SWTOR Alliance System Guide: Build Your Base Fast

You've finished eight class stories, survived five years of Sith politics, and now some immortal maniac with daddy issues has locked your companions in carbonite. Congratulations. The SWTOR Alliance System is your reward: a base on a backwater planet, four bossy specialists, and a to-do list longer than the Outer Rim. Let's get through it.

Prerequisite

Complete Chapter IX: The Alliance of Knights of the Fallen Empire. Everything before that and this system doesn't exist for you.

What the Alliance Actually Is

The Alliance is a resistance faction you build from scratch on the planet Odessen, tucked away in Wild Space where Arcann's fleet can't easily find you. Lana Beniko dragged a handful of specialists there. Your job is to make that handful into an army.

The system has three moving parts: Alliance Specialists you gain influence with, Alliance Alerts that let you recruit companions, and supply crates you grind from heroics to feed the whole machine. Miss any leg of that stool and you'll be staring at a half-empty base wondering why your datapad keeps flashing.

If you're a returning player wondering why all your old companions vanished, this is where you get most of them back. The Knights of the Fallen Empire companion recruitment system is intentionally slow and mildly sadistic about it.

The Four Alliance Specialists

These are the people running your base while you're out being a hero. Keep them fed with supply crates and recruits, and they'll unlock perks, dialogue, and a speeder if you max them. Neglect them, and nothing breaks except your completionist soul.

Each specialist goes from Influence Rank 1 to 20. Max all four and you earn the Alliance Commander title and 100 Cartel Coins. Yes, 100. Try not to spend it all at once.

The Commander's Datapad sits in a small room in your Alliance Camp HQ. Every time you hit a new rank milestone, it generates a quest. Collect it or it just sits there judging you.

Turning in one Locked Supply Crate to a specialist gives 500 influence. Also drops companion gifts and, occasionally, a legacy armor piece usable by any character above level 10. Occasionally a speeder. Don't get excited until it actually happens.

Supply Crates: The Heroic Grind

Locked Supply Crates come from Heroic missions, completable once per week. The fastest way to pick them up: head to the inner ring of the Fleet and use the Heroics Terminal. Pick up everything. You can teleport directly to any heroic from your mission panel via the ship icon. No loading screens, no commute, no excuses.

Time Gate

Heroic missions reset weekly. You cannot brute-force max influence in a single sitting. The game will make you come back. It has no shame about this.

• Pick up heroics from the Fleet terminal
• Teleport directly using the ship icon on the mission panel
• Bring the crate to the correct specialist at Odessen HQ
• +500 influence per crate, plus loot
• Check your in-game mail — some supply crates arrive that way

Alliance Alerts: Getting Your Companions Back

Alliance Alerts are how you recruit lost companions and new allies. They appear automatically in the Companions and Contacts panel (N key, or the fist icon in your menu) as you meet certain requirements. Some unlock after specific chapters. Some require you to have survived previous story choices. Some require you to not have killed a specific character three expansions ago.

The conversations use a silent-protagonist format lifted straight from KOTOR. Your character doesn't speak. The developers framed this as "nostalgic." The players framed it differently.

Once you recruit someone, use Travel to Contact in the Companions and Contacts panel to reach them instantly. No taxis required.

Permanent Consequence

Some companions are locked behind story choices made chapters ago. If you killed, sacrificed, or alienated the wrong person, certain alerts never appear. The game does not apologize.

Ship Droids: The Free Wins

Both C2-N2 and 2V-R8 are available in the Alliance Cantina on Odessen. Find them. Talk to them. C2-N2 will ask you to allocate comforts to the crew. Do it correctly: Modified Food Processor goes to Aygo at the Military Hangars; Non-Perishable Meals go to Hylo Visz. This unlocks a repeatable weekly mission and gives 500 influence per specialist. It takes three minutes and has no catch.

Star Fortress: The Payoff

After Chapter IX, the Star Fortress arc opens. These are solo or heroic flashpoints on planets controlled by the Eternal Empire. You infiltrate, destroy, liberate. Six total. Completing them ties into your alliance narrative and feeds more influence into the system. The SWTOR Star Fortress missions NPCs stand at the bottom of the Odessen landing platform elevator. Hard to miss. Easier to ignore. Don't ignore them.