Armors with Color Variations in SWTOR

Back in the day, there were certain armors that seemed to change color based on your character’s species. I went and did a look-around to find out if this still existed and what it might look like!

The Armor Color Skin-Tone Bug

Interest in this bug, or rather the color variations it created, was likely popularized by this neat old blog post called The Amazing Chameleon Shirt, from a now-retired blog called Crew Skills, where the player showed their Aspiring Knight armor set as gray, pale blue and black depending on their character.

My first step was to go check around and see if these variations still existed – sadly it looks like no! I tried testing it out on a couple of my characters with no luck.

It turns out that this variation in color was actually caused by characters have different skin-tone colors. This bug caused all kinds of unexpected effects between the preview window, to the character sheet, to cutscenes, and even included Cartel items. Players would post on the SWTOR forums about their various armors having different issues, with the biggest issues seeming to be related to certain Cartel items not properly displaying the color red once actually worn.

For example, one player posted about their Reveler’s Finary, which is supposed to be bright pink and bright red, but it instead was showing up as very pale pink, with the bracers not matching the new pale colors. The graphics are set to very very very low, but you can see the difference!

Another player said, “I’ve noticed this as well for my Human Marauder wearing the Masterblade vest and put a ticket in for it. In the preview window and the cinematics, the chest piece is bright red; but in game it appears pink.”

I’m not sure how long the bug had been in the game, but another player wrote down that the issue had existed since at least Update 1.2. In early 2013, it seems this bug was fixed in Update 1.6.2 – the Patch Notes only mention the Investigator’s Robes being fixed, but players reported it seemed that their other sets seemed to be fixed as well.

With the bug being fixed in 1.6.2, it looks like those color variations are no longer available!

BUT… while investigating… I remembered something else very interesting that I thought was related, but turns out to be a completely different interesting armor color change!

Acolyte’s Vestments

While investigating the color-changing Aspiring Knight’s set, I was trying to remember any other sets that changed color, because I was very interested in seeing all the variations. I did remember that the Acolyte Vestments, a very easy to get set from the Adaptive vendor on the Imperial side, did happen to have a wierd variation that existed!

If I understand right, with this wierd set, if you buy it on a Sith Inquisitor, it will show up as purple, like on the left. But if you buy it on any other class, it will show up as the red version on the right with a hood. Why is there a variation? I have no idea. But the reason I remembered it, was because if you look at it on websites that catalogue the information in the game’s files, it actually shows the two color variations in pink and purple (plus the Republic version)!

This is different than the Aspiring Knight, which only ever had the single Imperial and single Republic icon.

If you like the idea of multiple icons or looks for the same set, here’s a really fun one! In Update 7.0, the developers revamped quest rewards to match with the new concept of Combat Styles. Instead of making 8 different items, for each class, plus the 3 different variations for Tank Healer DPS, instead they made just 3 items, for tank healer or dps, and made those items change color depending on your class… so there’s 8 icons and 8 looks for one type of armor! For example, here is the Alderaanian Battler armor set, for damage characters questing on Aldereraan.

Whether there are any more armor sets like the Acolyte’s Vestments that change color depending on class, I’m not sure, but it was interesting to look around!