Costumes

This article is about character costumes. For the temporary costume powers, see Temporary Powers or Trick or Treat.

Overview

One of the greatest strengths of City of Heroes and City of Villains is the wide variety of costumes available to heroes and villains. The costume creator is extraordinarily deep, with customization available for all aspects of a character's appearance.

Modifying a Costume

Once a character has selected his or her costume, he or she may change these selections at a special store known as a Tailor. In City of Heroes, there is a chain of stores called "Icon," which has branches in Steel Canyon, Independence Port, and Founders' Falls. In City of Villains, there is a chain of stores called "Face", which has branches in Cap au Diable and St. Martial. For a fee, a hero or villain may change almost any aspect of his or her appearance, except for the fundamental properties of gender, body type, and overall height. A character may change any of his or her costume pieces, as well as any size and scaling properties except the ones mentioned, any number of times and at any level. Low-level characters will need to exercise caution on their ways to the Tailor stores, though, and will likely not be able to afford extensive changes without help.

Fees

Changing major style categories, like from "Full Masks" to "Helmets", is relatively expensive. Changing textures is less expensive, and changing color patterns is even cheaper. Individual color changes are free. Changing any face or body shape sliders costs a very high fixed price, no matter how many change or by how much. There is also one small, fixed overhead charge regardless of anything else. All these fees scale with the character's level.

Free Costume Change tokens exist, and can optionally be spent to cover the full cost of a costume change. These tokens are claimed through the Veteran Rewards system. They are also given automatically to all characters when a patch or Issue modifies costumes in a major way.

Capes and Auras

At level 20, a hero or villain may earn a cape. In City of Heroes, a hero should visit City Representative in City Hall in Atlas Park to undertake a mission to unlock capes. In City of Villains, a villain should visit their original contact (Kalinda or Matthew Burke) in Mercy Island to undertake a mission to earn the right to wear a cape.

At level 30, a hero or villain may earn an aura. In City of Heroes, a hero should visit the City Representative in City Hall in Atlas Park to undertake a mission to unlock auras. Kalinda and Matthew Burke allow villains to "unlock the power of the destined ones."

Extra Costumes

At level 20, 30, and 40, a hero or villain may earn extra costume slots, which allow that character to have more than one costume defined at a given time. New costume slots are initially identical to the character's first slot.

At level 20, a hero should visit Serge in the Steel Canyon branch of Icon to earn an additional costume slot. A villain should visit The Facemaker in the Cap au Diable branch of Face.

At level 30, a hero should visit Lauren in the Independence Port branch of Icon to earn an additional costume slot. A villain should visit Gorgeous Glenda in the Cap au Diable branch of Face. (She is in the room at the end of the hall.)

At level 40, a hero should visit Carson in the Founder's Falls branch of Icon to earn an additional costume slot. A villain should visit Lovely Linda in the St. Martial branch of Face.

During Halloween Events, participating players are able to earn Halloween-themed Event Salvage. A full set of this salvage can then be turned in to unlock an extra costume slot at any character level. This extra slot stacks with all existing slots, resulting in a possible total of five slots when a character reaches level 40. Although new costume salvage only drops during Halloween Events, the NPCs who accept it are permanent contacts, and the salvage itself can be saved, traded, or bought and sold through the Consignment Houses.

Soldiers of Arachnos

An Arachnos Soldier's or Arachnos Widow's original costume slot is forced to include unique, AT-specific accessories that give it a distinct appearance. To balance this, these Villain Epic Archetypes have one additional way to earn an extra costume slot, starting at level 10, by running missions for Brick Johnson in Port Oakes. AT-specific accessories cannot be added to any costume except the first slot. For this reason, all newly-gained costume slots begin as a plain set of tights for these ATs, with only details like color scheme and facial features copied from the first slot.

VEATs apparently can use both this extra slot and the Halloween Salvage slot to achieve six costumes total, but this is not fully supported. The sixth slot does not appear in the costume selection window. Because of this, it cannot be edited at the Tailor, and it can only be switched to by using the "/cc 5" slash command described below.

The Crab Spider Backpack

The first costume slot operates oddly with Arachnos Soldiers who have Multiple Builds. If one build contains any powers from a Crab Spider powerset, then all builds automatically use the Crab Spider backpack accessory in the first costume slot. This even causes it to replace the unique cape that would normally show on a build that contains powers from the Bane Spider power set. Positron describes this as an "unfortunate effect" of how the game currently works, though it's on the Known Issues list and may be fixed in the future.

Swapping Between Costumes

A character can swap between costume slots by typing the following into the chat command line.

/cc #

To utilize different slots, replace the pound sign (aka hash mark) with a number from 0-4. For instance, the first costume slot is:

/cc 0

If a character has five costume slots, the last slot is:

/cc 4

These commands can be inserted into binds and macros.

A hero or villain must wait 30 seconds between costume changes.

Supergroup Mode

In addition to all the above, a character's appearance may change depending on whether he or she is in Supergroup Mode. Each Supergroup has two official colors and one official chest symbol. A member of a Supergroup may freely configure each of his or her costume parts to use its natural color, SG color #1, or SG color #2 while that character is in SG Mode. Also, the character can control whether being in SG Mode causes the SG's chest symbol to replace his or her normal one. These settings can be changed at any time, anywhere, for free, from the Supergroup settings tab. A character cannot configure separate SG appearance settings for each costume slot, however. There is only one style for the entire character, and it will apply to whichever costume he or she is currently wearing.

Template:Issue13 Issue 13 completely changes the way to select Supergroup colors to display. All of the design errors, true bugs, and missing items have been fixed. Flesh out new changes.

See Also

• Costume Colors
• Costume Change slash command
• Unlockable Costume Pieces
• Costume Sets
• Supergroup and SG Mode

References

• Stupid Crab Backpack won't go away.
• Do VEAT's need the halloween salvage for 5th slot?