SWTOR Alliance Guide – Companion Alerts, Alliance Specialists and Star Fortress

The Alliance System is a way of building your forces against Arcann by recruiting new companions to your cause, gathering supplies for your newly-founded base of operations, and working with potential allies to destroy key-targets on planets across the galaxy.

You can start your progress on the Alliance system once you have gotten to Chapter 9 of Knights of the Fallen Empire. If you haven’t gotten that far yet… spoiler alert!

Companion Alerts

The Alliance system is made up of many different parts, but focuses around your four Alliance Specialists, individuals who are veterans in their respective fields. You can help them and grow your alliance in two ways – by finding them new recruits that will benefit your cause, and by gathering special supplies that can aid them in their various works.

Keep in mind the alliance system conversations are done in a slightly different way than normal cutscenes – the interface gains a “classic” look similar to the cutscenes in Knights of the Old Republic, and your character’s voice is not heard at all.

To Find a Findsman Quest

Finding new recruits for your alliance specialists involves questing off the main path of Knights of the Fallen Empire. Recruiting new allies starts with the quest alert “To Find a Findsman” which you ill receive automatically in the Companions and Contacts panel. Once you’ve found a recruit, keep in mind that you can easily travel back to them at any time through your Companions and Contacts panel. You can get there by pressing pressing the “N” key on your keyboard, or by clicking the “fist” icon on the menu. Then you can find your recruit in the list, and press ‘Travel to Contact’ in the top right. This travel function also works for many of the other recruits you’ll gather, and can be a quick way to return to your base on Odessan.

Once you complete “To Find a Findsman”, you’ll gain a whole bunch of new recruitment missions. To see them open your Companions and Contact panel again – they’re located at the top, and are called “alerts”. Completing these quests will expand your alliance, and you’ll also get a new companion for every quest you complete. The companions you gain are the companions from the previous eight class stories… and you can even gain companions that weren’t part of your own class story! More alerts become available as you finish the original ones, and even more become available as you progress past Chapter 9.

Alliance Specialists

Much like companions, you can gain influence with your alliance specialists, which grants you achievements, special rewards, unique abilities, and spendable currency as you progress. Alliance specialists start at influence level 1, and can progress all the way to influence level 20.

You gain influence with your alliance specialists every time you bring them a new recruit – but if you want to bring them all the way to influence level 20, you’ll also need to bring them supplies.

Supply Crates and Heroics

Locked Supply crates can be gained by completing Heroics, missions that can be completed once a week. An easy way to pick up heroics is to head to the inner ring of the fleet, and look for the wide heroics terminal. From there, you can pick up all the Heroics that reward supplies. The best part about doing Heroic missions is that they can be instantly traveled to – once you have picked up a heroic quest, look for it on your missions panel and press the “ship” icon beside, and you’ll be teleported to the quest’s start. You can even pick up a bunch of heroics on the same planet, then easily hop from heroic to heroic using the travel pass!

Keep in mind that heroics start awarding supply crates at level 61 – A fun way to level up between 61 and 65 is it simply do all the Heroics on the terminal list, from top to bottom. You’ll wind up with a ton of credits, locked supply crates you can send to other characters, achievements and level-up without even having to start Knights of the Fallen Empire.

Each of the alliance commanders likes a different type of supply crate.

  • Admiral Aygo likes Military Equipment
  • Hylo Visz like smuggled goods
  • Dr Oggurobb likes Alien Research crates and
  • Sana-Rae the voss likes ancient artifacts.

Once you’ve gained a locked supply crate, you can bring it to the correct alliance specialist and turn it in for your reward. Don’t forget to use the ‘Travel to Contact’ button on your Companions and Contacts panel to get to them easily!

Turning in your supply crate will get you a few things. You’ll gain 500 influence with your alliance specialist, and a special share of the loot just for you. The reward loot usually includes some gifts for your companions, and some legacy armor, which can be worn on any of your characters above level 10. You’ll also have a chance of being rewarded a cool speeder!

Specialist Influence Rewards

As you gain influence levels with your alliance specialists, you’ll also be given a special reward through your Commander’s Datapad, located in a tiny room on the west side of your Odessan headquarters. For every influence level you gain with your alliance specialists, a small quest will pop up on the datapad, which rewards you some credits and currency crystals. There’s even a free introductory reward on the datapad that introduces you to each of your specialists.

Gaining influence with your alliance specialists will occasionally unlock more conversations with them, but not very often. Some of the rewards you can gain from them include…

  • Special buffs and abilities while doing the Star Fortress flashpoint,
  • A unique Roche speeder from each of the specialists at influence level 20,
  • and The “Alliance Commander” title if you fully complete your alliance, with all specialists at influence level 20, as well as a special reward of 100 Cartel Coins.

As you gain influence, you’ll also hear small changes around your alliance base… the soldiers, scientists and supporters will sound a little happier as morale improves!

Star Fortress

Once you’ve completed Chapter 9, you’ll also be able to start the Star Fortress story arc and missions. Look for Miot Dengd, who has a quest symbol over his head, in your alliance base on odessan. He’ll get you started on a mission to infiltrate a Star Fortress – battlestations deployed by Arcann across the galaxy to subdue dissenting worlds.

Once you’ve completed the introductory quest, you’ll receive alerts from 6 other planets with new potential recruits, who require help taking down the Star Fortresses above their planet.

If you follow the alerts, you’ll be able to try out each of the different solo Star Fortress flashpoints – they each have roughly the same mechanics, but have slightly different visuals depending on what planet they are over.

Completing each planetary alert gains you a new companion – these companions are especially cool because they include species we’ve never had as companions, including a Selonians, an Ithorian and even a Nautolan.

After you’ve completed a planetary alert, you’ll be able to do the “Heroic” version of that planet’s Star Fortress. The Heroic version is meant to be done with 2+ people, but if you have good gear and a companion with influence, you should be able to solo the heroic versions.

For every alliance specialist you’ve gotten to influence level 10, you’ll also get a special buff in heroic mode that helps you in battle. There’s also some hidden items in each Star Fortress that can only be unlocked if you or one of your group members has the correct alliance specialist at influence level 10.

Unlocking these items will give you a special temporary ability to help you in battle while in the star fortress. Bringing all four of your alliance specialists to influence level 10 will give you all four buffs, and lets you unlock all four hidden items!

If you’re an achievement hunter, there’s also a bunch of achievements tied to Star Fortresses both in solo and heroic mode – the coolest ones are a special achievement for defeating an Exarch with all four temporary abilities unlocked, and another achievement for defeating an exarch ungrouped and with no buffs at all!

Star Fortress Secrets

There are dozens of secrets hidden in Star Fortresses.

View Full Guide: Star Fortress Secrets Guide

Odessan

Apart from growing your alliance, there’s also a lot of neat perks for you on Odessan, the lush planet where your alliance has settled down.

Inside the cantina on Odessan there’s a vendor that sells companion gifts and locked supply crates.

Inside the cantina there’s two more companions you can recruit – the original ship droids C2-N2 and 2V-R8. C2-N2 even has a weekly repeatable quest where you can bring him crafting materials to help your alliance.

Inside your actual alliance base, there’s a vendor you can exchange credits for Zakuulan decorations and a set of Scion’s Vestments, just like the Scions in the story wear.

Working on your alliance can take a lot of time and effort, but it can be very rewarding to actually see your alliance “grow” as it gains new members, and to hear your alliance members become more confident as you gain them more supplies and recruits.

If you’re daunted about starting the alliance missions, I highly recommend going back and playing all eight class stories first. That way, you can meet all the previous companions before you recruit them through alerts. You can also ignore them and jump straight back into the main storyline.