Costumes and outfit slots

Paulgar · November 2021

Why don't costumes work with the outfit slots? I just bought a second outfit slot for my jester, only to find out my costume doesn't change when I change my outfit slot. Pretty bummed about wasting my crowns. This ever happen to anyone else?

Elvenheart · November 2021

Costumes can be turned on and off with a click in the collections menu. They can also be recolored at outfit stations. And, I THINK they can even be added to your quickslot bar. It would be a waste of an expensive outfit slot to use one just for a costume. 🙂

Kiralyn2000 · November 2021

Costumes also aren't built in pieces, like motifs & styles need to be. Or with any need to make them fit with other parts. So they can be built outside the general rules for normal armor, they can have more complex overlapping pieces without (as much) clipping, etc.

(costumes can only be recolored at an outfit station if you have ESO+. Or if you use one of the crown consumable dye-packs.)

newtinmpls · November 2021

There are costumes, there are disguises and there are outfits.

Oh, and there is armor (or clothing)

Armor is the "default" mode, you can dye it (if you are an ESO member, use the dye station; it will be free), Armor has an "armor value" which is highest for heavy armor. Also usable in the same slots as armor is clothing. It is often found by thieves in containers, and can be "laundered" and sold in guild stores. It has NO armor value, but can be dyed.

Broken Branch Toothmaul (my goblin) is wearing regular armor here (crafted deadwater motif for the chest, legs and feet; draugr for the hands and belt, selene's monster helm and pauldons)

This next shot is of her wearing some clothing - a layered dress and stitched gloves have replaced the hands and chest. I added hide helm, but you can still see the pauldons.

In general in game you will see Armor (or clothing) UNLESS it's covered up with something else, that something can be:

A Costume is something you use from the "collections" menu (that little weird circle/triangle/box symbol). Most of them are either purchased in the crown store, obtained by gems or seals, or sometimes earned in game. A costume WILL override your armor. It will also over-ride an outfit. If you are an ESO+ member you can dye a costume; most costumes have 3 dye channels. Dying costumes is free.

Here she is wearing the Nord Hero Armor costume (none of the armor bits that you see are the actual armor she is wearing, which is completely covered up by this costume - in this example she is still wearing the crafted armor shown above, but it is not visible now. This costume was dyed with a dye stamp that I think I got in a crown crate...seemed weirdly Christmass-y so she kept it.

A Disguise is something you can put in the leftmost "appearance" slot (next to neck, ring, ring). It is NOT dye-able, and it can be destroyed in combat - but usually only in the same zone that you obtained it. Currently "hide helm" does not appear to work on those disguises that have a helm/hood. A disguise will override your armor, and it will also override a Costume. It will also override an outfit.

Here she is wearing the Frostedge bandit disguise, which can be found (and destroyed, if worn) on Bleakrock Isle. Outside of Bleakrock Isle it will not be destroyed and can be worn indefinitely.

An Outfit is something you create at an outfit station (formerly a dye station) you can choose the appearance of any slot (head, belt, weapon) that you know (either by knowing the motif, meaning one of your characters can craft it, or by knowing the style - meaning you can use that style to make an outfit, but cannot craft actual armor). You get one outfit slot per character (they are specific to that character) and if you buy "another outfit slot" it only applies to that one character.

Here is the first outfit I created for her, called "Goblin Girl". Its pretty much Hollowjack motif bits, which she likes. It is images ONLY, not real armor, hence the mix of light chest, medium shoulders and so on does NOT matter to actual armor protection, which is still the same as in the first picture.

One thing that comes in handy about a costume overriding armor, is that you can use a "hat" to add to the ambiance of your costume. Here she is with the Pumpkin Spectre Mask enabled (and also dyed).

Hope this helps - you have basic armor, and TON of ways to cover it up. Lots of options!

.edited for mistakes

Danikat · November 2021

As other people have said costumes and outfits are two separate systems. An outfit is a customised selection of armour and weapon motifs (skins) and needs an outfit slot to hold it. A costume is a one-piece set you can't customise (except dying it, if you have ESO+).

The benefit of outfits is greater customisation - you can use any combination of the motifs you have unlocked, the only restriction is the weapons have to match the ones you're really using - you can't make sword & shield look like a bow for example. The downside is it's more expensive and time consuming to set them up - you need to unlock the motifs and dyes you want to use, pay gold to apply them to an outfit slot and if you want more than 1 outfit you'll need to buy additional slots.

The benefit of costumes is you can have an unlimited number of them (the only limit is how many ZOS have made) once you've got them there's no cost to using them. Also because they're not armour there's more variety, you can get costumes which look like the clothes NPCs wear in towns, or daedra or whatever. The downside is the only customisation is dying them, you can't pick the bits you like and replace the ones you don't.

newtinmpls wrote: »

Armor is the "default" mode, you can dye it (if you are an ESO member, use the dye station; it will be free)

Everyone can dye armour for free, and outfits for a small gold fee. ESO+ is only required to dye costumes.

Even then you can dye them without it, but you're restricted to using dye stamps. But personally I wouldn't bother because dye stamps are restricted to 3 colours and only a tiny selection are available at any time, you're better off buying 30 days of ESO+ and seeing it as the cost of dyes for all your costumes than hoping a dye stamp eventually comes around which looks good.

WraithShadow13 · November 2021

For the price they're charging, i think i would be happy if the costume slots and the armory slots were account-wide and not just one-offs.

NotaDaedraWorshipper · November 2021

WraithShadow13 wrote: »

For the price they're charging, i think i would be happy if the costume slots and the armory slots were account-wide and not just one-offs.

outfit slots* Costumes doesn't have slots.

FluffWit · November 2021

You can always hotkey your appearance stuff to switch at the click of a button.

This allows you to do a neat trick- if you hotkey a polymorph on a female character you can use it to do male dance emotes on female characters.