Partner



Partner is a new style pet in TERA, added in May 2019 patch. Partners and pets are together called Companions.

Initially there are four possible partners: Marie, Kuncun, Cocomin and Loo. Loo is only available from cash shop RNG boxes. New partners from Exodor patch are Rico (or Pico) and Elo (or Eco). Special partners are RK-9 from Rampaging RK-9 Kennel event (August 2020) and Kalligar from DA+VS conquest mode (December 2020) and Lumikan (April 2021 event).

A Partner has a Bond Skill and a random Gifted Skill. A partner has Stamina and Fellowship bars.

Partners have advanced chatbot AI. They can congratulate you when enchanting gear succeeds, or comfort when it fails. They notice fishing spots ("this is good spot") and notice when boss gets enraged. Partners know each other ("Have we met?", "Yes, we met in Velika!") and sometimes comment or even ridicule others masters or guilds.

Bond Skill gives Power buff. Bond Skill must be dragged to speedbar and can be activated while in battle. This makes Partner work quite like a brooch.

Pet's skill can be transferred to Partner. Partners have 6 slots for extra skills. Since October 2019 patch 86 it's also possible to move skill away from Partner.



Gifted Skills
Partner has extra random Gifted Skill. These skills include healing, mana infusion ("Emergency Service"), but also skills like XP boost ("Rapid Growth") or Dual Boost, that boosts XP and skill XP gain.

Special skills include Critical Crafting, which increases change to crit while crafting. Backup Fisherman increases change to catch a BAF while fishing. Gathering Support speeds up gathering for few minutes.

Gifted Skills trigger randomly while Companion has high stamina, when giving it a gift, or when using the Bond skill. In case of Critical Crafting this skill triggers randomly when crafting something. So you want to craft cheap stuff until you get skill trigger. Backup Fisherman triggers when catching a fish manually.

Gifted Skills are not particularly useful due their randomness. You want to keep partner with Critical Crafting III if you have crafting skills.

Stamina
Partners need gifts to keep their stamina up. Gifted figurines recover your partner’s stamina. Note that partners are not required to be summoned to give figurine gifts.
 * Figurines are obtained through crafting or merchants.
 * Purchase gift designs through the processing materials merchants in crafting centers.

Fellowship/Grade
A partner’s grade starts at 1 when registered. You increase partner's grade by promoting it with another partner. Grade can increase up to 10.

A partner’s fellowship starts at 1 when registered. Fellowship can increase to 50. Higher fellowship is reached at higher grades. Fellowship tells how big power buff partner can give in battle and its duration. Maximum buff is 40 power for 300 seconds

Getting this high Fellowship depends heavily on RNG. To reach it you'd need 10 partners that are already on high level and combine them, but it can still fail and give low fellowship. This makes process extremely RNG dependent and expensive if you want to min/max partners.

Patch 92 (April 2020) made upgrading partners bit easier and less RNG. Partner fellowship increase now has less randomness and it depends more on partner that is sacrificed. Higher grade partner have more chance to higher fellowship increase. This change is from KTERA patch 2020.04.23 (v95.01), parts of it applied already in EU/NA.

Based on one time experiment feeding partner only with highest grade 10s gave in average +4.333 fellowship per update (which is really bad and flustrating).

Partner fellowship was again buffed in v103 in February 2021. This should be new table, based on translated Korean patch notes: Special Partners have "Increased Fellowship". This actually seems to be worse than buffed fellowship after v103 (if text in descriptions is correct). Increased Fellowship description is grade 1 -> 3-4 fellowship, grade 2-4 -> 3-5 fellowship, grade 5-7 -> 4-5 fellowship, grade 8-10 -> 5-6 fellowship. Special Partners' effect is called "Eternal Power" instead of normal Bracing Power. Eternal Power stays even if you happened to die. You lose power buff from normal partner when you die.

Making a Lumikan partner after this change resulted a partner with fellowship 46, which equals 28 power. Only grade 10s were used, and this gave in average +5.000 fellowship per update. Chance to get +6 is prolly under 10 %.

Normal partner with same process gave 49 fellowship (37 power), or in average +5.3333. Reaching maximum of 50 on non-special partner is not impossible.

Chart above shows superior (yellow) partner Bond Skill powerbuff vs. fellowship. As we can see, partner with 44 fellowship is baseline. After that 1 more point of fellowship gives 3 more power. If you can squeeze 6 more fellowship, powerbuff almost doubles. It should be noted that getting +6 when promoting is really rare. Even getting +5 each time is good value.

Superior Partner with 37 fellowship gives you 100% uptime for buff and 19 power.

To maximize your partner you need superior partner and sacrifice 9 grade 10 partners. This requires ~810 Legacy Essence, or 1600 if you don't use expensive and unreliable Evolution Cores. August 2020 patch has added special fodder partner ("Dopey Cocomin") that can't learn skills or can't be upgraded, but work as fodder material.

Acquiring Partner
A new level 66 quest was added to game that awards uncommon Kuncun partner that has Special Storage ability. Although finishing this quest requires collecting 8 pieces of Legacy Essence. This material was only dropping very rarely from Gossamer Vault (level 66 dungeon with 453 item level gear needed), and later in DFNM with equal requirements. Best bet is to wait weekend event or daily login event to get this material to your hands.

Note: in patch 92 in April 2020 quest was moved to level 68. Acquiring a partner no longer requires Legacy Essence, just killing 10 monsters. This quest now rewards special partner Thrall Egg Cocomin that has 12 power Bond Skill. You can finish quest again, even if you had earlier partner from old quest. You also get second tab of Pet Pocket from new partner. This partner's Bond skill cannot be upgraded.

You can get partner from evolving a level 10 pet using Evolution Core, or combining two pets (high level recommended). Quite many achievements in game give pets. You can also buy more pets with spare Legacy Essence.

Evolve method only consumes one pet, but it's expensive. The Evolution Core costs more than in broker and has low change to succeed (20% says Essential Mana). Failing also lowers pets level.

Partners on Adventures
June 2020 update added new feature to partners. It's possible to send a partner to adventure. Adventure lasts 8 or 12 hours, during which partner is unavailable. When it returns, it brings back some rewards. Partner status is seen on Character selection screen. If it blinks, you can claim the rewards.

There are initially 7 possible adventures:

Rewards from adventures named after dungeons are roughly same as finishing dungeon. 10 Legacy Essence Fragments gives one Legacy Essence.
 * RR adventure gives materials to convert to Ethereal set accessories (Red Refuge Treasure) and Argog Weapon Skin (Argog's Treasure).
 * AA adventure gives material for upgrading accessories to Radiant set and for enchanting Exodor gear.
 * CS adventure gives materials to convert Superior Exodor gear to Mythical status (Corrupted Skynest Treasure) and for Kelsaik Weapon Skins (Nightmare Kelsaik's Treasure).

Partners need higher grade to go on higher adventures. Grade listed in table is for green (uncommon) rarity partner. One less grade is needed if partner is blue (rare), two less is needed is partner is golden (superior).

Adventure has 1% chance to give jackpot rewards. There is new Gifted Skill ("Adventure Enhancement") for partners that doubles the chance. You use use partner with Adventure Enhancement III skill and level it up for adventures.

This content is really past it's prime by this patch. You can't get superior halidom/relic IIs anymore. Also this does not give materials for Mahtnan gear. Most useful is Exodor gathering, which gives enchantment additives.

Links

 * companion skills table [Official documentation]
 * power vs. fellowship table [Official documentation]
 * Servant Adventures and possible rewards