SWTOR Companions Guide

Companions are non-player characters that accompany you while playing Star Wars: The Old Republic – they’re often a fundamental part of the story, help you with a crafting, and in almost all solo content in the game you’ll have a companion out beside you to help fight, heal, or tank in combat with you. There’s over 100 different companions in the game, and each one is a little different.

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When do you get your first companion?

You’ll gain companions as you play your personal class storyline, and your first companion will show up on the planet that you start your character on, near the end of your class storyline on that planet.

First Companions

• Sith Warrior = Vette
• Sith Inquisitor = Khem Val
• Jedi Knight = T7-01
• Jedi Consular = Qyzen Fess
• Bounty Hunter = Mako
• Imperial Agent = Kaliyo
• Trooper = Aric Jorgan
• Smuggler = Corso Riggs

To get your first companion, simply follow the purple quests. You might be anywhere from level 3 all the way to level 10 or higher by the time you meet your first companion.

Class Companions

Each class has five unique companions that you earn by playing your class quest, and you’ll unlock more story companions as you play the expansions as well.

What are companion quests?

Companions are more than just followers – they are unique characters that often have a fleshed out story, background, opinions, and even quests that can only be experienced with certain companions. Your original five companions that you get during your class story will have special companion quests that you can access by speaking to them on your ship, in your stronghold or in rest areas like cantinas.

In the past, you used to need to give your companions gifts so you could unlock more of their story, but now their stories are simply tied to your class quest progression, and as you finish your purple quests, new companion quests will usually show up when you head back to your ship. During the original stories, bringing along your class companions might trigger special dialogue during cutscenes or while wandering around the open world.

How can I view my companions?

You can view all your companions by pressing the N key on your keyboard, or by going to the Companions and Contacts section of the menu.

If you notice your companion is not with you, you can press the summon button beside their name in the Companions window.

To dismiss a companion temporarily, right click on their companion portrait on the bottom left of the screen and choose dismiss.

There’s also a button to re-summon your current companion under their empty companion portrait if they go missing, but if that doesn’t work to bring them back, use the Companions and Contacts N window to summon them instead.

Companion Influence

Your companion’s influence level represents how good they are in battle, and how useful they are in crafting and gathering. You can gain influence a few different ways including taking your companion along while questing, giving them gifts, sending them out on crew skills, or giving them a Commander’s Compendium. Companion Influence Guide

SWTOR Companion Influence Guide

Companion Gifts

Giving your companion gifts is the main way to raise your companion’s influence level. Each companion likes a different type of gift best, and there are hundreds of different gifts in the game. Companion Gift List and Chart

Commander’s Compendium

A Commander’s Compendium (sometimes known as a Companion Compendium) is the fastest way to get to Influence 50 and levels your companion to influence level 50 immediately, without using gifts. You can either get one in the Strongholds section of the Fleet for 3 Dark Projects plus 4.25 million credits from a droid named V1C-0RY, or buy them from the Cartel Market or with credits on the GTN.

Companions in Combat

While in combat, most of the time you can set your companion to the role you want them to have and then focus only on your own abilities, letting your companion choose what they want to do during the fight by themselves.

To change a companion’s role, right click on their companion portrait on the bottom left of your screen and choose Healer, Tank or DPS. Most players choose to have their companion set to Healer as it’s often the easiest way to stay alive, but if you are not dying in battle, it can be faster to defeat enemies by setting your companion to DPS. In the past, each companion was only good for a certain role, but these days all companions can help you in all roles.

You can also manually control your companion a bit.

First off, you can send them in to attack before you if you’d like. Select an enemy by left-clicking them or tabbing to them on your keyboard. Then press any of your companion’s abilities near your companion’s portrait to send them to attack

You can also manually choose which abilities you want your companions to use during combat, but for the most part, your companions are meant to fight all on their own, so you don’t need to micromanage them.

The second option you have is whether you want them to use all their abilities or not – for example, some companions will have a stun ability, which is often useless during a difficult boss fight and would be a waste of their time. Not all companion skills are toggleable, but the ones that are have a very small checkbox on them that can be right clicked to turn on and off.

Lastly, you can set your companion to Passive mode by clicking the icon of a person in a blue shirt crossing their arms. While in passive mode, companions will follow you, but they will not attack your enemies or heal you. If you’re ever finding your companion just staring at you in battle, try clicking the Passive button to turn Passive mode off. Passive mode can also be really useful during combat – if you’re trying to escape, you can toggle passive mode to run away more easily. Passive mode also allows you to position your companion a little bit – if they’re standing in something hurting them on the ground, they are not smart enough to step out of it, so if you press their passive button, they’ll run over to you, and then you can click their passive button again to have them continue healing or attacking.

Much like players have cooldowns on their abilities, companions do too. If you feel that your companion is attacking instead of healing as a healer, they’ve probably run out of healing abilities to use!

Instead of clicking your companion’s abilities, you can also use the keybinds – by default, they are C+1 (Attack), C+2 (Passive), and the abilities C+3, C+4, C+5, C+6 and C+7.

Companion Strength

Your companion’s influence level is what affects their strength in combat. Their health, damage, and ability to heal all go up with a higher influence level. Companion Influence Guide

Heroic Moment and Unity

While you have a companion out, you have the chance to use three special abilities during combat if you’ve earned them.

• Heroic Moment, which heals you and your companion and allows you to use any heroic abilities you’ve earned through the class stories
• Unity, is an ability that heals you and your companion, and you can earn it for your entire legacy by reaching light 5 on one of your characters
• And Sacrifice, which heals you 40% of your health, but nearly kills your companion in return, is pretty much never used unless your companion is almost already dead

Heroic moment also gives you a whole bunch of temporary abilities to use depending on how many classes you’ve unlocked. See the Legendary Player Guide for more info. Unity and Sacrifice are  from Legacy Unlocks.

Companions in Crafting

Companions help you with your crew skills by gathering materials for you or crafting items for you. How to Craft Guide

SWTOR How to Craft Guide

Companion Influence also increases their success at crew skills. It makes them craft and gather faster, as well as makes them more likely to get rare materials when they go gathering, or have a higher chance to craft an extra item or an augmented item when crafting. Companion Influence Guide

Knights of the Fallen Empire Companions

Once you reach the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, the third expansion, the number of companions you can have drastically increases, and there’s a ton of different companions you might wind up with. Some you will earn through the main story naturally, while others require that you complete a special type of quest called an Alliance Alert.

You can start Alliance Alerts after Chapter 9 of Knights of the Fallen Empire, and your Alerts can be seen in the Companions and Contacts window. Some Alerts are only for certain classes, and some alerts require that you finish certain parts of the story before showing up, or require that you finish other alerts first. You can even earn some companions from other classes. To learn more about companion recruitment and how to get all the companions, visit swtorista.com/recruitment

Cartel Market Companions

On top of the companions you earn the through the story and quests, there’s also an assortment of companions you can get from the Cartel Market, either with Cartel Coins or bought with credits from other players on the GTN. These Cartel Market droids and beasts are more for long-time players who are looking for more variety, and do not offer and special boosts in battle. In fact, they’re technically considered worse than companions you earn, as they do not have the ability to craft or gather, and don’t have any dialogue at all. Companion List

Special Companions

Lastly, there are a few very special companions that can only be earned very specific ways. These include: