I asked a few of our prolific posters to write up some suggestions for how they go about creating their sets. These are their own words and opinions.
Errtai plays on The Red Eclipse. He’s only been posting sets for about 8 months, but has quickly become a favorite poster and helpful commenter on the site.
A big hello to all the TOR-Fashionistas out there!
We all visit Tor-Fashion with one single goal; to get some inspiration for a great outfit which we can use for our beloved toons in-game. I don’t know about you but for me, this place is simply oozing with all kinds of great inspirational posts!!
But what is a great outfit? How to create it? Is it simply taking good looking pieces and throwing them onto your toon? Is it using expensive stuff so you get people’s attention? Or is there more to it?
I’m sure all the great minds who keep posting here have different answers to it. But for me personally, most of the time everything starts with the character him or herself. I don’t care how good the outfit looks like; as long as it’s not fitting to the character, it’s simply bad for me. In other words, I don’t care how “dull” or maybe “uninteresting” an outfit may look like; as long as it fits the character, it simply is great for me.
Let me give you an example. Take a look at this guy:
This “damaged” guy is named Darksaber and he’s my Juggernaut tank. When I started him, he was a mere Human. Then during the Sith Warrior story, there was one moment when his master betrayed him in a cave on Quesh. A bomb has been set off and he barely managed to escape it. But not without a cost.
At that point I changed his race to Cyborg and changed his face as you see in the above picture. According to my imagination, that bomb that exploded in that cave destroyed the right side of his body completely. Right eye gone, right side of the face in scars and also right hand is gone too. On top of it, his backbone has been damaged beyond surgical repair.
So at this point I asked myself this: “What kind of an outfit do I want for this character?”. There were lots of Cyborg outfits available but I didn’t want to turn him into a “Mr.Robot” kind of guy. I was more like thinking along the lines of a Darth Vader-like Cyborg look. You know, a few mechanical add-ons here and there and that’s about it.
So I came up with this look:
As you see, right hand is gone and has been replaced with a mechanical hand. And that Rebreather mask was a no-brainer.
Backbone has been damaged, hence the mechanical spine keeping him together and up and running.
I completed the outfit with some fitting heavy armor pants and some metallic looking heavy boots.
You don’t want to get punched or kicked by this guy; seriously. He’s one big walking pile of metal!
As I said somewhere above, an outfit that is “shiny” or “bright” or “sparkly” may not always be a great outfit. The question is; is that outfit suitable and fitting for your character? In this above case, the outfit I came up with was fitting. It made sense considering the story of the character and what I wanted to do with him.
It may not be one of my “brightest” outfits but it most certainly is one of the outfits that is most fitting for the character I’m using it on.
Now, not all great outfits have to start from the veeeeery beginning; meaning the character him or herself. Sometimes you simply see a piece of gear and want to use it. That’s also a great way of creating successful outfits.
Again, let me give you an example.
That’s the HK Helmet alright. Oh how I waited to make something out of it (that didn’t look ugly or funny at the same time).
The most significant thing about this helmet is the red/dark orange eyes. That was my starting point. I started searching for a fitting chest piece with some red or dark orange lights on it, and found this one.
That’s the Fearsome Harbinger Chestguard dyed to Dark Brown/Medium Brown.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: The character’s name is Flàmé and she is a Powertech. I wouldn’t recommend throwing all this heavy armor onto a, say, Sage for example. Just wouldn’t make sense.
So yes, I was happy with the chest piece I found that was looking good together with the HK helmet. It was time for the other pieces. Again, what I was looking for were pieces with red lights on them and pieces that were also going to look great with this outfit. I found these.
Classic Contractor’s Gloves and Zakuulan Inquisitor’s Belt. Pants is Overwatch Enforcer’s Greaves.
And now, the final piece. The boots.
Overwatch Sentry Boots. Oh and obviously she’s using the HK blaster!
Finally, Dark Legionnaire chest piece is another great alternative you can use with this helmet. Aeden did one such outfit which was simply great.
So yes, this is another way of making a good looking set in my opinion. Get one piece as your starting point and try matching the other pieces.
As in the above case, it can be the lights on the armor. It can be some shape or different look the armor has. Do you want to use a chest piece with the Republic logo on it? Cool, just make sure to use a nice belt with the same logo on it; there are plenty on the GTN!
Or finally it can be the third color of the piece you have that you want to match.
Both Aeden and Exile posted toons wearing this chest piece where they were nicely matching that third yellow color on the chest with some other nice armor pieces. I simply copy/pasted their posts, made a few changes here and there and voila; my Shadow Caédes had a nice new outfit!
And the final thing I watch out is the class of my toon. Am I working on a Guardian? Surely I don’t want to look like the next Guardian out there and surely I want to be “different”. But not as different as putting a Mando armor on him!
Or is it my Sage? Yes yes yes, we’ve all seen those Sages with those plain and simple brown Jedi robes running around and no, I don’t want to look like them. Surely my toon must be different. But that doesn’t mean giving him a Commando armor!!
You’ve seen my Powertech Flàmé above. Yes, I want her to be different but there is NO way I will dress her up with some sort of a Consular light armor!
What I’m trying to say is, I try to come up with different outfits but they should ALWAYS be suitable for the class I’m playing. They should always make sense. My Inquisitor who is a Dark Council member, entering the the Dark Council chambers on Korriban for a meeting and she’s wearing, what? Havoc Squad armor??!!! Oh my God, that’s just plain wrong!
So yes dear Tor-Fashionistas, these are all I can tell you. There are way better posters here than me and I’m sure they have much useful things to tell. But these three things above I mentioned, are how I work on an outfit.
I either look at my character, think of his or her story, and then try to find pieces that would be fitting. Or sometimes a single piece of gear amazes me and I try to find other pieces that make sense with it. But no matter what I do, the outfit I come up with should always be suitable for my toon’s class.
Thanks for reading. Errtai, out.
