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Database · 8 ranks · 14 Cross Trainings

Zero Company Bonds and Cross Training

Bonds are pair relationships that pay out permanent bonuses and most of your Focus Points. This page holds the values; the guide explains the system.

Verified
10 September 2026
Version
Pre-release evidence — retail verification pending

A Bond is a relationship between two Operators that climbs eight ranks across five named tiers, and pays both of them Focus Points and a chosen permanent bonus at every one. A full pairing pays 18 Focus Points to each Operator, and eleven of those arrive in the last two ranks. Three Cross Trainings are offered at each rank, drawn at random from a pool of 14; the one you take applies to both Operators, stacks with itself, and cannot be refunded the way a Focus Point can.

The relationship ladder

Pairs do not all start in the same place. Some begin below neutral because the characters dislike each other, so a Bond is as often repaired as built. The tiers are not evenly sized — Neutral spans three ranks and High spans one.

  1. 1

    Very Low

    Rank 1, and the tier no source named until the shipped game's own rank table was published. A pair sitting here is not neutral about each other and has not been left alone — it is the first rung, reached at 40 Bond XP, so a pairing you have never fielded together is below even this.

  2. 2

    Low

    Ranks 2 and 3. Where several pairs begin. Starting below neutral is deliberate — some Operators dislike each other before you have done anything, so a Bond is as often repaired as built.

  3. 3

    Neutral

    Ranks 4, 5 and 6 — the widest tier, and the one a pairing spends longest inside. The usual starting point for a pair with no history.

  4. 4

    High

    Rank 7 alone, at 250 cumulative Bond XP, and it pays 4 Focus Points — four times what any of the first five ranks pays. Reported by previewers as a named tier before it was known that anything sat above it.

  5. 5

    Very High

    Top of the ladder

    Rank 8, at 350 cumulative Bond XP. It pays 7 Focus Points and replaces the standard Cross Training choice with a Passive Ability unique to that pairing, obtainable nowhere else. Named by the pre-release trophy list, which asks you to reach it with specific pairings; a retail guide states it is the maximum tier.

The eight ranks, and what each one pays

Bond XP is cumulative, not per-rank: 350 is the total a pairing needs for rank 8, not the cost of reaching it from rank 7. A completed Tactical Mission awards 30 Bond XP to every pair that took part, so the first five ranks are roughly four shared deployments and the last three are another seven.

RankTierTotal Bond XPFocus PointsCross Training
1Very Low40+1One of three drawn from the pool
2Low70+1One of three drawn from the pool
3Low80+1One of three drawn from the pool
4Neutral100+1One of three drawn from the pool
5Neutral125+1One of three drawn from the pool
6Neutral175+2One of three drawn from the pool
7High250+4One of three drawn from the pool
8Very High350+7A Passive Ability unique to the pairing

Both Operators are paid, so a pairing carried to rank 8 is 36 Focus Points across two Operators against 10 for one abandoned at rank 5. That is the argument for concentrating a roster on fewer pairings, and it is arithmetic rather than intuition.

Cross Training, and which one to take

Reaching a Bond rank offers three options, and the one you pick applies to both Operators in the pair. The choice is a choice — which is what makes Bond pairing plannable — but the three on offer are drawn at random from the pool below, so a training you were saving for may not appear.

They stack. A pair that reaches rank 8 has taken eight of these and may have taken the same one repeatedly — three instances of Fitness Work is +12 Max Health on both Operators. What they cannot do is be undone: unlike Focus Points, a Cross Training is locked in once taken.

Speed Training

+0.50m first movement.

The one that buys back Action Points rather than adding to a stat. Movement comes out of the same three-point pool as attacks, so an Operator who reaches cover in one move instead of two has bought a second Rifle shot — which is exactly the Operator whose second shot costs two AP and who otherwise cannot afford it. Half a metre is small; taken three times on a pair that reaches rank 8 it is not.

Note Applies to the first movement specifically, not to every move — which is the opposite of the astromech's Improved Motors, and the distinction is the source's own wording.

Target Practice

-5% range hit penalty.

Worth exactly as much as the shots your squad is taking from too far away, which for a Longarm on a roof is most of them and for a pistol Gunslinger is none. Reducing a penalty is not the same as raising accuracy: this does nothing at optimal range, so it is a training for the Operators who are always at the edge of theirs.

Note This is the most likely match for the "increased ranged accuracy" a launch-week reviewer listed without naming, and the match is a reading rather than a statement — Ranged Combat Drills and Agility Drills both touch ranged combat too. Recorded here so the reading can be checked rather than inherited.

Agility Drills

-5% enemy ranged hit chance.

The only Cross Training that is purely defensive, and on a permadeath run that makes it the one whose value is hardest to see and easiest to underrate. Three Injuries kill an Operator permanently; a 5% miss is not a heal, it is a fraction of an Injury never taken. Worth most on whoever holds the front and least on a Sharpshooter nobody can reach.

Close Combat Drills

+1 Melee Damage.

The narrowest training in the pool on today's roster. Melee damage matters to Kabb Uppercut's punch and to Tel-Rea Vokoss' lightsabers, and to almost nothing else — no Specialization in the eight is built around it. Take it on a pair containing one of those two; anywhere else it is the option you pick when the other two are worse.

Precision Shooting Games

+1 Critical Damage.

Critical *damage*, not critical chance, so it pays only on the attacks that were already critting — which makes it the natural partner of Timing Exercises rather than a competitor with it. It is worth the most on the Longarm, whose published critical bonus is +12 against the Rifle's +6: the biggest crits gain the most from a flat addition to them being taken repeatedly. **From Patch 1.1 it also pays a Jedi Padawan**, which it did not before: Critical Damage bonuses now apply to Tel-Rea Vokoss's Force attacks. On any pair containing her that moves this from a wasted pick to a real one, and it compounds with the +10% Melee Critical Chance her own Padawan Training buys.

Note Patch 1.1 fixed Critical Damage bonuses not applying to Tel-Rea Vokoss's Force attacks. The training itself is unchanged; what changed is that one Operator can now use it.

Timing Exercises

+3% Critical Chance.

The safest of the pool. It pays out on every attack rather than on a narrow action, which makes it worth most on whoever attacks most often in a turn — a Gunslinger stacking Onslaught, not a Sharpshooter taking one shot. All four weapon types have a base 5% Critical Chance, so one of these is a 60% increase on the base rate, which is a larger change than the number looks.

Note Recorded as +5% from 2026-08-14 until 2026-09-08. That figure was a previewer reading a pre-release build; +3% is the shipped game's own ability card. The older value is superseded rather than deleted — a build written around +5% was not wrong when it was written.

Freeform Training

+2 Focus Points.

The only one that compounds. Focus Points buy ability and Talent ranks, so this converts a Bond rank into scaling rather than into a flat modifier — and it is worth reading against the rank table beside it, because the rank itself already pays 1 to 7 points. At rank 3 this doubles the payment; at rank 8 it adds two to seven. Taking Focus Points early and combat bonuses late is the obvious line, and now that Focus allocation is freely resettable, taking the points early costs nothing even if you spend them wrongly.

Ranged Combat Drills

+1 Ranged Damage.

Flat damage on every ranged attack, which makes it the mirror of Timing Exercises: that one pays more on the big single shot, this one pays more the more times you pull the trigger. On a pistol Gunslinger firing three times a turn it is +3 a turn before any mod; on a Longarm it is +1. Stacked across several Bond ranks it is the plainest damage increase in the pool. One Operator's arithmetic changed on 9 September. Tel-Rea Vokoss's Force attacks were applying this bonus **twice**, and Patch 1.1 applies it once — so a pair that stacked this training around her hits for less than it did in the launch fortnight, without anything about the training itself having changed.

Note Patch 1.1 fixed this bonus applying twice to Tel-Rea Vokoss's Force attacks. It applies once now, as it always did to everyone else.

Cover Combat Practice

+5% Cover Bonus.

Defensive, like Agility Drills, and conditional on something Agility Drills is not: it pays only while the Operator is actually in cover. That suits a squad that fights from position and does nothing for one that spends its turns advancing — which is the same divide that decides whether Overwatch is worth holding, so the two questions have one answer per Operator.

Fitness Work

+4 Max Health.

The Bond bonus that touches survivability rather than output, which makes it the one that matters on a permadeath run. Three Injuries kill an Operator permanently, and an Injury is taken on reaching zero health — so raising the ceiling is a direct purchase of runs, not of damage. It is also the exact figure two Zone Influence rewards grant the whole roster, which is the only case in this database of the same statistic arriving from two unrelated systems at the same size.

Reflex Fire Training

+1 Overwatch Damage.

The narrowest of the combat options. It pays only on turns an Operator actually holds a cone, which most never do. It stacks with the Sharpshooter's Pick Them Off, and outside that class it is usually the wrong pick.

A Friendly Game

+40 Bond XP.

The strange one, and the one worth understanding before it is dismissed. It buys no statistic — it buys progress on the ladder that is offering it, and 40 XP is more than a completed Tactical Mission's 30. Taken at rank 1 it is a third of the way to rank 3. Taken at rank 7 it is a ninth of the way to rank 8. It is a training whose value falls the longer you wait, which is the opposite of every other option here.

Grenade Training

+1 Grenade Damage.

Pointed at one Operator type more than any other: the astromech, which carries no weapon, holds three Utility slots and gets three uses of each. Nine grenades a mission at +1 apiece is a real number, and it is the only Cross Training that pays a droid anything at all on the offensive side. Worth nothing to a squad whose explosives are an afterthought.

Combined Fire Games

+1 Assist Damage.

The fifth published source of Assist Damage, after the Scope slot's Tracking line, Hawks' Fearless Leader, the Scoundrel's assist abilities and the roster-wide Teamwork upgrades — and **nothing published says whether any of them stack with each other.** What makes this one different is where it comes from: Call for Backup is both a way to assist and a way to build a Bond, so a pair that assists often is the pair most likely to be offered this, and the one it pays most.

Applies to
Both Operators in the pair, permanently
Offered at
All eight ranks, not only the maximum
Offered from
Three drawn at random from the 14 above. One guide calls that list "all known" rather than complete.
Refundable
No. Focus Points can be reset freely; a Cross Training cannot.
Stacking
Yes. The same training can be taken more than once by one pair.
Rank 8
A Passive Ability unique to that pairing instead of a choice. None has been named.

Pairings evidenced to reach Very High

A pairing not listed here is unknown, not impossible. Every row below comes from a pre-release trophy asking the player to reach Very High Bond with that pairing. That is a list of achievements someone chose to write, not a compatibility matrix, and nothing states that other pairs cannot get there.
  • Hawks + TrickAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Hawks + Luco BroncAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Hawks + Kabb UppercutAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Hawks + Jae MordantAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Hawks + Cly KullervoAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Hawks + Tel-Rea VokossAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Trick + Luco BroncAchievement

    The one pairing a source describes as starting hostile: Umbara fought the clones. That a trophy exists for taking it to Very High means the starting animosity is repairable, not permanent.

  • Kabb Uppercut + Jae MordantAchievement

    Evidenced by a pre-release trophy requiring this pairing to reach Very High Bond.

  • Two Custom OperatorsAchievement

    Two Custom Operators. Recruits are not excluded from the relationship system, so a squad built without authored characters still progresses Bonds normally — and a launch-week guide states plainly that the maximum-Bond passive is available to any pairing, authored or not.

  • Two AstromechsAchievement

    Two Astromechs. The load-bearing row: droid-to-droid Bonds reach the top tier, which is what makes an all-astromech squad a progression strategy rather than only a legal one.

What is confirmed about Bonds

  • Bonds form between pairs of Operators, not across a squad.
  • Focus Points are mainly earned from Bonds, and a full pairing pays 18 to each Operator across eight ranks.
  • Reaching a rank offers a choice of one of three trainings, drawn at random, and both Operators receive it.
  • A completed Tactical Mission awards 30 Bond XP to every pair that took part.
  • Calling for Backup, shared missions, shared Operations, healing and approved dialogue all raise a Bond.
  • Hawks' Pico-5 adds 4 Bond Points a use, capped at 20 per character per mission.
  • Bonds can fall, and a companion pushed far enough can leave the squad.
  • Rank 8 replaces the choice with a Passive Ability unique to that pairing.

The system, what raises a Bond and what it costs to lose one are covered on the Bonds guide and the Cross Training guide. Focus Points have their own page.

Open questions

Points the shipped game has not yet answered for us, or that need a controlled comparison to state as fact — recorded rather than guessed at.

  • Every maximum-Bond Passive Ability. None has been named, it is the strongest tier of the system, and a guide reading the shipped game now states that each pairing's is unique to that pairing — so there is not one unknown here but one per pair. Patch 1.1 adds the first fact anybody has published about how the rank-8 option is chosen: a Specialization's passive Cross Trainings feed the pool, including a Secondary Specialization's, which were being left out. That is an input, not an answer.
  • Whether fourteen is the whole Cross Training pool. The guide that published the table calls it "all known basic Cross Training rewards", which is a claim about the author rather than about the game, and one other guide names a fifteenth option this table does not carry.
  • Conflict Resolution, which one guide describes as advancing both Operators toward their next Bond level and no other source names. If it is real it is a second progress-buying option alongside A Friendly Game; if it is that option under a different name, one of the two is wrong.
  • What a Bond rank costs in Focus Points to the *player* — nothing. The 18 points a full pairing pays each Operator are income, and no source has published the price of a single Focus Tree node to spend them on.
  • Whether the three options offered at a rank are drawn from the full fourteen or from a subset. One guide says the pool, another says the order is randomised per playthrough, and neither states whether an already-taken training can reappear.
  • How much a Bond decays from a disapproved decision, and how far it has to fall before an Operator leaves. Decay is confirmed first-party; no figure exists for it anywhere.
  • Whether Bond XP sources beyond the 30 per shared Tactical Mission carry published figures. Call for Backup, healing and shared Operations all grant progress and none of them is quantified.
  • Whether pairings outside the ten recorded here can reach Very High. A launch-week guide says any pairing can; the trophy list is still the only evidence of a *specific* pairing doing it, and it names ten.

Sources

  • Star Wars Zero Company Bonds & Cross Training Guide

    Hack the Minotaur · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 8 September 2026

    Supports: Bylined Hack The Minotaur, "Latest Update: September 1, 2026". **The complete Cross Training table, fourteen rows, verbatim**: Speed Training "+0.50m first movement"; Target Practice "-5% range hit penalty"; Agility Drills "-5% enemy ranged hit chance"; Close Combat Drills "+1 Melee Damage"; Precision Shooting Games "+1 Critical Damage"; Timing Exercises "+3% Critical Chance"; Freeform Training "+2 Focus Points"; Ranged Combat Drills "+1 Ranged Damage"; Cover Combat Practice "+5% Cover Bonus"; Fitness Work "+4 Max Health"; Reflex Fire Training "+1 Overwatch Damage"; A Friendly Game "+40 Bond XP"; Grenade Training "+1 Grenade Damage"; Combined Fire Games "+1 Assist Damage". Introduced as "All known basic Cross Training rewards are listed below" — a claim about the author's knowledge, not a claim of completeness. **The eight-rank Bond ladder**, as a table of Rank / Tier / Total Bond XP to Unlock / Focus Points Earned / Cross Training: 1 Very Low 40 1 "1 Standard Upgrade"; 2 Low 70 1; 3 Low 80 1; 4 Neutral 100 1; 5 Neutral 125 1; 6 Neutral 175 2; 7 High 250 4; 8 Very High 350 7 "1 Unique Upgrade". Prose around it: "You also earn Focus Points by hitting each Bond Rank, with 8 Bond Ranks in total", and "There are 8 confirmed Bond Tiers... Very High is the maximum tier and the threshold the game's trophy list recognizes for reaching maximum Bond with a given pair." On the choice: "You get to select from 3 random Cross Training passives each time your Operators rank up in Bond XP. You cannot predict which options will appear at a given tier, only that they will be drawn from the total pool of available trainings." On stacking: "Cross Training STACKS on each Operator. This means you can have multiple instances of Fitness Work (+4 Max Health) or Speed Training (bonus First Movement) for example". On permanence: "Cross Training bonuses apply permanently to both operators in the pair once chosen, regardless of deployment status." On Bond XP: "Each completed mission awards 30 Bond points to every pair that participated"; Call for Backup is "a Free Action available once per turn to one randomly selected operator, at no AP cost", and "Both the operator who called and the operator who assisted gain Bond progress"; healing a specific squadmate builds Bond between those two; assigning two Operators to the same Operation does too. On the top tier: "The maximum-Bond Cross Training grants a Passive Ability unique to each pairing, which cannot be obtained through the Focus Tree or any other progression system." On permadeath: a dead Operator's Bonds are severed and "The Cross Training bonuses already earned and locked in from that pairing remain on the surviving operator." **Checked for and absent**: any Focus Point cost for any node, any figure for Bond decay, and any name for a single maximum-Bond passive.

  • I played 54 hours of Star Wars Zero Company

    Dantics · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 5:26–11:55 — an injury is taken only on being reduced to zero health; normal, hard and expert named, plus an Ironman-style toggle; crisis operations; weapon mods slotted freely before missions; a second Specialization after cycle 18; every Bond level granting Focus Points and one of three joint training bonuses; the Sharpshooter's unmissable shot and the Soldier's rocket barrage

  • Complete Star Wars Zero Company Trophy List — How to Get All Achievements & Trophies

    Insider Gaming · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026

    Supports: Full trophy table — Very High Bond as a named relationship threshold, and the named pairings reaching it, including two astromechs and two Custom Operators; completing a mission with four astromechs; equipping four Weapon Mods to one weapon (“Fully Geared”); applying a Focus Point; using Force Push or Pull to knock one enemy into another; knocking an enemy out of the combat space; defeating enemies from higher elevation; landing a shot at 10% or lower Chance-to-Hit and missing at 90% or greater; the difficulty tiers Story, Normal, Hard and Expert, and Expert with Beskar Mode. Published 2026-08-17

  • Star Wars Zero Company Trophies

    PSNProfiles · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026

    Supports: Trophy list — independent corroboration of the trophy descriptions and of the Very High Bond terminology.

  • PC Review — 'Star Wars Zero Company'

    WorthPlaying · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 27 August 2026

    Supports: Weapons — "Regardless of specialization, operators can use any of the game's four ranged weapon types: blaster pistols, blaster rifles, longarms (sniper rifles), and repeaters (machine guns)", and "Blaster pistols deal the least damage but always cost one AP to fire. Blaster rifles cost one AP for the first shot and two for the second, using all three AP an operator starts with each turn. Longarms always cost two AP but offer the longest range." No cost is given for the Repeater. Progression — "Focus points can be completely reset and reallocated at any time, so you're never stuck with a bad build." Bonds — "Reaching a new bond level lets you choose one of three permanent buffs for both operators, including increased health, ranged accuracy, movement range, or additional Focus points." Published 2026-08-26

  • STAR WARS Zero Company — Patch 1.1 Notes

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 14 September 2026

    Supports: Published 9 September 2026, the first post-launch patch; re-read in full on 14 September 2026, when it was still the newest entry on EA's News & Updates page. **Every item below is listed by EA under bug fixes**, which is what makes each one a statement about 1.0 as well as about 1.1. Secondary Specializations: their passive Cross Trainings "now correctly enter the selection pool at Relationship +8", and Secondary Specializations "now count for Specialization-specific Operation requirements and results". Chance-to-Hit: attacks displayed at 100% "can no longer erroneously miss". Scattergun: Tiers II, III and IV "no longer incorrectly use Tier I values". Droid Dismantler: Harmony "is granted only on Droid deaths, not on every enemy death". Tel-Rea: the Ranged Damage Cross Training bonus "is now applied once rather than twice" to her Force attacks, and Critical Damage bonuses "now correctly apply" to them. DC-17m Anti-Armor: it "can now critically hit" and "receives damage bonuses that apply to grenades". Ion Blasters "no longer double Critical Damage". Sweeping Salvo: "enemies outside the targeting cone are no longer hit". A Life of Labor II "can no longer infinitely accumulate bonuses when purchased repeatedly". Immovable: the status "now provides its intended bonuses". Bacta Tank, missed on the first read and added 14 September: "Fixed an issue where the Bacta Tank could be used more than one in a cycle" — EA's wording, typo included; the intended rule is one use per cycle. Overwatch, three lines, quoted verbatim on 14 September because the first pass had paraphrased the first of them too loosely: "Fixed an issue where Overwatch shots triggered against attackers caused the enemies to fire through solid objects at Operators they couldn't see" — an enemy-side line-of-sight failure, not the player's reaction shots passing through walls; "Fixed some instances of Overwatch triggering on a unit outside of the targeting cone"; and "Fixed various Overwatch issues that caused enemies and Operators to be unintentionally attacked". A fourth mentions it in passing: "Fixed a turn ordering issue that caused the Coil Captain to heal a target already slain by Overwatch". **Checked for and absent**: any figure for anything — no Scattergun tier statistics, no Harmony amount, no DC-17m damage, no figure for what Immovable now provides, no Bacta Tank cost. Also absent: any fix for Overwatch *failing* to trigger. Every Overwatch line corrects a shot that should not have happened, and none claims a shot that should have happened now does.

  • Star Wars Zero Company: How to Increase Bond Levels

    allthings.how · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 8 September 2026

    Supports: Bylined Pallav Pathak, updated 28 August 2026. Names three Cross Trainings this database already held — "Timing Exercises: +5% Critical Chance", "Reflex Fire Training: +1 Overwatch Damage", "Freeform Training: +2 Focus Points" — and two it did not: "Ranged Combat Drills (+1 Ranged Damage)" and "Fitness Work (+4 Max Health)", plus Conflict Resolution, which it describes as pushing "the pair toward their next bond level" rather than granting a stat. **Its Timing Exercises figure is the pre-release +5%**, where `retail-htm-bonds` reads +3% off the shipped card; see that record. On permanence, verbatim: training rewards are "locked in once taken, unlike Focus Points, which you can refund and respend." On the menu: "The training options are drawn at random for each playthrough, so no two campaigns present them in the same order." On the top tier: "Reaching the maximum bond unlocks a special Cross Training that grants a Passive Ability, the strongest tier of reward." **Conflict Resolution appears on no other source read in this pass**, including the fourteen-row table on `retail-htm-bonds`, which is why it is entered with that absence stated rather than as a fifteenth row of the same standing.

  • Star Wars Zero Company Xbox achievements

    TrueAchievements · Tier 2 — Achievement list · accessed 19 August 2026

    Supports: Achievement list — independent corroboration of the same requirements, including the four-Weapon-Mod achievement and the difficulty tiers.