Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by maimeekrai

Can you hand down old equipment? or is there companion specific equipment?

i hand down equpment quite often in STO, to my Bridge Officers.

 

 

Of course you can. I hand down my bounty hunter stuff to mako all the time. Both of us use pistols and both of us can wear medium armour. So whenever I upgrade my character I just hand down the stuff to mako. This frees me up to accept more comendations. I also hand down stuff we can't use to the other companions. Keeping your companions geared up is part of the game and I notice the people that complain the most about hard leveling fail to do this. 

isn't mako's primary stat cunning? i think youre gearing her wrong.

The quest that I struggled on was the one with Darth Angmar or whatever his name was and it forces you to use Kira. It was impossible to kill him with her since I ignored her forever and it doesn't warn you in advance you are going to have to use her. It would be nice I guess in the quest description if maybe in parenthesis they put (kira) lol.

I have never updated my companions gear and do notice they drop really fast during PvE. I am almost obsessive about updating my personal gear and checking on upgrades a few times every level ..... keeps me good and broke. 

I have not reached end game on any of my characters and have a couple above 40. Going out of my way to upgrade gear every chance I get probably slows me down a bunch but I'm not complaining.

From what I've read I am in no hurry to reach endgame due to my moddable stuff not being up to par with endgame unmoddable purple gear. Kinda like to keep my own look as long as possible.

Every change I get? I don't know. I evaluate the drops and quest rewards and see if there's an upgrade. Upgrades for my character are prioritized over upgrades for my companion. If I can craft something that's an upgrade, whether it's for the character or the companion, I do so immediately.

I never purchase gear with credits. I will purchase gear with emblems, first for my character, then for my companion. I usually do this around the time I'm getting ready to leave a world so I can spend my emblems all at once and not have them sticking around doing nothing in my inventory. I know they don't take up space, but it bothers me to have them just sitting there.

** edit **
The fully modifiable gear takes much longer to mess around with. I'm trying to have full sets of mod gear on my character and my companion. This is going to increase the amount of time I spend on gear tremendously, but it's also going to make my crafting profession more useful (to me).

None, companions are worthless at 50.

I keep Klem fully upgrades, as a healer I use him the most, but I also keep my pirate friend upto date with his blasters incase I need to burn a single mob fast, the rest I kind of ignore.

If a upgrade was very good for my main one, I would take it when I finished a quest...  I never defered time to do it though.

I didn't sign up to play the mmo to outfit myself, and some lackeys I would rather not be there, sounds harsh, but I am not a big fan of it...Now if I was playing a 'pet' class, then that would of been my choice, like in Vanguard, where you have gear for the necros pets...But it was one pet...

To top it off, they are buggy, I duo a lot, and often one of our companions usually doesn't even get into the mix till something is about dead...They are ADD or something, and harvesting bio was pretty much breaking my wifes to where he started acting stupid for the next fight after bioing.

I know some people love their pets though, mine just irritate me, repeating the same lines over and over...I don't know if they changed it or not, but I also got the same xp, when I was leveling without them...Seems kinda screwy.

On my Jedi Knight it was the easiest thing to keep my companion upgraded. I purchased the republic dance outfit for Kira and since I'm a cybertech it was a snap to keep up with the mods.

My other characters I usually upgraded their companions by quest rewards, any lucky drops, or if I have left over commendations I'll use those to buy gear for my companion with.

Originally posted by keithian

Originally posted by maskedweasel

I don't really spend much time at all on my companions...   If I upgrade their gear, its usually the gear specific to the companion I'm using,  only one character did I actually pay attention to what gear I gave them consistently and that was Risha, because even with really good gear she goes down quickly at the high levels... and she was my romance arc for that char.

Curious if you had any quests that forced you to use a certain companion you had not upgraded and how you handled it?

Well, they pretty much hand you new companions with pretty well spec'd gear throughout the arc,  if I ever had a hard enough time, I'd just switch to the most recent companion I got, and that would pull me through, but most of the time I just kept with the most relevant companion... if I was a tank, I stuck with a healer,  if I was a healer, I  stuck to a tank.  

Very rarely would I ever feel like it was necessary that I upgrade my companions to get by.

It doesn't feel like I put much effort into gearing my companions.  However that's such a subjective phrase I don't know what it's worth.

Usually I can gear my main companion out with random green/blues that drop while leveling and the occasional commendation overflow gear.  I'm a sucker for commendation rewards, idk why.  Often times that's where my companion gets his/her new weapon from that lasts for quite a while. (use the commedation modifcations if you can't craft upgrades)

I find that only focusing on one companion is the best route to go... maybe two.  However that one companion is whichever one suits you the best at any give time.  It can change and you'll have to invests in the new companion to get them up to par if you'll be switching to them.  With the speed of leveling in this game, trying to gear out 3+ companions will ultimately end up being a waste of time and resources.(world drops aside)

Once you're maxed out it will all change though and I recommend choosing an order to gear out each of your companions.  You never know when you'll need a certain type and having your companion decked out like you are can make all the difference in the world.

P.S. - I've played a bunch of classes so far, JK Sentinel can get rough at times.  I don't remember when you get Doc but 34 sounds like the ball park of it.  He should end up making a huge difference for you and your play style.  Also, I've heard that the combat tree really takes off at 43.  Personally, I wouldn't know because I played Watchman from the start.

I concentrate on one companion, and when offered quest rewards, if it isnt a nice upgrade for the main sidekick, I typically will grab it for a lesser used one.

I buy no gear in game. Simply what I loot, get rewarded, or craft for my own folks(which isnt much).