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 "The Facemaker" (not to be confused with the contact of the same name), 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 costumes any number of times and at any level for a fee. 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 "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 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 The Facemaker.

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 The Facemaker. (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 The Facemaker.

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 Oaks. AT-specific accessories cannot be added to any costume except the first slot. For this reason, the second slot's initial appearance defaults to plain tights, and the third and later slots default to the second's appearance.

Villains cannot use both this extra slot and the Halloween Salvage slot to achieve six costumes total. Five costumes is still the maximum.

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.

See Also

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