For the life of me I cannot understand why the Companion is still tied to Gyashl Greens item. I understand the original intent but at this stage of the game it's just plain annoying to have an inventory space locked-in just to be able to summon your companion outside.

Option 1: I believe it would make a lot more sense to have the Companion Choco simply tied to a General action that unlocks upon reaching and completing the appropriate MSQ and GC quests (as they are now), and remove the 30min timer.

Option 2: If this is still not desired, since it might be too much work/effort to go back and change how existing unlocks and content works now, I would then propose to add a General Action - Call Companion that could unlock via a new Quest that is added and becomes available upon Compaion reaching level 10

This action would be a simple toggle, and should call Choco out to fight alongside you without the current 30 minute timer. Using the action again would banish your companion. When the companion dies, there would be a 10s cooldown before being able to call Choco out again (similar to how it is now with Gyashl Greens when the companion dies).

Notes and Contingencies: If this were implemented via Option 2, then having Choco out via this action should disable usage of Gyashl Greens, though they would still be usable to call Choco out normally for 30min if it wasn't already, though it would be a waste to do so this way. In the rare event Choco is out via Gyashl Greens, using the new "Call Companion" action would keep Choco out but remove the 30min timer. I believe that covers all the odd scenarios that might arise having both Gyashl Greens and the proposed Action in the game.