The new Outfitting System has arrived and a bunch of people have a ton of questions, complaints and misconceptions. I thought to myself, "Self, you could go to each thread and want to answer their questions and misconceptions there...or you could do that all in one place." So here we are. If you don't want to listen to me, go check out ZOS' basic guide here instead:
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/26295
If you want to review the Patch Notes, go here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/394810/pc-mac-patch-notes-v3-3-5-dragon-bones-update-17
Outfitting & Dyeing 101What the Outfitting System is:
The Outfitting System allows you to create an outfit similar to a costume that will override your normal appearance from your crafted/dropped gear. That outfit can be as detailed or as plain as you like, using any motif that is known on your account. The outfit can be used to alter the appearance of your weapons within limitations of type and allows you to dye weapons used in the outfit. You do this using the Outfitting Station, which is the old Dyeing station with a fancy new UI. Creating and altering the appearance of your outfit costs gold or Outfit Change Tokens available from the Crown Store (400 Crowns).
Everyone gets one free outfit slot per character. Additional Outfit Slot Upgrades add 1 outfit slot to a single character (per character, not account wide) and may be purchased from the Crown Store (1500 Crowns).
Common Misconceptions
1. The Outfitting System does not take away your ability to hide your helmet for free. There are two settings that cover this. If you are a polymorph user, go to Settings ->Gameplay ->Hide Polymorph Helm to turn that on/off. If you just want to hide your helmet, go to Collections ->Appearance->Hats->Hide Your Helm. The old functionality of "Hide Helmet" has now been turned into a hat. It still functions exactly how you'd expect, allowing you to hide the helmet on your crafted/dropped gear, your costumes, and your new outfits.
2. The Outfitting System does not take away your ability to dye your crafted/dropped gear for free. In the dye station menu, where you would normally dye your crafted/dropped gear, if you select the "No Outfit" option, that's the same thing. Under "No Outfit" you can dye your equipped armor and shield for free. You cannot dye your weapons, however. You aren't missing out on anything, however, because you couldn't dye weapons before the Outfitting System anyway.
3. The Outfitting System does not take away the ability of ESO+ subscribers to dye their costumes freely. That process works the same as it ever did.
4. The free Outfit Slot given to everything character is free to have, not free to create. If you actually create an outfit using that slot, you will have to pay the gold/token cost for the motifs and dyes used.
5. The Outfit System
does not remove any functionality from people who learned the Imperial and Morag Tong transformations from the Collector's Edition. You can still
freely convert and dye those equipped pieces from the No Outfit menu just like you could before. In addition, you will not be charged gold for those styles if you use them in your Outfit. However, you will be charged gold to dye those pieces in your outfit because free dyeing was never part of the advertised benefit.
Edited to Add: Upon further experimenting, the conversion of armor has been moved to the Outfit system. This does mean that you can't convert pieces and dye them freely from your "No Outfit" equipped gear menu. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, that's a lost functionality. On the other, I could only convert crafted armors, no-set armor, and a few rare no set motif gear sets, so it was never the most functional system in the first place.
Using the Outfitting StationStep 1: Log in with your crafter(s). Motif Knowledge for crafting gear is still character specific but motif knowledge for crating outfits is account wide. However, you need to log in with the character that knows the motif in order for the rest of your characters to use the motif for the outfit system. So I had to log on with my crafter or none of my alts would know any motifs except the basics.
While you are on with your crafter, quickly make an deconstruct (or buy and deconstruct) a piece of equipment from each of the tiers of materials (iron, steel, birch, cotton, etc) in order to get the new material dyes. It doesn't matter whether its blacksmithing, woodworking or clothing (I did mine from all three), you just need to deconstruct one item from each tier. This gives you the new dyes from the tiered weapon colors. Now, you can use any dye on any weapon and you can use these dyes on armor, but these dyes are designed to mimic the color of weapons at their differetn tier. So if you really like rubedite red, you're in luck, but if you yearn for the low-level days of plain iron, you are also in luck.
Step 2: Find an Outfit Station. It should be easy. All the former dye stations became Outfit Stations.
The former dye station UI has definitely been upgraded.
You'll see the drop-down options for "No Outfit" (that's your equipped gear), "Outfit 1" (that's the free outfit every character got), and the advertisement to buy more outfit slots for your character from the Crown Store.
Step 3: Using "Outfit 1", you can choose Dyes, Armor Styles, and Weapon Styles from the motifs and dyes that you know account-wide. (If you are missing a motif, make sure you logged in with that character - see step 1)
You can pay for changing your Outfit with gold (amount varies per outfit) or an Outfit Change Token from the Crown Store (400 tokens). Since I've said this here, I'm going to just talk about gold costs below, since a token makes that all irrelevant.
Armor Styles and Weapon Styles cost gold to use. You can preview the cost by hovering over the item while your running total of cost will by at the bottom of the outfit slots. Generally speaking, basic racial motifs are cheap and newer, rarer motifs are much more expensive. Weapon styles are more expensive than armor styles. Weapon Styles also have some limitations. You can make a one-handed weapon look like a different kind of one-handed weapon (i.e. a sword can look like a mace), but you can't make a one-handed weapon look like a two-handed weapon.
Dyes also cost gold to apply to your outfit. This appears to be a flat cost. I did not noticed any price changes for rarity. 50 gold per armor slot and 350 gear per weapon slot.
You can Rename your outfit or randomize dyes if you are looking for ideas. Under Armor Styles, you can "Randomize Styles" which sounds like it should give some hilarious results.
Step 4: Finalizing and Equipping your Outfit
When you are finished, Select "Apply Changes" in the dye station menu just like you would for regular equipped gear or a costume.
You will be prompted to pay for your changes in the currency of your choice. If gold, you will pay the total amount accrued for your armor styles, weapon styles, and dyes. If you use a Outfit Slot Upgrade from the Crown Store, you will have no additional costs other than the flat 400 crowns it cost to buy the token. Unlike crafting, this will not cost style materials.
When you pop out of the dye station, you may or may not look exactly how you like.
Costumes override outfits. So do polymorphs, hats, and disguises. If you want to see your outfit, remove your costume.
Hide Your Helm Hat overrides outfits. If you don't want to see your outfit helmet (and didn't use the hide your helm option in the outfit station), this is great!. If you want to see your outfit helm, turn off the hat.
Equipping and Swapping Outfits
In Collections, there's a new tab to the far right called "Outfit Styles."
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There you can:
Swap Outfits, including back to No Outfit
Preview Armor and Weapon Styles and figure out what you know and don't know
Head straight to the Crown Store to buy more outfit slots for your character if you are so inclined.
Step 5: Changing Your Outfit
To change your outfit after you finalized it, head back to an Outfit Station.
Like before, you can choose armor styles, weapon styles, and dyes.
You will be charged for every change you make. For example, removing a dye counts as a change. I removed a dye and was charged for it, however using a different dye in that now empty slot did not result in extra charges because it was only one slot being changed. Essentially, experimenting cost nothing, but you will be charged for every change you finalize.
My Thoughts on the Outfitting System
I hear a lot of complaints coming from people who don't understand the Outfit system and mistakenly believe that they are being charged for something that used to be free or that they have lost functionality or that they are forced to use the outfit system to regain something that used to be free. The Outfit System does not charged you for anything that used to be free, like dying your equipped armor/shields. The Outfit System does not cause you to lose functionalities like Hide Helmet or Hide Polymorph Helms, it just adjusts where you find them.
However, the Outfit System does have major downsides.
Gold cost per item and per dye slot is designed to be inconvenient enough to push players towards the Crown Store tokens. That it also functions as a gold sink is a side effect. When arguing about gold cost, keep in mind this info about average player gold that the 90th percentile of players across platforms had around 400-900k. Source:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/4399012#Comment_4399012
Many of the armor pieces have glaring graphical issues that quickly become apparent when mashed together with other armor sets, like high-floating shoulders, black textures where someone didn't texture the underside, and dark patches on knees where boots would have been. This is nothing new, however the issues are readily apparent now.
That all being said, I had a ton of fun spending close to 2 hours tweaking my main character's armor
just so and really enjoyed the experience. I doubt that I'll ever use the Crown Store options, but I will use my free outfit slot quite a bit. Overall, I'm pleased with this addition to my ability to customize my characters' appearances.
Final Note:
As usual, I'm sure I've missed something important or there are other questions I failed to address. If there's something that you think I missed or needs to be added here, please feel free to add that to the post.