So influence works in two ways -- it opens up conversation dialogues and it moves characters closer or farther away to your alignment.

So for instance, lets take Atton. If you have high influence with Atton and you are light sided, then youll open up his storyline (have to go to Nar Shaddaa first tho and experience an event there) and he will have a light sided alignment. The higher your influence with him and the closer you are to the max light side, the closer he'll be to max lightside, and of course, if you both max out, I think you both get max alignment points (pretty sure it works for Atton, but it definitely works for your main character).

But lets say you're mean to Atton throughout the game and you do the things that cause negative influence -- then Atton will be dark sided. As you max out light side, he will max out dark side.

Now two things about influence:

1) Negative influence works the exact same way as positive influence. If you spend the entire game being an ass to Atton, he will open up (after you visit Nar Shaddaa first and experience the event there), but you either have to be super mean to him or you have to be super nice to him if you want to hear his entire storyline, but both work.

2) Maxing out both positive and negative influence opens up different dialogue choices in the end game depending on who your character favors.

Finally, be careful. If you're playing as a male character, make sure you get high positive influence with the Handmaiden before Visas, otherwise the Handmaiden will get jealous and will eventually stop talking to you. That only happens with the Handmaiden though -- all other characters are fair game.

Originally posted by Mandalore:

So influence works in two ways -- it opens up conversation dialogues and it moves characters closer or farther away to your alignment.

So for instance, lets take Atton. If you have high influence with Atton and you are light sided, then youll open up his storyline (have to go to Nar Shaddaa first tho and experience an event there) and he will have a light sided alignment. The higher your influence with him and the closer you are to the max light side, the closer he'll be to max lightside, and of course, if you both max out, I think you both get max alignment points (pretty sure it works for Atton, but it definitely works for your main character).

But lets say you're mean to Atton throughout the game and you do the things that cause negative influence -- then Atton will be dark sided. As you max out light side, he will max out dark side.

Now two things about influence:

1) Negative influence works the exact same way as positive influence. If you spend the entire game being an ass to Atton, he will open up (after you visit Nar Shaddaa first and experience the event there), but you either have to be super mean to him or you have to be super nice to him if you want to hear his entire storyline, but both work.

2) Maxing out both positive and negative influence opens up different dialogue choices in the end game depending on who your character favors.

Finally, be careful. If you're playing as a male character, make sure you get high positive influence with the Handmaiden before Visas, otherwise the Handmaiden will get jealous and will eventually stop talking to you. That only happens with the Handmaiden though -- all other characters are fair game.

Hi, thanks for the explanation. I'm playing as the female exile.
I was trying to figure out how to keep Visas dark sider/neutral without being an a**hole to her.

Happy to help. I would say that if you're playing light sided, you have to be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to her, otherwise you have to play dark sided and be nice to her. I dont think there are too many places where you can lose influence with her, so I would recommend playing dark sided then.

Heres a good place for conversation dialogue choices if you're interested:

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords

Ok, if instead i play visas as light sider, but with some dark powers like force lighting and madness and some light side powers, could she be valuable (or is a bad build)?
My idea was to use her as a stunner/caster.
I'm currently play as guardian (and later on i'll get weapon master)

Originally posted by Mandalore:

Happy to help. I would say that if you're playing light sided, you have to be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to her, otherwise you have to play dark sided and be nice to her. I dont think there are too many places where you can lose influence with her, so I would recommend playing dark sided then.

Heres a good place for conversation dialogue choices if you're interested:

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords

IMO, the companions become plenty strong enough regardless of which side they lean to--light or dark... even when using opposite side force powers--in the later half of the game. So... yes, she can become somewhat Light sided and still be effective with dark side powers. TBH though, I don't think I ever got her all the way maxed to light side... don't remember for sure. But, I did like that Electricity power for her as well.

Yes, at the end of the day, any character can take on opposite force powers and be valuable. If im playing a dark sided character for instance, I always take on force heal, and if I play as a light sided character, I always take the force storm path.

In fact, I would recommend against choosing light sided powers only for light sided characters and vice versa, unless you're planning on role playing.

Thanks!

How does influence WORK***

Its a fair question for new players who arent familiar with the system.

I'm confused why he got a jester award.

Does he want a spiffy spreadsheet with places to gain influence?

basically if you are light side, Positive influence makes them lightside (except kreia) and negative influence makes them darkside.

either high positive or high negative influence will win you their influence checks. so if you are LS, getting low influence with HK-47 would get you his influence checks and he'd still be darkside.

its still a system where I can be a LS jedi, and psychotically murder people to make atton and visa gain influence as they would in DS playthrus, but aside from the small DS point hit, they end up LS.

but the main take aways if you want to pass influence checks you want to either always gain or always lose influence with the character.