How Companion Levels and Gifts Work in Swerve
Understand companion EXP, level milestones, character diaries, gifts, and how Swerve plans to develop deeper character interactions over time.
Companion levels give you a way to follow the time you spend talking with a character. Complete new exchanges, watch your EXP grow, and open the level panel to see your progress and the experiences you have unlocked.
Progress belongs to you and that character. Starting another story with the same character keeps the companion level, while the new story can have its own relationship, events, and diaries.
The level controls appear in supported one-on-one chats when companion levels are available for your account. Select the Lv. badge beside the character to view progress and milestones.
How conversations add EXP
A new completed exchange earns 10 EXP. Send a new message and wait for the character's response to finish. Regenerating the same reply, requesting a continuation, or retrying an exchange does not award the conversation's EXP again.
Each level takes more EXP than the previous one. Moving from Lv.1 to Lv.2 needs 50 EXP, so five new completed exchanges reach the first milestone. Moving from Lv.2 to Lv.3 needs another 100 EXP.
The current maximum is Lv.100. Earlier conversations are not retroactively converted into EXP. Rewinding a branch or deleting a chat does not remove progress you have already earned.
What the current milestones open
| Milestone | Current experience |
|---|---|
| Lv.1 | Your starting level |
| Lv.2 | Diary eligibility and brief inner thoughts |
| Lv.7 | More detailed inner thoughts and motivations |
| Lv.25 | A commemorative badge |
| Lv.100 | A commemorative badge and the current level cap |
The Lv.25 and Lv.100 badges mark your progress. They do not add another story ability in the current version.
Inner thoughts still follow the character's own settings and the conversation's narration settings. A character written to keep thoughts unspoken does not have to reveal them in every reply because you reached a milestone.
Diaries also need something to write about in the current story. After reaching Lv.2, complete at least one real exchange in that conversation to meet the story requirement. Diary writing and reading follow their own rules, including free short entries and an account-wide first free full-length entry. The character diary guide explains those details.
Send a gift when it fits the conversation
Where gifts are available, open Gifts in the character controls to browse the current selection. Choose a gift and quantity, then check the chat-credit price and EXP before confirming.
Gift prices and rewards are shown in the panel. A gift order includes one character response, and the gift contributes its listed EXP to your progress with that character.
If that response fails after the gift was sent, use the original order's free response retry. Sending the gift again creates another purchase. If the result is still being checked, wait for the existing request's status before deciding what to do next.
Let each story develop its own relationship
A higher companion level gives access to the experiences shown in the milestone panel. Feelings and events still develop within each story.
A character can remain cautious after a disagreement. A gift can become part of the scene without resolving its conflict. Starting a different story with the same character keeps your level, while giving that story room to establish how the characters know each other.
Your own Persona helps describe who you are in that conversation. The companion level tracks your overall progress with the character, while the Persona and story provide the details for the current interaction.
Where we want to take companion levels
We plan to make progression reveal more of a character's inner world over time. Future improvements may offer a more gradual view of their thoughts and how their perspective develops, building on the current Lv.2 and Lv.7 experiences.
We also plan to explore characters initiating contact with users. How that interaction should work, which controls users should have, and whether it connects to particular levels are still being designed.
These are plans for future development, with no confirmed release date or new milestone requirements. Reaching a higher level today does not enable proactive contact or unlock abilities beyond those listed in the current panel.
Open a character chat and select its level badge to see your current progress.
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