To improve the efficiency of your companions — whether in combat or while performing crafting tasks — you’ll need to raise their Influence to Rank 50. Influence can be increased through several methods, including earning affection during conversations, sending companions on Crew Skill missions, and giving them companion gifts.

Influence is basically a numerical value to tell you how much your companion likes you. Each influence rank gained with a companion grants:

• + 0.5% critical rate
• 1.5% time efficiency for Crew Skills
• +50 Presence boost

But what do those stats mean?

• CRITICAL RATE: The critical rate is the chance of your Companion getting a “crit” or bonus when they do missions or crafting skills. That means you may get more than the one item you set them for.
• TIME EFFICIENCY: The time efficiency is how fast your Companion will finish crafting or a mission. That means every level of influence speeds up their skills.
• PRESENCE BOOST: The presence boost improves their health, healing and combat damage allowing them to do better as their influence goes up.

As you give your companion gifts and their influence rank increases, so does the rank of gift needed to make a real difference in the increase. Below is a general breakdown of what gift rank to use at what influence rank for increase.

GIFT RANK	INFLUENCE LEVEL
1	1-10
2	11-20
3	21-30
4	31-40
5	41-50

TIP: To increase the influence gained by gifts, you can unlock the Character Perk “Legacy of Altruism” (increases influence gained by up to 30%) and “Legacy of Promptness” (reduces the time it takes to give a gift to your companion. Combined, they will cost just under 1,300,000 Credits.

The fastest route to increase your Companion’s Influence is to use a “Commander’s Compendium” that instantly raises them to a Rank 50. You can get the compendiums in three ways:

• V1C-0RY in the Stronghold & Crew Skills area on Fleet.
  • Cost:
    • 3 – Dark Project MK-1
    • 4,250,000 Credits
• CARTEL MARKET
  • Cost: (when not on sale)
    • 1 for 990 Cartel Coins or a bundle of 3 for 2,490 Cartel Coins
• GALACTIC TRADE NETWORK
  • Cost:
    • The cost varies based on demand.

While you are playing, you will often get drops of individual and bags of companion gifts, especially at lower character levels. These do help, but don’t always apply to the companion you may currently have.

Another way to get gifts is to buy off the GTN or from the Companion Gifts Vendors on Fleet. The vendors carry Rank 5 Prototype and Artifact Gifts.

Cartel Bazaar on Fleet also has Rank 6 Delicacies and Maintenance gifts from the Jawas that can be purchased with Jawa Scraps for the Droid and Creature Companions.

Rank 6 Legendary Companion gifts can be purchased from Silas Fleetfire on Odessen, in the cantina, and on Darvannis (if you have access). These Legendary Gifts give the highest amount of influence possible. They each cost 250,000 Credits. Some Legendary Gifts can also be obtained from the Locked Supply Crates (from heroics after level 60) you can open after completing Chapter IX of Knights of the Fallen Empire.