Some of the retired companions are completely unique in their stats/synergies/abilities. With how important team composition is for numerous site activities, this can easily become an issue where the only companion who can fill the role you need is retired.

I'd like to see every retired companion have another available companion that exactly matches their combat abilities. While a recolor would be the least work intensive way to do this, they don't have to be visually similar if staff would prefer the retired companions remain unique looking. It's just the combat features that are strictly important.

I'd also be fine if the new companions were difficult to aquire, like the Kapros for example. Or if staff want to maintain the RL currency association, they could be a MS item. These new companions don't need to be easily accessible, they just need to be unretired so every concurrent player could hypothetically get one at any point in the game's future if they need it for their team.

This should absolutely be the case if it's not already, there should literally be 100% replicas of retired companions stat-wise, even if they are hard to get. I'd like to steer away from more MS stuff too at the moment so anything else would be preferable unless certain MS things are changed.

When the companions serve actual gameplay function and fill their own niches, anything that's perma-retired needs to have a duplicate of it's stats and such available somewhere else.

Definitely agree with having a “poor man's [retired companion]" for competitive fairness! Ideally something to sink pebbles into.

I wouldn't want these to be moonstones but making them rare like Kapros seems like a fine idea.

There are retired companions already? I get KS companions being… unobtainable, but having retired companions before the site even fully opened for a month is bonkers.

Full support for being able to have pysnergies of those retired companions on ones you can obtain.

Just want to note that I too would prefer they not be MS items. I don't think it would be especially healthy for the current economy. It's included in the OP because it's also not a deal breaker for me if that was the only way staff would implement this. Having the combat combinations available to all players going forward feels too important.

@Synesthesia

People are referring to the KS companions when they're talking about retired ones. Iirc, the devs have stated nothing beyond the KS will be perma-retired.

That being said, full support for KS mimics. Its absolutely vital that they have duplicates available, because right now KS backers or those who can trade for them have a distinct advantage in the way of options that no other player has access to. In particular, the Krane is extremely powerful due to its synergies and ability loadout, especially when paired with a Bracchus. It is not fair to the rest of the players that those who didn't back or can't afford them are locked out of a very advantageous, meta-centric choice.

As someone who uses the aforementioned Krane + Bracchus combo, full support. Krane is literally like having a better Kit on your team that doesn't need to eat, and it's way too big of an investment for most players if they want to have an optimal team. I was lucky enough to get a 4 digit WW on day 1 to trade for it, but not everyone's gonna be fortunate enough to have something to trade.

They could be expensive pebble companions, or maybe an alternate method like rare drops, Arena, etc. Just as long as they don't cost MS. It'd be nice to have recolors (I'm just now realizing how much I want a blue Krane), but entirely new companions would be fine too.

I'd be honestly even fine with them being MS so long as they're exact in stats [ms is actually less hard to get than it initially appears and it will only get easier, flea market is very helpful for that] but i'm all for there being something with mirror stats, or at least stats that are only Marginally lower than the real deal so long as the synergies and abilities are untouched

I too agree to this idea. I was able to acquire 1 ks crane through an offsite trade but would be thrilled if I could use the campaign 2 crane base team which I cannot afford anymore.

100% agree!