Fallout 4 – How to max out companion affinity in <5 minutes

Introduction

So, if you’re reading this, you’re probably like me. You probably prefer being out on the road alone, maybe just with Dogmeat, because you can’t stand having to constantly look over your shoulder and make sure Preston didn’t get stuck behind a tree, or have to get annoyed at the fact that you’re popping pills to get through a tough fight and Codsworth decides to throw a fit over it in the middle of the fight. What does he even know?! He runs on kerosine and doesn’t have nerve endings! He doesn’t know what its like to take a bullet to the thigh without med-x. This is why the dog is superior. He doesn’t judge, he just bites the baddies and gives you free items.

Anyway, all of the companions do have a special perk associated with them if you get full affinity with them and (maybe) do their companion quest. This results in a contradiction of incentives. After all, if you agree with my stance on companions, you probably got the Lone Wanderer perk and maybe the Attack Dog perk too. If you start travelling with other companions (this is the only way to raise their affinity naturally, they won’t like you better if you put them somewhere safe and quiet for some reason) you lose the benefits of these perks and now you have to deal with a whiny hanger-on. Raising your companion’s affinity like this will take hours. You can explore a very large part of the commonwealth just trying to get one companion’s affinity maxed out, which is a huge waste of time if you didn’t actually want them with you.

This is made worse by some companions being distinctly unlikeable and hard to please. Like, did you know that Strong hates it when you step into power armor, thus when you accidentally do this it sets you back even more, forcing you to spend even more time with his ugly mug?

So, to everyone else who wants those perks but is sick and tired of hearing Curie comment on the state of the commonwealth for the hundreth time, here’s how you fix the issue in <5 minutes, or your money back!

(Note that a refund on your purchase of this guide, worth zero dollars, has been transferred to your account preemptively to avoid angry phonecalls about the 5 minutes offer. You’re welcome.)

Step by Step

First, stand in front of the companion whose affinity you want to adjust, then hit the `/~ button to open your console.

Click on your companion with the mouse cursor. This will cause your companion’s ID to appear at the top of your console. This indicates you selected that companion for modification.

Next, type the command “setav ca_affinity 250.” This sets your companion’s affinity to the first benchmark value of 250, where the first special dialogue triggers.

Type the command “getav ca_affinity” to check to make sure you did it right. It should give you back the value you just entered for the affinity of that companion.

Now take ANY action that improves your companion’s affinity. Any at all. This causes your companion to register that a change to their affinity has occurred. Now if you talk to them, their special dialogue will trigger. Rinse and repeat for the affintiy benchmarks of 500 and 1000 to get all the dialogue options. After the talk at 1000 affinity your companion will either give you their special perk or offer you a quest that will give you the perk upon completion.

Congrats! You just saved yourself about 20 hours of grinding per companion adjusted this way. Again, you’re welcome.

Special thanks

I’d like to use my closing statements to thank the variety of online threads I had to scour to figure out how this works. If it wasn’t for the lacklustre information provided in 95% of them (most leave out vital information on how this works, like how to get your companion’s ID, and some tell you to use “modav ca_affinity” which you should not use because it might break your game) I would never have written this guide as a note to myself and others.

Thank you all for reading, and have a nice day.

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