SWTOR Legacy Companion Unlocks in patch 1.2

Bioware is giving us a real reason to get in the good books with our companions. As of patch 1.2 increasing your companions' affection to 10 000 unlocks a unique enhancement for that specific class of companion. There are a total of five different companion classes and they are healer, melee damage, ranged damage, melee tank and ranged tank. Also, every single companion you cap affection with grants you 10 bonus Presence with all your characters under your Legacy name. So theoretically you can eventually have a default 400 bonus Presence on all your characters, if you play all eight classes and max out affection with all the (40) companions.


Somehow I think people are going to be spending a lot more time chasing companion gifts!


After doing some testing I discovered that the bonus I unlocked by maxing out Kira's affection on my Jedi Knight was applied to every other character I created, on both Republic and Sith sides. For Kira it was a bonus to surge and although it applies to all characters, the bonus surge can only be unlocked once. The Presence, on the other hand, can be unlocked on every companion and every class.

In the notes about what is unlocked is says "You may only receive this bonus for one healer/melee tank (etc) companion". It took me a bit of research to figure out that what this means is that if you unlock a healer companion on your Jedi Knight, you get the bonus for all the characters you create. It is not stacked or re-applied when you unlock another healer companion though on a separate character.

Here you can see the bonus surge applied to a naked level one Trooper. It is clearly not present in patch 1.1. Interestingly, base DPS with no weapon equipped seems to be higher in 1.1.

So, let's look at the bonuses that you get with each class of companion.

Achieving maximum affection with a healer grants you a bonus to the total healing you receive, increases your heroic moment by 12 seconds and reduces the cooldown by 1 minute. (Also grants 10 bonus Presence to all characters)

Surge rating goes up. Heroic moment goes up by 12 seconds and cooldown goes down by 1 minute.

Critical Hit Chance gets a boost for ranged damage companions as well as the usual increase of heroic moment by 12 seconds and reduction of cooldown by 1 minute.

With the melee tank companions you get a bonus to your accuracy (plus the usual).

With ranged tank it's the usual plus a Max Health bonus.

Here's a summary:

Campion class	Bonus*	Heroic Moment*	Cooldown*	Presence
Healer	Healing Received	Increased by 12 seconds	Reduced by 1 minute	+10 bonus
Melee Damage	Surge rating
Ranged Damage	Critical Hit Chance
Melee Tank	Accuracy
Ranged Tank	Max Health

* Is only unlocked once

All this means that getting on your companions' good sides is even more important than ever. To review the gift preferences of companions, check out our information pages.

Sith Inquisitor Companion Details in Full

If you want to romance Andronikos Revel, or maybe Ashara Zavros is more your style, you'll need to know what gifts can give you extra mileage. We've updated our Companion List information for the Sith Inquisitor class, with the gift preferences information and a whole lot more.

Go forth, you Force-attuned, Empire aligned players and get to know your companions! 

Same Sex Romances in SWTOR

No idea how I missed this last week ... it's a whopper! First let's look at this post on STWOR.com forums by StephenReid:
Official statement follows: Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature. Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.

So let's recap, there will be same sex romance allowed in STWOR, but not when it's first released, it will come out in an expansion. This raises a whole lot of questions, like what role will romance (same sex or opposite sex) play in the game? SWTOR is being released rated T for teens, but will this change with an upcoming expansion?

People got so mad about the decision to not include same gender romances until post-launch that BioWare had to delete/lock the first 300 posts. Now it's not just bi-sexual and gay people that are pissed off, it's anti-gay people and some parents and the religious conservatives who are getting mad that the content will ever be allowed in the game.

But on the flip side, what if there was no inter-species romance? Would people get as upset? I know a lot of guys in real life that have gone nuts when they see girls dressed up as Twi'Lek's for example. So are we all that desperate that we must have Twi'Lek romance in the release and not patched at a later date?!  

BioWare have gone to great lengths to include romance in RPG games in the past and I even stumbled into a gay love scene in Dragon Age II  that kinda threw me because it was so unexpected!

In case you haven't played Dragon Age II and are not familiar with what I am talking about, let me explain. In Dragon Age II, to unlock certain abilities with your companions, you need to establish relations with them. You do this in the form of conversations. You have choices in what you say to them when you talk about choices and personal issues. Choices you make during quests effect the way your companions feel about your character. The more the companion likes your character and its choices, the more abilities are unlocked, making your companions more effective during gameplay.

During my gameplay in Dragon Age II I was attempting to build up my male warrior's relationship with Anders, who is a male companion character. Anders was my main healer and I thought he was a pretty cool dude. But in my attempts to build up a rapport between the two, Anders took it the wrong way and before I knew it there was a lengthy kissing scene between the two (male) characters. In Dragon Age II the same end result can happen between opposite sex characters as well. In another scenario, my character was talking to a male elf in a brothel while I was following a quest line and before I knew it, they were in bed together ... not what I had intended. My two female companions were very upset!

Surely there should me more control over whether your character pursues a hetero or a gay relationship? In Dragon Age II, which is a BioWare game, the plot line leading to a romance encounter was a bit unpredictable. What would Chewie do if Han took his big hugs the wrong way?

Would he rip his head off ? If Han went for the grab?

Is this same sex romance option not in SWTOR on release due to time constraints or is LucasArts blocking it? Are BioWare just holding off until the game is out and has 5 million players before telling George sorry ... we are putting it in, you can't stop us now! 

But my final question is, will this be an epic Star Wars adventure or a cliche romance novel?

and will my smuggler have that same sex appeal as Han solo?