If you haven’t played through to the end of chapter 9 in Knights of the Fallen Empire in SWTOR yet, you may want to hold off on reading this. I’ll assume that anyone who is reading further is actually working on recruiting new companions for the alliance against the Fallen Empire.

Edit: With patch 4.1 released Feb. 9, 2016

• The “A Kindly Old Monster” Alliance Alert Mission no longer requires completion of the “Stalking the Score” Alliance Alert Mission. It now requires the completion of Knights of the Fallen Empire Chapter IX: The Alliance, and the “To Find a Findsman” Alliance Alert Mission.

You will run across various companions from the different classes in the game as you play. If one of these companions worked directly for your character, your interactions with them are slightly different. In the case of recruiting them, this can be really beneficial. For example, my Sith Warrior wasn’t required to run PVP matches in order to get Pierce back. She just had to travel to his location and tell him to come back.

I had hoped this would be the case for getting Dr. Lokin to come back and work for my Imperial Agent. Unfortunately, there is a major slog involved just to get to the point where you can even talk to Lokin. The Rakghoul event is currently in progress, which is one requirement for finding him. (EDIT: No longer required to do first, but some info for this separate quest anyway. In the past, before you could get his recruitment mission, you had to finish recruiting the first companion that your military commander Aygo wants, which is Qyzen Fess. Getting Fess requires a pretty lengthy slog to gather enough trophies to make him happy. Don’t wander around Hoth looking in the 3 other areas the holo display recommends, just go to the top of Highmount Ridge (there is a new quick travel point placed along a road near it to benefit Republic characters who don’t have a base nearby), and wander in circles atop the mountain killing the “worthy jagganath” targets. And for sanity and compassion’s sake, if there are other people of your faction doing the same thing, group up and help each other. You both get trophies from the same kill.)

It is easier to recruit Lokin on an Agent then on other classes because you will already have influence with him (I assume!). For other classes, he asks for quite a few level 8 raw materials to use in his research. For the Agent, you get to skip ahead to the step that requires deployment of 4 probes in the tunnels. (If you got him to 10 influence already via your class missions) However, you do have to deploy and protect those probes rather than just ask him to come along with you. It can be tricky doing the 4th probe in the heroic mission area, so be careful of AoE there. Also be aware that the quest can bug in the phase where you have to recover a canister after scanning the Sarlacc pit on Tatooine. Unless you want the Worm Food achievement, don’t jump into the pit looking for it. Just log out and then back in and the canister will be there.

After finalizing Lokin’s recruitment, you return to Dr. Oggurobb first because he gives you the option to split Lokin’s time between military and research duties or assign him full time to military operations. If you split his time, you split the influence you gain. If you don’t, it all goes to Aygo. Other than sharing the influence you get between the two specialists, there is no real sense of how this choice might impact the story in future chapters.

You get so many companions in the game that I doubt I’ll bother recruiting anyone for Beywan Aygo on a class that has no special connection to the companions he wants us to find.