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. 25% discount tokens may also be gained through the Day Jobs system, and the 57 month veteran reward includes a permanent 50% discount on all tailor fees. These discounts do not stack - if a player has the 57 month veteran reward, the player will no longer be able to use discount tokens.

Saving and Loading

Issue 13 released a Save and Load option in the costume edit screen, both at character creation and at the Tailor. These options allow you to save a character's costume and load it onto another character.

Restrictions

• Only costume options that have been unlocked will load. This includes in-game and account-based unlocks.
  • Examples:
  1. the Roman Costume Pieces (complete the Imperious Task Force)
  2. the Valkyrie Costume Pieces (purchased pack)
  3. the Samurai Costume Pieces (veteran reward)
• Only costume options that are editable in the tailor screen can be loaded. Height changes and model changes are not allowed.
• The "load" option is unavailable when:
  1. Trying to load an off-model costume like male pieces to a female model.
  2. Trying to load a costume file that has illegal costume pieces, such as Statesman's unique faceplate, or typos.

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 Founders' 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, the first newly-gained costume slot begins as a plain set of tights for these ATs, with only details like color scheme and facial features copied from the first slot. After this costume is modified, it becomes the default for all further alternate costumes.

Soldiers of Arachnos 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, therefore it can only be switched to by using /cc 5, described below. The sixth slot is a copy of the first non-Arachnos costume slot when the sixth slot was opened and cannot be edited at the Tailor. The first non-Arachnos costume slot can then be edited at the Tailor, allowing the character to have six unique costume options, as the sixth slot will not change to match.

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, a player can set any of their costumes to appear differently while in Supergroup mode. This is done through a separate screen available at any time through either the Supergroup window, settings button, or at the tailor screen by selecting it over the "colors" options. Changes between Supergroup mode and normal costumes are limited to colors (using either or both of the two supergroup colors in place of any or all colors on the normal costume) and whether or not to use the "Supergroup chest detail", the Supergroup icon decided on by the Supergroup's leaders. This is individually selectable for each costume since Issue 13. Prior to that, Supergroup settings for costumes were across all costumes, and often led to bugginess if a costume shared a color with the Supergroup colors.

See Also

• Costume Colors
• Unlockable Costume Pieces
• Costume Sets