The pet does not matter as much as the slot order
Players spend hours comparing companion damage, health and abilities, then install mods in whatever order they happen to be in. That is backwards, because of how precepts work.
A precept is a companion’s ability, expressed as a mod. Companions run precepts in priority order by slot position: top-left is highest, bottom-right is lowest, ten slots total. The companion checks whether the highest-priority precept’s conditions are met, uses it until they are not, then checks the next one down. It will interrupt a lower-priority precept to use a higher-priority one.
So if your top-left precept is an attack ability that triggers constantly, your companion spends the mission attacking and never picks up loot, because the loot precept sits at position seven and never gets a turn.
Move the pickup or healing precept to the top-left and the same companion with the same mods becomes useful. No new pet, no new mods, no platinum.
That single change is worth more than any class comparison in this guide.
The seven classes, grouped
| Group | Classes | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Robotics | Sentinels, MOAs, Hounds | Fragile, carry utility precepts, no Orbiter roaming |
| Beasts | Kubrows, Kavats | Durable, fight alongside you, roam the Orbiter |
| Deimos Infested | Predasites, Vulpaphylas | Modular, built from parts, gilding required |
Sentinels are the utility class. They float beside you, carry the widest range of precept types, and die to any serious area damage. Their value is the mods they carry, not their combat output.
MOAs are modular robotics built from components, which means you choose the parts and therefore the precept pool. They sit between sentinels and beasts: more durable than a sentinel, less than a Kubrow.
Hounds are the advanced robotics class, also modular, and the most durable of the three robotic types.
Kubrows are the original beasts. Durable, melee-focused, and they roam the Orbiter when you are not in a mission.
Kavats trade some durability for utility precepts that affect your loot and your crit, which is why they remain popular despite lower survivability than Kubrows.
Predasites and Vulpaphylas are the Deimos Infested modular beasts, built from parts obtained on Deimos. Both are viable, and both require gilding before they award mastery.
The four that need gilding
MOAs, Hounds, Predasites and Vulpaphylas are modular companions. Like Zaws and Amps, they award no mastery rank points until they are gilded at their vendor, and gilding resets them, so you rank them to 30, gild, then rank again.
Non-modular companions — Sentinels, Kubrows and Kavats — do not need gilding. Note also that Kubrow, Kavat, Predasite and Vulpaphyla weapons award no mastery at all, which is a separate rule from the companion itself.
If you are levelling companions for mastery, the mastery rank guide explains why companions give 6,000 points against a weapon’s 3,000, and why this makes them the faster path.
Precept rules most players miss
Precepts are class-locked. A Djinn Sentinel cannot use Helios’ Investigator precept. Each companion type has its own set, plus universal precepts shared within a class. You get the specific precepts automatically when you acquire the companion.
Polarity does not gate precepts. They do not need to be installed in a matching-polarity slot to function, unlike normal mods. That means you can freely reorder them for priority without a forma pass.
Precepts occupy general slots. Precepts have a designated polarity by convention, and there are matching slots on every companion, but they are still general mod slots you can repurpose. The trade-off is capacity against flexibility.
Building a companion that survives
A dead companion carries nothing, so survivability is not optional.
Priority order for the build:
- A revival or self-repair precept, top-left. A companion that revives itself is worth more than one with better stats that dies once and stays down.
- Health and armour mods. Companions scale poorly with enemy level, and a beast with no defensive mods dies to a single Steel Path enemy.
- The utility precept you actually want — pickup radius, loot chance, crit sharing.
- Damage mods last. A companion’s damage is a rounding error against your weapon’s. Building a pet for damage is building it to die while doing nothing measurable.
The Steel Path guide is the practical test: if your companion survives Steel Path Survival for twenty minutes, the build is fine. If it dies in the first two, the mods are wrong regardless of which pet it is.
What companions actually give you
Loot pickup. The vacuum effect moves drops to you, which is a time save that compounds across hundreds of missions. This is the strongest argument for keeping a Sentinel even after you stop needing its damage.
Loot chance. Certain precepts raise resource or mod drop rates, which stack with the Steel Path’s +100 percent bonuses.
Crit and damage sharing. Some Kavat precepts raise your crit chance or grant damage buffs, which is why Kavats are popular in crit builds.
Shared invisibility. Companions inherit your Warframe’s and Operator’s invisibility, so a stealth build does not get exposed by a visible pet. This also means a companion will not break a Spy vault for you.
Free revival utility. Sentinels can be configured to revive, which effectively gives you a second attempt on a mission that would otherwise end.
There is also the Helminth Charger, an Infested Kubrow created from a Helminth cyst, which counts as a Kubrow for mastery and mod purposes. The Helminth guide covers how to get the cyst.
A note on targets
Companions do not attack Feral Kubrows, Feral Kavats or Desert Skates. This matters on Earth and in open landscapes, where a beast companion will ignore those targets while still drawing aggro from everything else. It is not a bug, and it is not configurable.
For the mod capacity side of fitting a companion build, see the mods guide. For which companions come from which open world, the open worlds guide covers the acquisition routes, and best weapons is where to look if you are deciding whether your damage or your companion is the weak link.