600

 

And, the numbers seem to bear out my memory because 54 (affection) * 21 (gifts) = 1134 which is pretty close to what you got up to. Like I said before, these numbers aren't going to be thoroughly exact but fairly close.

 

Let me know either way though because I've actually been using that list on all my companions and, if I'm wasting credits too, I really want to know just as much as you do!

 

According to the guide I looked at, Quinn has 3 Favorites: Imperial Memorabilia, Weapons, and Military Gear. However, when I gave him Imperial Memorabilia, he only got 54 affection per item. Now, that guide also mentions that for Ashara Vel (the Inquisitor companion; a friend of mine tried this as well), Courting gifts are Loved. So it may be that Loved is actually higher than Favorite, and Quinn has no Favorite. That would bear out what you're saying: that I'm seeing a lower return because he doesn't have anything he loves; just stuff that is his Favorite.

 

Frankly, if that's the case, then the OP needs to be re-vamped. The way it's laid out, it says that 21 Rank 1 gifts will get 2000 Affection, end of discussion. However, that appears to only be the case if a companion has a gift they Love. If they only have a Favorite gift, then the numbers given no longer work, and you get posts like mine complaining about it. It would also be nice to find a current guide to what gifts each companion likes, along with a ranking of which ranks are highest and lowest (all the guides I'm finding ignore this part, so I have to guess whether Loved or Favorite is higher-ranked).

 

Anyway, thank you for the help. At least we now know what the problem is. This just means that I have to buy a gift, see how much affection it gives at each rank (by giving it to him), then do the math from there. Repeat at each stage, and it should be easy to get any companion's affection up.

According to the guide I looked at, Quinn has 3 Favorites: Imperial Memorabilia, Weapons, and Military Gear. However, when I gave him Imperial Memorabilia, he only got 54 affection per item. Now, that guide also mentions that for Ashara Vel (the Inquisitor companion; a friend of mine tried this as well), Courting gifts are Loved. So it may be that Loved is actually higher than Favorite, and Quinn has no Favorite. That would bear out what you're saying: that I'm seeing a lower return because he doesn't have anything he loves; just stuff that is his Favorite.

 

Frankly, if that's the case, then the OP needs to be re-vamped. The way it's laid out, it says that 21 Rank 1 gifts will get 2000 Affection, end of discussion. However, that appears to only be the case if a companion has a gift they Love. If they only have a Favorite gift, then the numbers given no longer work, and you get posts like mine complaining about it. It would also be nice to find a current guide to what gifts each companion likes, along with a ranking of which ranks are highest and lowest (all the guides I'm finding ignore this part, so I have to guess whether Loved or Favorite is higher-ranked).

 

Anyway, thank you for the help. At least we now know what the problem is. This just means that I have to buy a gift, see how much affection it gives at each rank (by giving it to him), then do the math from there. Repeat at each stage, and it should be easy to get any companion's affection up.

 

Looks like you read the OP and didn't fully go through the first of mine because what I did was make note of that very fact and thus came up with the numbers of all the rest of the companion "types" like Quinns and Akasha (if your male) and even for those companions that only have a "like."

 

Furthermore, there never seemed to be any actual consistency with what amount of affection is "favorite" and what amount is "love" when I was looking through all of those guides- not to mention the fact that there have been some minor changes that have been introduced since which is, again, why I went with Low/Medium/High as well as actual numbers for my list when I took the other companions into account.

 

So, just to cut down to the basics, the list that I derived from applying Greyseven's original method to the the other types of companions should be fairly simple to use.

 

Just note how much your companion gives you for that "best" gift and use the following:

 

No Legacy Bonus

High Affection (+96):

Tier 1

63 Gifts Cost 12,600

Tier 2

42 Gifts Cost 25,600

Total Cost 37,800

 

Medium Affection (+54):

Tier 1

113 Gifts Cost 22,600

Tier 2

75 Gifts Cost 45,000

Total Cost 67,600

 

Low Affection (+24):

Tier 1

251 Gifts Cost 50,200

Tier 2

167 Gifts Cost 100,200

Total Cost 150,400

 

You'll also note if you scroll up to my original post that I also went through the various Legacy Character Perk levels and did those as well but you hardly need to worry about those numbers unless you ever buy any of those Perks. Until then? Just roll with what's above.

 

Does that help?

Edited August 12, 2013 by Dallayna

Yup. Thanks.

Awesome guide:

 

I'd like to add that based on observing the cost to gain ratio.

 

From 0-6000.

 

Buying the favorite 200 cred gift for your companion from the gift vendor on the fleet gives you more affection in ratio of point to cost gain, than the 600 cred one. Don't buy the 600 cred gifts stick to the 200 cred gifts till you reach 6000.

I know this is an oldie but goodie thread and it has been most helpful. So just in case anyone is still monitoring this, I apologize if it's considered a necro, but

 

My companion, Elana Thorne, does not have affection for any Tier 1 gifts above small.Nothing moderate. I also had this happen with Treek. Indeed, there is only one companion gift from the vendor that is moderate, and that's a 600 credit item. So the guide doesn't appear to work quite as well as perhaps it once did. Any ideas?

I know this is an oldie but goodie thread and it has been most helpful. So just in case anyone is still monitoring this, I apologize if it's considered a necro, but

 

My companion, Elana Thorne, does not have affection for any Tier 1 gifts above small.Nothing moderate. I also had this happen with Treek. Indeed, there is only one companion gift from the vendor that is moderate, and that's a 600 credit item. So the guide doesn't appear to work quite as well as perhaps it once did. Any ideas?

 

Funny you should mention this. After coming back a second time and spending a lot of time concentrating on boosting crafting skills and legacy bonuses, it occurred to me that companion affection was something I needed to really get into. I was just going to post a thought on this, but you beat me to it by asking the question.

 

The gifts from the fleet vendor are okay to get you started, but the best way is via the gift missions you do with your crafting characters. I haven't really looked terribly closely at it, but at first glance, it appears that Underworld Trading, Treasure Hunting, and Slicing all produce high quality gifts and they have the bonus of taking half as long as resource gathering missions. In other words, if a rich Slicing mission takes one hour when you're looking for sliced tech parts, for example, a rich Slicing mission of the same level will take approximately 30 minutes when you're looking for gifts. The downside is that you can't use them to boost your crafting skills, obviously, but of course I'm sure you're looking to boost affection for the other benefits. Personally, I want to get to max affection on all 40 companions across my legacy, and all those gifts I've been looking as a a pain in the neck to store for so long are starting to prove very useful.