SWTOR Character Appearance Guide

There are hundreds of ways to customize your character, including their race, the character creator and darkside corruption.

Character Creation

When you create your first character, you’ll be fairly limited in what you can choose. Many of the different races, or species, will be locked out, and you’ll only have a few to choose from. When you are creating an new character, hover your mouse over the races to find out where they come from.

SWTOR Races

Free to play and preferred players by default only have access to Humans, Cyborgs and Zabraks, the species with horns on their head like Darth Maul. To unlock more, you’ll need to either subscribe or buy more races with cartel coins.

Many races become available automatically when you subscribe – but which ones exactly are different for each class. For example most Republic classes gain the gren Mirialans, and the Imperial classes gain either Sith Purebloods or the pale Rattataki.

Unlocking Races

To unlock races that are unavailable to you, you can buy them on the cartel market with cartel coins, or on the GTN for credits from other players. All race unlocks cost 600 cartel coins and are in the unlocks section of the cartel market.

If you are subscribed, you get free cartel coins every month, otherwise you will have to buy cartel coins from swtor.com. If you already have a character with lots of credits, you can check the GTN by searching for the words “legacy unlock” – but there’s usually none available or they’re extremely expensive. You’ll need at least a level 10 character to use this unlock item, so unfortnately you won’t be able to start playing that Sith pureblood trooper right away… but leveling is pretty easy, so you can level up a random character quickly, buy the unlock, then start your preferred character. This unlock allows you to make a new character of that race with any class at level 1.

Classes that are cartel-market only like Togruta and Cathar can only be unlocked with the cartel market unlock, there’s no other way.

The other way to unlock a race is through the legacy system. There’s two different ways of doing that.

The first is to level up a character of that race to level 50. You could find a class that allows that race as a default, level them to 50, and you’d then be able to create a new character of your preferred class with your newly unlocked race. For example, if you wanted to make a blindfolded Miraluka Sith Agent and are subscribed, you could first make a Miraluka on the Republic side as a Jedi consular, and level them to 50. Then that race will be unlocked for all new characters you make, regardless of their class.

The other way is to level any character up to level 50, then in the legacy panel you can spend 1 million 500 thousand credits to unlock any race you choose.

All species unlocks are legacy-wide.. that means they’ll only work for any new character you make on the server you originally unlocked them.

What’s extra cool about unlocking a race is that it sometimes gives you more appearance options. For example, you can normally only make a red Zabrak on the imperial side… but if you unlock the race, you can make a red zabrak on the republic side when you could normally only make one with normal skintones. There’s also over 50 different cyborg cybernetics which are normally bound to the different classes – for example the trooper cyborg gets an eyepatch – but once you unlock the race all the cybernetic options become available across the board.

Character Customization

Apart from your race, there are tons of ways to customize your characters including their hair, eyes and tattoos. Although the are lots of options available by default in the character creator, there are also some “hidden” ones you can only get once you’ve already made your first character.

You can buy new types of eyes or hair on the cartel market with cartel coins or on the GTN from other players. You can find what’s available on the GTN by searching for the words “appearance option” but there’s often many not available for sale. To buy them from the cartel market, check the “misc” tab. They only cost between 100 and 240 cartel coins, and unlock those appearance options for any new characters you make. Some of the hair options include pigtails, dreadlocks, beautiful braided hair, long curly hair, stylize short hair and afros. The hair style unlocks apply to any races that have hair, except for Zabraks who have horns. and even funky colors light bright pink and dark blue. You can also unlock new eye colors like bright blue and vibrant green eyes – but these only work for humans and cyborgs. There’s also a special Sith eyes unlock, and some new tattoos for Mirialians.

Appearance Modification Station

If you want to change a character you’ve already created, you can easily give them a hair cut – or even change their species, by finding an appearance modification station. There’s one available in the cartel bazaar on the flet- the northern elevator for the republic side, and the southern impside. There’s also a decoration version you can buy for your stronghold. Once there, you can change every part of your character’s looks, except their gender. It costs cartel coins – for example changing your hair costs 80 coins, your hair color another 80, your eye color 40, and your species 600 cartel coins.

Darkside Corruption

When you make dark side choices, your alignment can also change the way your character looks. As your character progresses towards the dark side, their eyes changes from their original color to yellow, then orange, then finally red. Your character’s skin may get paler or darker, dark veins will spiderweb across their cheeks and mouth, and dark circles will show up around their eyes. Each level of darkside alignment brings a change to your character’s darkside corruption. To make darkside corruption visible, you need to turn it on in the same panel as your equipment is – look for the tiny armor icon on the bottom right and toggle “show darkside corruption”. You can turn this on or off at any time. Playing as a lightside character gives you no appearance changes.

Companion Customization

The companions you gain from your class story, and any companions you gain in Knights of the Fallen Empire that used to be in the game, can also be customized. There aren’t as many options available for them as your main character, but you can change up the way they look with companion customizations. For example, if you have Vette the blue twi’lek, you can change her into a green twi’lek, a red twi’lek or even a diseased rakghoul twi’lek. Some of these can be bought from vendors around the galaxy, and others are from cartel packs and can be bought on the GTN. To see a list of all the companion customizations, search online for “tor fashion companions”.

There are thousands of possible combinations out there when it comes to customizing your character – so get them looking good, and get out there!