How to Create a Unique and Original Outfit in SWTOR

This guide will help you learn to make an original outfit in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Whether you’re in PvE, PvP, or RP, chances are you want to look good while in your respective activity. As you read, you’ll find numerous tips to creating a look that is unique to you!

What are Outfits in Star Wars The Old Republic

When referring to outfits in this guide, this is not the gear you use to gain your offensive and defensive stats from. Rather it’s the cosmetic overlay known as Outfits that provide no stat benefits. We have a full guide on the difference between Gear and Outfits in SWTOR, but I’ll provide a brief summary here.

Opening your Character Pane Window (default key is C), you’ll be able to access your current gear on your character. Switching to the Outfitter tab will allow you to create outfits of just about any armor you can get and have it change your character’s appearance without changing their stats. You can even have your weapon outfitted to look different in the Outfitter tab!

Unlocking Outfit slots and placing gear into Outfitter slots will cost credits or Cartel Coins, though the credit cost isn’t anything you can’t farm from doing daily and weekly missions.

There are some limitations to keep in mind with the Outfitter Menu:

• The “Hide Head Slot” feature can only be used by Subscribers or those who have consumed the “Customization Control: Hide Head Slot” item from the Cartel Market.
• Your currently selected outfit is linked to your currently active Combat Style Loadout. If you switch your current loadout, your outfit may change to another outfit depending on that loadout’s designated outfit.
• You cannot have a weapon in your outfitter that’s incompatible with your current Combat Style. If an outfit equipped with an incompatible weapon is used, the outfit will use the weapon currently equipped in your gear tab.
  For example, if you’re a Shadow/Inquisitor, you cannot use an outfit that has a Single Lightsaber or Dual Lightsabers loaded in. On the other hand, a Sniper can get away with using a Blaster Rifle instead of a Sniper Rifle in their Outfitter slot as this doesn’t severely impact animations for abilities.
• Using a Dye on a piece of gear in the Outfitter will still consume the dye, so it may be advantageous to place any dyes in the Chest slot to utilize the “Unify Colors” feature.

What makes an outfit unique

Designing and coordinating an outfit to look unique can be seen as a form of art. Like any form of art, you must understand that all art is derivative of its predecessors so what we often see as “original art” is actually often a mixture of various styles developed previously.

In the case of outfits, you’ll want to mix various pieces of gear to create a unique look. As an example, I’ll be showing you my outfit in SWTOR.

I’ve had this outfit since 2016 though over time there have been very minor adjustments such as the hand pieces, the addition of a holoshield tuning, etc.

The secret is in the details

During my years of SWTOR wearing this outfit, I have failed to see anyone with anything remotely similar. But how do you achieve a unique look such as this?

One way you can achieve this is to combine armor from various sources such as the Cartel Market, event or season-specific armor, armor that drops from chests, or even armor that drops randomly from NPCs you defeat.

This armor is designed to tell a story about my character based on my own personal experiences. From an RP perspective, I envisioned my character as being a Jedi Sentinel that likes to be discreet, slice into locks and computer terminals, and remain light on his feet.

To achieve this, I used medium armor typically found available for Sentinels. The belt is a heavy armor belt as it gave the appearance of being a utility belt filled with numerous tools. Meanwhile the helmet, despite being Imperial, has nothing overtly Imperial-themed about it. It has been repurposed to appear more Jedi by using a brown dye to override its regular red color.

Using my outfit as an example, we can get one answer as to what makes armor unique. I believe a unique outfit in SWTOR utilizes the following:

• The outfit is comprised of gear from numerous sources that form a thematically cohesive outfit.
• The outfit tells a story about your character.
• Whether you play PvE, PvP or RP, the outfit shares to others who you are and what you do.

Though the question of what makes an outfit unique can have numerous answers. For example, you could get a random piece of gear for each slot with each piece being dyed a unique dye color. It may not look good, but it would certainly be unique. You may have another answer for this question, but we’ll be using the list above as an answer for the purposes of this guide.

Tips for creating a Unique Outfit in SWTOR

We can now get to the important part. How can we make you look good while being unique in SWTOR? I’ll be listing off various tips in this section.

How to pick a theme for your Outfit

The first and most important thing is to decide on is the theme for your outfit. Do you want to come off as a diplomatic consular? Or perhaps you want to come off as a conniving smuggler with a grimy appearance? Picking the theme will make the following steps a lot easier now that you have some guidance.

The importance of avoiding Iconic gear pieces and sets

Many of us look towards famous Star Wars characters to either roleplay as or emulate in some manner during our time in SWTOR. If you’re interested in recreating famous Star Wars characters in SWTOR, we do have Roleplay Guides for this very purpose. Though if you’re going to create a unique outfit, you’ll want to avoid gear that is too iconic.

Iconic gear pieces can include the following:

• Arcann’s Mask
• Ajunta Pall’s Armor set
• Bastila Shan’s Armor Set
• Darth Malak’s Jaw Casing
• Darth Malgus’s Armor Sett
• Darth Sion’s Armor Set
• Exar Kun’s Armor Set
• Malgus Reborn Armor Set
• Mandalore the Indomitable’s Helmet
• Mandalore the Ultimate’s Helmet
• Mandalorian Nomad Armor Set
• Marka Ragnos’s Crown
• Mask of Nihilus
• Naga Sadow’s Armor Set
• Reaver’s Armor Set (Darth Marr)
• Revan Helmets (Revan Reborn/Darth Revan/Jedi Knight Revan)
• Satele Shan’s Armor Set
• Temple Guardian’s Armor Set
• Tulak Hord Armor Set

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be using these in your outfits, you’re just going to have a harder time making them look unique. You can dye the outfits different colors or only use certain components in your outfit. But at the end of the day, if you’re wearing a Revan mask, people are going to think “Oh that’s Revan!” instead of “Oh that’s [your name here]!”.

If you want to have a truly iconic character build (not just an outfit), we have a collection of guides that will show you how to recreate iconic Star Wars characters in SWTOR and play them!

Popular Cartel Market items will not make you stand out

If you wanted to, you could make your entire outfit composed of pieces from Cartel Market gear. The Cartel Market has a great amount of outfits to choose from that look good, but too much of something can be bad.

In the case of outfits, too much of one gear set can take away from your outfit’s uniqueness. This is more often the case with popular outfits such as the Sith Recluse Armor Set, the Satele Shan Armor Set, and others.

It can’t be helped that these armor sets are popular because they look fantastic. Unfortunately, that means everyone and their grandmother will have something like this. When everyone is wearing the same thing, you won’t be seen as unique by implementing the same armor pieces into your own outfit.

Oftentimes, Cartel Market Armor Sets are made to work with itself only such as the Dathomir Shaman’s Armor Set. This can make it harder to pair with other pieces of gear that are not part of the same set while making it look good. If there’s a certain Cartel Market armor set that catches your eye but you want a unique outfit, decide which elements of the armor set you want to keep. Once you decide on which elements of the armor set you want, build up from there.

Check Various Sources for Gear

While the Cartel Market offers a wide variety of armor sets, we may not always be in a position to purchase Cartel Coins.

Fortunately, you can find many of these armor sets on the Galactic Trade Network. Unfortunately, armor sets that are more rare or are in higher demand may cost a fortune which you may not be able to afford due to budget limitations. This issue is even worse if you’re a Free-To-Play player where your credit cap is 1 million credits.

There are ways around this to where you can look good while saving credits and actual money. Check these following sources for gear!

Common Armor Drops on the Galactic Trade Network

The GTN is a great place to shop for gear that’s cheap. Many of these gear pieces sell for very cheap from a few thousand credits to a couple hundred thousand credits or so. You can make a great looking outfit with these random drop pieces but do keep in mind, not all of them offer support for Dye Modules.

Some might feel like these common green and blue drops aren’t worth wearing with how common they are, but give them a chance! Many of them can look quite good!

Vendors

There are a wide variety of vendors out in the galaxy that can sell you gear. They can be found on the fleet, planets (typically those where you can gain reputation), during events, etc. Always keep an eye out for these vendors but do keep in mind that there are a few that will require currency that’s hard to acquire.

For example, the Underworld Exchange Vendors on the fleet as they require Cartel Market Certificates for some items. These are outdated currencies that would drop from loot boxes that used to be more readily available. These days, you’ll need to use a Contraband Slot Machine in a stronghold to acquire these.

A good source for cheap archetypal gear can be found from the Adaptive Gear Vendors on the Fleet. You’ll find them in the Supplies section next to a level 10 gear vendor. A full set of gear from these vendors will cost between 4,200-17,500 credits.

Another good set of vendors with archetypal gear can be found on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas for Republic and Imperial characters respectively. These are the Legacy Vendors that will sell the same sets of gear for Construction Kits or Credits.

I recommend the credit variants as they’re the exact same thing as their Construction Kit counterparts and are much easier to obtain since Construction Kits are a bit of an outdated currency. A full set of gear from one of these Legacy Vendors will cost 1,200,000 credits.

The Republic Legacy Vendors can be found on the Senate Plaza outside of the Senate Tower. This isn’t too far off from the spaceport so it’s very easy to get here. The Legacy Vendors on Dromund Kaas are a short speeder bike trip away from the spaceport. You can find them near the Craft and Trade Market in Kaas City.

There are a wide variety of Specialty Goods Vendors in SWTOR. They’re found on all the vanilla planets from the starting planets such as Tython and Korriban to Corellia. Check them out to see what unique looks they can offer you!

Alliance Supply Crates

The Supply Crates you gain from planetary Heroic Missions are a great way to get a wide variety of gear. You can unlock these after unlocking Doctor Oggurobb, Sana-Rae, Hylo Visz, and Admiral Aygo on Ossus after Chapter 9 of the Knights of the Fallen Empire questline.

Check your Collections window and go to Armor > Remnant Sets to see if anything there seems appealing to you. Certain crates will unlock different gear types, they are as follows:

• Locked Supply Crate: Alien Research – Agent and Inquisitor Sets
• Locked Supply Crate: Ancient Artifacts – Knight and Consular Sets
• Locked Supply Crate: Military Equipment – Warrior and Trooper Sets
• Locked Supply Crate: Smuggled Goods – Bounty Hunter and Smuggler Sets

You can find a Mission Terminal at the Combat Training section of the fleet or on Odessen that will grant the Heroic Missions that reward these chests. Despite saying these missions are Heroic 2+, you can easily solo these with a companion and rather quickly as well.

Avoid mismatching pieces too much

This should go without saying but it’s best to avoid mixing pieces that contrast too much. In this example below, this character has a Mandalorian helmet, a crop top, and a very long skirt with Temple Guardian gloves. When picking a theme for your outfit, decide if you want this to feel like a light, medium, or heavy outfit.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t mix light, medium, and heavy gear pieces. Rather, make sure that they work together and fit the theme you’re going for.

Avoid Clipping Gear

There are times where gear will clip with one another which just doesn’t look good, try to avoid this. If you’re not familiar with the term “Clipping”, it can be described as when 3D objects phase through another object in a way it shouldn’t. Below is an example of a clipping outfit:

What are the pieces you should always start with

When you’re picking your outfit components, chances are the defining portions of you outfit will be your Chest and Leg pieces. However, if you’re looking to use a specific head piece, then you’ll pick that first and then see which Chest and Leg Pieces work with that head piece.

Keep in mind that your chest piece will define the color of your entire outfit should you Unify Colors for the outfit. Make sure your favored chest piece is compatible with dyes if you had a specific dye in mind.

After choosing your Chest, Leg, and Head pieces, choose your Hand and Feet pieces next. The Hand and Feet pieces act as secondary pieces, not quite defining but still noticeable on your outfit.

Afterwards, you’ll want to choose your Wrist and Belt pieces, which act as Tertiary pieces that will often have the least impact on your outfit.

A unique outfit will more often than not be made of a mashup of gear from various sources. Perhaps it will be components from dropped gear, mission or story related gear, and perhaps with a dash of Cartel Market gear. For example…

This is my Sith Inquisitor outfit. It is comprised of the following pieces:

• Head: Revanite Pursuer’s Helmet
• Chest: Revanite Vindicator’s Breastplate
• Wrist: Outlander Guerrilla’s Bracers
• Hands: Scout Trooper Gloves
• Belt: Revanite Pursuer’s Belt
• Legs: Overwatch Enforcer’s Greaves
• Feet: Overwatch Security Boots
• Dye: Black and Deep Red Dye Module

Mix up the pieces from various sources, see what works, and slap on a dye if you wish. This will likely be a trial and error process so do make use of the Preview function (CTRL+LMB) to get an idea how the gear interacts before you commit to buying new pieces.

Use Dyes

Dyes are a great way to stand out from the crowd (or to not stand out if that’s your goal). Dyes can be made with the Artificer Crew Skill, earned from Galactic Seasons, or purchased off the Cartel Market. While this is a great way to make your outfit look good, the wrong dyes can easily make your outfit look gaudy and obnoxious. Before we continue, let’s look at Color Saturation.

On the image above, you can see a fully saturated color on the left versus the less saturated version on the right. I will be referring to saturated and less saturated colors for this section so it’s important to have an idea on what that means. Saturated colors appear brighter whereas less saturated colors are more subdued and easier on the eyes. Bright colors can be fun to wear but more often than not, we’ll see less saturated colors in Star Wars. Here are some examples:

Outfits in Star Wars typically are not fully saturated and are more often subdued in color. Luke’s yellow jacket in the image above comes off as pale due to its less saturated hue. Ahsoka Tano in the image has well saturated pants that have less luminosity (brightness) but her tunic and boots balance it out with less saturated blues and blueish grays. Sheev Palpatine prefers darker, saturated colors such as Burgundy and Blood Red.

In these examples, the outfits avoid bright, saturated colors (Ahsoka’s skin doesn’t count). If you want to have a unique outfit that matches the aesthetic of Star Wars, aim for less bright and less saturated colors. If you do have some bright colors, try to balance it out with less saturated colors. You can never go wrong with earth tones on your outfit.

Accessorize

A great way to add to your outfit is to add accessories in the form of companions, pets, weapon tunings, and vehicles. Let’s use myself as an example for this:

Since I go for the theme of a Jedi Sentinel that uses a lot of tech, I have a droid companion and pet to show that to others. Each have more subdued colors to pair well with my own outfit and the companion in particular compliments this. This is done by its yellow accent lights being reminiscent of my yellow lightsaber. Meanwhile it has blue glowing bits around its weapons similar to the holoshield projectors I use.

The Walkhar Prophecy mount works with my outfit due to the similar colors and yellow accent lighting to pair with my outfit and lightsaber.

Depending on your theme, you may find yourself pairing well with an animal companion, mount, pet, etc. Fortunately there are various colors of each mount and pet design though companion customizations can be trickier as some companions lack customization options entirely. Just make sure these additions fit your theme and color palette if possible!

Tips for making Faction-Specific Outfits in SWTOR

Some people may want to have a base to build off of to either fit a certain aesthetic or because making an original outfit from scratch is difficult. This is what this section is for, we’ll be going over generic outfits from various factions found in SWTOR. These are just my personal recommendations but any archetypal armor from a planetary vendor works!

You can use the following outfits as a basis for a desired look and work on changing components from there. It’s a good way to practice putting together cohesive outfits that maintain their desired theme.

The Jedi Order

The Jedi Order typically utilizes simple cloth robes, tunics, and at time armors. These outfits are often simple earth tones so they’ll typically wear shades of brown.

• Guardian – Valiant Jedi Armor Set* (Cartel Market).
• Sentinel – Sentinel’s Exalted Set (Coruscant Legacy Vendor)
• Sage – Force Magister’s Set (Republic Fleet Adaptive Gear Vendor)
• Shadow – Battleborn Set (Republic Fleet Adaptive Gear Vendor)

*Check Planetary Vendors for very similar sets that you can purchase for credits.

Republic Military

Republic Troopers typically don heavy armor with white as a primary color and a secondary color that changes with their unit. Officers dress more lightly and professionally while scouts will more likely use medium armor with camouflage.

• Standard Trooper – Alderaanian Trooper’s Set (Alderaan Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Heavy Trooper – Trooper’s Exalted Set (Coruscant Legacy Vendor)
• Officer – Formal Militant Armor Set* (Cartel Market)
• Scout – Forest Scout Armor Set* (Cartel Market)

*These are most commonly found in Bronze Armor Packs and should be fairly cheap on the Galactic Trade Network.

Underworld

Underworld can cover Smugglers, Bounty Hunters, Mercenaries, Gangsters, and even undercover operatives from Republic and Imperial Intelligence.

There’s no real “correct” way to design an underworld character but more charismatic figures will tend to show their face while those doing more dirty work will tend to hide it. Underworld characters typically have outfits that look grimy, patched together, or purely function over form.

• Underworld 1 – Tarisian Smuggler’s Set (Taris Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Underworld 2 – Tatooinian Smuggler’s Set (Tatooine Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Underworld 3 – Voss Bounty Hunter’s Set (Voss Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Underworld 4 – Tatooinian Bounty Hunter’s Set (Tatooine Specialty Goods Vendor)

The Sith Order

Members of the Sith Order will usually wear robes or armor that are black, red, dark blue, or dark purple in color. These outfits often have an air of menace and are usually intimidating.

• Juggernaut – Eradicator’s Warsuit and Mask (Cartel Market)
• Mauraider – Alderaanian Warrior’s Chestguard (Alderaan Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Sorcerer – Belsavis Inquisitor Set (Belsavis Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Assassin – Grand Inquisitor Set (Imperial Fleet Adaptive Gear Vendor)

Imperial Military

Imperial Military armor and uniforms typically have black as their primary color with red accents.

• Standard Trooper – Imperial Trooper Set (Collector’s Edition Vendor)
• Heavy Trooper – Iokath Annihilator Set (Imperial Iokath Reputation Vendor)
• Officer – Mullinine Onslaught Set (Craftable with Armormech, Imperial Only)
• Agent – Remnant Resurrected Agent’s Armor Set (Alliance Crates)

Mandalorian

Making a Mandalorian themed outfit is quite simple to do. All you need is a helmet with a T-shaped visor and heavy armor. Instead, tell others about yourself through the color of your armor. Colors have different meanings for Mandalorians and are as follows:

• White – A New Start
• Gray – Mourning a lost love
• Black – Justice
• Red – Honoring a parent
• Orange – A lust for life
• Gold – Vengeance
• Green – Duty
• Blue – Reliability

• Mandalorian 1 – Mandalorian Seeker Armor Set (Cartel Market)
• Mandalorian 2 – TT-17A Hydra Set (Imperial Fleet Adaptive Armor Vendor)
• Mandalorian 3 – Corellian Bounty Hunter’s Set (Corellia Specialty Goods Vendor)
• Mandalorian 4 – Ruhnuk Wanderer Set (Ruhnuk Reputation Vendor)

Unique Outfit Examples

Last, we’ll be going over some examples of some great unique outfits from SWTOR players along with interviews. Some of them have even chosen to share their outfits with you so you can know how to recreate their outfit! If you’re one of the interviewees reading this, thank you again for your time and for sharing your style with us here at VULKK!

This concludes our guide on how to create a truly unique and original outfit in SWTOR. If you want more SWTOR content, I suggest you start with our SWTOR Guides Master Catalog.